Presto Buyers' Guide
Analyzes and Classifies
All American P i a n o s
and in Detail Tells of
Pheir Makers.
PRESTO
E.tablUhed 1884. THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY
Presto Year Book
The Only Complete
Annual Review of the
American Music In-
dustries and Trades.
10 Cents; 92.00 a Year
CHICAGO, SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1924
COME OUT OF THE SHADOWS AND LET SUN HIT YOU
AS THINGS SEEM IN THE TRADE JUST NOW
Talk of Dull Times Is a Sort of Summer Diversion Which Will
Lose Itself When the Men Whose Business It Is to Make
Business, Get Back to It and Down in It Again
A somewhat unique situation exists just now in the
piano industry. It may, to some extent, be said to
extend also to the piano trade—the retail piano
selling—this unique situation. It is a kind of almost
indefinable unrest—almost uncertainty.
A country newspaper—a small town editorial
prophet—says that the piano business has slowed up
because of so many interferences that a small cata-
logue would be necessary to list them all.
They have to do with almost every social and
economical upheaval since Noah sailed the ark. They
include radio, phonographs, automatic player actions,
automobiles, and the high cost of living.
What's "Slowing Up"?
Of course none of those things have much to do
with music or the things that make music. And,
furthermore, the slowing up of the pianos business is
no greater, proportionately, than the slowing-up of
all other lines of industry and trade.
That is a fact easily verified. All the piano mer-
chant has to do, to satisfy himself that his business
is not hit any harder than other lines, is to ask his
merchant-neighbor.
It's largely in the air, just as epidemics come and
go; just as floods and tides come and go; just as in-
ternational disturbances come and go; just as human
life itself comes and goes. It's change, as natural as
breathing.
Who's to Blame?
The truth is that, whether in dull times or bad
times, it's the energy of the man that makes his
business good or permits it to be poor. If the ele-
ment of hustle survives, the business continues good.
Today, with all the talk about dull trade, there are
piano factories as busy as they ever were in the days
of the greatest activity. There are retail piano
dealers as busy as they ever were in the days when
the factory output did not begin to meet the demand.
It's not the business. It's YOU!
Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that there are
whisperings and uncertainties, associated with the
piano just now. So, too, with most other lines. But
it is the piano that concerns us most, because we're
in the piano business.
Combinations and Mergers.
There have been so many "combinations" of late—
so many "mergers," and so many rumors of more
combinations and mergers that do not happen, that
it keeps the trade stirred up with things which, while
they belong to the piano business, do not directly
affect the men who have a habit of wasting a good
deal of time talking about them.
And there have been financial crimps put into old
concerns whose stability has never before given any
thought. The adjustment department of the Better
Business Bureau, and the Music Industries Chamber
of Commerce, have been busy.
Some old-time piano industries, whose products the
dealers have been boosting and selling so long that
they feel lost without them, have been slowing down
and explanations have not been plainly given. Nat-
urally such conditions create doubt and discussion.
One of the midwest piano concerns, which for fifty
years had been moving steadily, has wavered and
finally, like the grape-vine swing, has "died down."
It has been trying to sell, and certain piano salesmen
have been trying to acquire it. The only things that
have prevented a "deal," which might be good for the
trade, is the lack of unity in the piano factory and
lack of funds on the part of the would-be purchasers.
And the case is almost a typical one. And such
things hold business in abeyance.
The other mergers which have been actually con-
summated are, almost without exception, good for
the trade. The come-back of the old Henry F. Miller
piano, of Boston, by the completion of the Continen-
tal Piano Co., and the taking over of the fine old
Smith, Barnes & Strohber Company, was a good
thing. It insures some of the most desirable instru-
ments a new life, and an active one.
So with the F. S. Cable Piano Co. and its affiliation
with powerful eastern interests. Mergers are not of
necessity other than advantageous. Business some-
times demands them specially for the expansion and
general progress of the older concerns in any indus-
try.
The general feeling that the piano in the word's
original meaning, is "coming- back" 1 is a good thing
for the trade. When anything of the art family be-
comes too closely allied with automatic, or mechani-
cal, evolution, it is bad for the things that must be
employed in the development of the art.
The piano player will remain. But the manually
played piano is even more essential to the cause of
music. Music is a means to an end greater than
the tickling of the auditory nerves. Music, to be
music, must be created by individual sensibilities,
judgment, education and taste.
Musical expression has been attained, to a mar-
velous degree, by the reproducing piano mechanism.
But it is folly to assert that even the reproducing
piano can sustain art as the human touch and intel-
ligence—even genius—has and must do, if music is to
remain an influence of noble impulses in the world.
All Here to Stay.
The playerpiano, the reproducing piano, and even
the coin-operated pianos, will live. But the manu-
ally played piano—the piano of early development, of
youth in musical understanding, skill and taste—the
educational piano—will "come back," even more fully
than ever before. It will be the middle of the arch—
the keystone of the piano business—in the future, as
it was in the past.
It is interesting to observe that the most pro-
gressive piano manufacturers are now putting greater
effort into their "straight" pianos than before
the player action came in. And it is still more inter-
esting to recall the other kind of piano makers who,
when the player first gave promise of its great suc-
cess, refused to recognize it on the basis of the
mechanical character of all, or any, self-playing
mechanism. Those piano manufacturers included
such men as William Steinway, Hugo Sohmer, Henry
F. Miller, Braton S. Chase, Mason & Hamlin, and
others of like aspirations. For several years after
the player had become in actual demand, those men,
and more like them, declared that they would not re-
spond to the clamor for "self-playing" pianos bearing
their names.
But the people wanted something easy, and still
capable of interpreting great music—and other kinds
of music still more. And the player was so far de-
veloped that there was no resisting it. And those
perfected player mechanisms will not give way so
long as people want piano music ready-made, with-
out *the labor of learning to manipulate the key-
board.
Invention Active.
It is certain that never in the history of musical
instruments has invention been so persistent, so
sleepless, and so filled with accomplishment, as in
the development of the player-piano. From the day
when Gaily, and Tremaine, and McTammany first
presented the comparatively crude player cabinets, on
Union Square, New York, to the present time, there
has been continual effort to attain the utmost in
expression, in ease of operation, and in permanency—
so far as is humanly possible—of the player mechan-
ism.
And the result is such instruments, or parts, or
actions, as are designated by such names as Auto-