Classic Mode

Presto

Issue: 1920 1792

Page 4 Text:

PRESTO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
C. A. DAN I ELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editors
November 27, 1920.
dull. With that kind of dealers things will stay dull. People who
buy pianos are usually prepared to accept the prices without argu-
ment. They want musical instruments and the world has not yet
accepted the silly idea that pianos are things of cheapness. It is the
dealer himself that spoils his own prospects by talking high costs of
things and the absolute necessity of their dropping. That is the blue
side of it. It isn't the side that sounds musical. The bright way is
always the better way. Keep on the sunny side and promote your
business just as if you did not know that prices had been lower or
would ever again be lower for such splendid instruments as you
carry in stock.
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234. Private Phones to all De-
partments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the Post Office, Chicago, Illinois,
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable In advance. No extra
charge in XL S. possessions, Canada, Cuba and Mexico.
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., 407 So. Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
Advertising Rates:—Five dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insertions.
Complete schedule of rates for standing cards and special displays will be furnished
on request. The Presto does not sell its editorial space. Payment Is not accepted for
articles of descriptive character or other matter appearing In the news columns. Busi-
ness notices will be indicated by the word "advertisement" In accordance with the
Act of August 24, 1912.
Rates for advertising in Presto Year Book Issue and Export Supplements of
Presto will be made known upon application. Presto Year Book and Export issues
have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musical in-
strument trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely and
effectually all the houses handling musical instruments of both the Eastern and West-
ern hemispheres.
Presto Buyers' Guide is the only reliable index to the American Pianos and
Player-Pianos, it analyzes all instruments, classifies them, gives accurate estimates
of their value and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
Items of news and other matter of general interest to the music trades are In-
vited and when accepted will be paid for. All communications should be addressed to
Presto Publishing Co., 407 So. Dearborn Street. Chicago, 111.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1920.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
PRESTO IS ALWAYS GLAD TO RECEIVE NEWS OF THE
TRADE—ALL KINDS OF NEWS EXCEPT PERSONAL SLANDER
AND STORIES OF PETTY MISDEEDS BY INDIVIDUALS. PRESTO
WILL PRINT THE NAMES OF CORRESPONDENTS WHO SEND IN
"GOOD STUFF" OR ARE ON THE REGULAR STAFF. DON'T SEND
ANY PRETTY SKETCHES, LITERARY ARTICLES OR "PEN-PIC-
TURES." JUST PLAIN NEWS ABOUT THE TRADE—NOT ABOUT
CONCERTS OR AMATEUR MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENTS, BUT
ABOUT THE MEN WHO MAKE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND
THOSE WHO SELL THEM. REPORTS OF NEW STORES AND
THE MEN WHO MAKE RECORDS AS SALESMEN ARE GOOD. OF-
TEN THE PIANO SALESMEN ARE THE BEST CORRESPONDENTS
BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY LIKE TO READ AND HAVE
THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FINDING OUT WHAT IS "DOING" IN
THE TRADE IN THEIR VICINITY. SEND IN THE N E W S -
ALL YOU CAN GET OF IT—ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
THE BETTER WAY
It would be difficult to produce a better illustration of the in-
fluence of a good name in business than is seen in the result of the
lower-price announcement of Lyon & Healy. The Chicago music
house, in a trade paper display, told why-a price-reduction is possible
in Lyon & Healy pianos and added that in making the concessions
the manufacturer's profits would be sacrificed. While there was no
intimation that piano prices in general should come down, the trade
at large seems to have jumped at the conclusion that such is the con-
dition. Few other business houses could have stirred up so much
discussion, or created so wide-spread a notion that the rank and file
of the piano manufacturers were holding up their prices without full
justification.
But, on the other hand, there is little sign of any breaking in the
cost of the essentials in piano manufacture. The supply industries
do not seem ready to give any sign of a return to anything like pre-
war prices. In fact there are intimations of a rise in the cost of some
of the indispensables, and the supply industries adhere to a system
which came to life when the highest peaks in prices had been touched.
It is to give to their customers guarantees that, should prices recede
within five or six months, rebates will be granted and the consumer
thus be protected from loss.
Certainly that doesn't look like a drop in prices. Piano manu-
facturers can not be expected to cut the selling prices of their finished
products until there has come a drop in the cost of their essential
supplies. So that the retail piano merchants who hold back from
buying in the expectation that prices will soon be lower, are sure to
lose more by missing sales than they can hope to gain when the at
present fictitious fall in prices may become real.
Retailers who are trying to keep business alive are succeeding.
Those who think that a discussion of high prices and a lugubrious
forecast of trade conditions are winning arguments are finding things
WHEN WIT AWAKES
There used to be an unrighteous notion, harbored by many peo-
ple, that men whose daily lives are mixed with music and its affairs
are apt to be mentally or intellectually lopsided. They are credited,
too often, with knowing a lot about the things divine but little about
the rough and ready side of business life, and that, while particularly
moral and good—get that?—they couldn't discuss a thing or quote a
sentence in which pianos, harps or consecutive fifths and octaves,
have no part. Of course any such idea as that is only a relic of con-
ditions as they once were, when all men of music were not so much
merchants as musicians, and perhaps not so much musicians as
"professors." For in the early days the average piano dealer, for in-
stance, tended store while he taught the young fingers how to play,
and sold instruments between lessons. That is all changed now.
Today the men who make musical instruments are rarely, if ever,
the men who make music. And the men who sell musical instruments
are seldom the' men who know much about the "exercises and scales."
They are business men who know more about their banks than about
Mozart or Beethoven. And they are men who graze as frequently in
the pastures of literature as in the fields of art. And so it has come
to pass that the men of the piano trade mingle freely with the minis-
ters, lawyers, doctors, and financiers. They are up in all of the topics
that interest the orators and the golfers, the scientists and the—well,
the profiteers.
All this is shown in the way in which piano men acquit them-
selves when they mingle with men in the liberal professions or still
more liberal trades, to cross mental rapiers and parry wit and wisdom.
A good illustration may be had in the recent "farewell" banquets in
which particular friends of Mr. Geo. P. Bent participated. Take the
one in Chicago last month. It was an impromptu affair and the host
had charged the crowd that there must be no eulogies, and that the
talks must be short and snappy. And do you .suppose, eliminating
the thought which must have been uppermost in every man's mind,
cutting out the almost irrepressible desire to say well-deserved things
about Mr. Bent, and his loyal characteristics, his manliness and big-
heartedness, that there was any stammering for timely topics or any
stuttering in the manner of their discussion ?
Read the few specimen stories, lifted from their graceful settings,
and presented in this issue of Presto. You will, of course, observe
that most of the stories are new. There is no fuzz on them. And
they seem to have fitted into the time and purpose. They rolled from
the tongues of men who knew what they had come together for—to
be happy and to help assure Mr. Bent that his having been with them
so long had contributed to their happiness. It is seldom that a trade
paper finds occasion to leave the factory and store, and to look into
the heads and hearts of the men who have also for an hour stepped
away from trade and its worries. And the fact that in this way we
have for contributors such story tellers as Messrs. Matt Kennedy,
J. W. Elliott, M. H. Adams, William D. Gates, Wallace Heckman,
Eugene Whelan and the rest, justifies the diversion into the field of
fiction. In that boquet of eloquence there were blossoms from the
law, the press and the piano—a fine combination. And poetry! well,
no gathering of the makers of the "best sellers" could do better. The
"Ifleal Life" by Mr. Lapham, pictured Mr. Bent better than any
artist's brush could do it. And the verses, "At the Gate," quoted by
Mr. Elliott, are too good to miss. A "pome" recited by Mr. Mangold
was also fine as, having ourselves set it going, way back in the nine-
ties, we should be in position to know. You'll find it in many places—
if you want to—and it's called "Sand." Mr. Mangold quoted it to il-
lustrate the pluck of his host of the occasion. And we all know that
Sand is Mr. Bent's "middle name." Of course no "poick" could object
to liberties with his improvisation when his "Flushtown" is adroitly,
and so appropriately, rechristened "Bent-Town." But, where all were
so good, there is little need of repeating that the piano industry and
trade have grown into a fine status as the dwelling place of orators
and tellers of good tales. Mr. Bent's dinner only added a new proof
of it. And we are ready to wager that there is no other business—
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/

Page 5 Text:

November 27, 1920.
PRESTO
not even that of the law—where the workers can employ, offhand, a
greater proportion of the 600,000 words of the English language than
may easily be rolled off by the gentlemen who make the music trade
a perpetual joy and delight.
Every man who proposes anything for the betterment of the
race, for making local conditions more livable, or even for getting
hold of more skilled workers for piano factories, is accused of being
some kind of a propagandist. And propaganda has a very ugly mean-
ing since the great war. Some editors of eastern daily papers are ac-
cusing statisticians of the Agricultural Department of the government
of propaganda in favor of the cities and against the ruralists in recent
figures showing that shelter and food for a farmer should be esti-
mated at an anual value of between $400 and $500 a year. "Let some
of these farm lads try to get shelter and food in any city for such
figures," say the critics. "They'd find the correct figures nearer
$1,400 or $1,500 a year, and these figures should be the basis to credit
the farmer with for the shelter and food he gets on the farm." Any-
way, it is best not to lure a young man away from the farm unless he
has a natural bent for mechanics or merchandising or manufacturing.
They are no longer hayseeds. With much more than half of the auto-
trucks of the nation in use on the farms, it is not disconcerting to a
youth from the country when a beetle-browed chauffeur almost runs
him down and sticks his head out at the side and yells "Hey, you!
How do ye loike the city?"
* * *
Among the features of the year, nearly done, has been the char-
acter of the display advertising of some of the large piano industries.
It would be impossible to find more artistic advertising than that of
the Kohler Industries, Inc., The Autopiano Co., The Cable Company,
the Apollo Company, the Starr Piano Company, the Cable-Nelson
Company, the American Piano Co., Chickering & Sons, William
Knabe & Co., the Simplex Company, Hallet & Davis Piano Co., and
quite a number of others whose original half-tones and color plates
have marked a new era in piano trade publicity.
* * *
What does the manufacturer do with the countermands, especially
the stop orders which are in no way justified by conditions? There
are piano dealers who place orders with traveling men with little re-
gard to the obligation they thus incur. No good business man will
give an order and ask that it be cancelled unless the' reason for the
cancellation is not only genuine but imperative. An item in this
issue of Presto tells how the great house of John V. Farwell handles
such cases.
* * *
Probably no one who knows anything about it will deny that
the Steger & Sons Piano Co. was the first to announce a lowering of
wholesale prices. And, whether the cut was justified by manufac-
LAST RITES OVER REMAINS
OF LATE JAMES F. BRODERICK
Funeral at Rosehill Chapel Saturday Largely At-
tended by Prominent Piano Men.
Solemnly impressive were the services at the fu-
neral of James F. Broderick, whose death was re-
ported in last week's Presto. Banks of beautiful
flowers completely hid the casket and its pedestals
from view. The singers sang 1 appropriate hymns
which were listened to in silent thought by the men
and women who had known Mr. Broderick in life.
Many of these men are approaching the last span
of human life, but they were cheered by the words
of the minister of the gospel who made the address,
the Rev. Dr. William Chalmers Covert, pastor of
the First Presbyterian Church, Grand boulevard and
Forty-fifth street, who said that Mr. Broderick had
followed one of the noblest businesses to which a
human being could turn his attention, that of pro-
moting the things of music. He declared that piano
men ought to be proud of their calling.
The speaker had not known Mr. Broderick in life,
but from what he had learned of him by those who
knew him well, his was a spirit of brotherliness, of
sprightly cheer, of business aggressiveness. And he
had devoted the best years of his life to upbuilding
one of the noblest and grandest of the arts—that
of music.
After the sermon, the officers of Dearborn Lodge
of Masons took charge of the service. Mr. Brod-
erick had been a member of Dearborn Lodge, and
the full funeral service of the Masonic order was
carried out.
There was a large attendance of piano men and
turing cost or not, there can be no question that, if the big Chicago
house charges the difference to publicity alone, the move was a paying
investment. Certainly the Steger activities indicate that there has
been no slip in managerial judgment.
* # *
In his article on tuning and piano repairs this week, Mr. Peltier
suggests that steel be substituted for ivory in piano keys. He asks,
Why not? Of course Mr. Peltier knows that it is the "feel" of the
ivory that pianists demand. Even the best substitutes, as celluloid
or ivorine, are not satisfactory to fine artists, who demand the real
thing and will accept nothing else. Still, Mr. Peltier's suggestion
may have merit.
* # *
It may be wise, or it may be funny—we don't know which. But
the printing of "pre-war price" foolishness in the trade papers doesn't
seem liable to help much. There are always a few piano dealers who
think that anything surprising constitutes good advertising. Just now
"pre-war price" advertising doesn't seem especially helpful. Some
one who has studied the subject says that there will be no "pre-war
prices" of things until we have pre-war rents.
* * *
If the advice of the bankers that people desist from buying what
they want, but can't eat, is put into practice, how are the banks to
swell their deposits? It is a part of the active piano salesmen's busi-
ness to disprove the advice of the bankers and to help the music-
famished public to possess the instruments they want—and need.
* * *
In response to the item last week telling of a dealer who offered
ten dollars for a copy of Presto's Buyers' Guide of 1909, three well-
preserved specimens of the publication have come to this office from
old subscribers. Only one incident showing that the "Book that
Sells Pianos" is preserved and valued accordingly.
* * *
There is an enterprise in the incubator the purpose of which is to
produce a new player action, with motor attached, capable of giving
the desired expression automatically. There are such player actions
now, but the new industry promises to do large things and it will
constitute another combination of interests.
5k
sk
sk
Get in your best work now, if you are a retailer. And a good
part of that best work will be in cleaning up the "lame ducks" and
slow payers' whose installment accounts have been permitted to run
behind. The closing of the year should be the cleaning-up time.
* * *
Well, there's a lot to be thankful for, even if prices of things don't
drop as fast as some expected. And if pianos are not selling quite
as fast as some would like, the presidential election is over, and
Christmas is coming.
their wives at the funeral; also several leading Ma-
sons. The chief mourners were Mr. Broderick's
widow and daughter.
In accordance with the tastes of Mr. Broderick
for simple music, the quartette of the First Presby-
terian Church, under the direction of Francis S.
Moore, of the Cable Piano Company, who is mu-
sical director of that church, sang "Nearer, My God,
to Thee," "One Sweetly Solemn Thought," "Lead
Kindly Light," and "Abide with Me." This quartette
consists of Mrs. Jane Pinckney Fritch, soprano;
Mrs. Margaret Lauder King, alto; W. V. Downer,
tenor, and Frank H. Collins, bass.
SEES SEASONABLE CHANCE.
The Commercial-News, Danville, 111., recognizes
the opportunities the coming weeks afford for the
sale of pianos and players. In soliciting the public
to use its want ad columns this is said: "Just at
this time of year there.is a growing market for mu-
sical instruments of every description. The long
winter evenings coming mean more time to enjoy
music. They mean more time for the young folks
to study music and they mean more time for you to
enjoy the pleasure of a new instrument. Realiz-
ing this joy, sell those that have ceased to give you
pleasure and pass the pleasure along to someone
else."
MANUALO IS FEATURED.
Mifflin's, Herrin, 111., handles pianos, playerpianos,
music and books. The store is one of the most fre-
quented places in this picturesque and growing
town in Williamson county. The district is agricul-
tural and the prosperous farming community pro-
vides a great many customers for Baldwin Manualos
which are featured very successfully by Mifflin's.
BANKERS URGED TO AID
OUR FOREIGN TRADE
Action to Be Planned at Meeting Called in Chicago
December 10.
Bankers and business men throughout the coun-
try are urged in a prospectus made public in New
York last week by the American Bankers' Associa-
tion to consider inauguration by the first of the
year of the Foreign Trade Financing Corporation
under the Edge act for the protection of home indus-
tries and proper financing of American foreign trade.
Action on the proposed corporation, which will
be capitalized at $100,000,000, is expected at a meet-
ing in Chicago on Dec. 10 and 11, designed to be
representative of the entire country's finance and in-
dustry. Establishment of the corporation, the pros-
pectus says, is considered vital to safeguard indus-
try from "an anxious future with attendant elements
of unemployment and unrest."
Other features emphasized are: "Future exports
from the United States for an indefinite time can-
not be paid for in large part except over an extended
period.
"In the case of countries where it is believed ex-
change may turn within a few months, buying in the
United States has practically stopped, except where
arrangements could be made for postponing payment
until exchange turns.
"European countries in general are being obliged
to confine their purchases here rigorously to necessi-
ties of the moment and are unable to obtain suffi-
cient raw material to restore their industries."
Weiler's, Quincy, 111., closed a sale of used pianos
last week.
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/

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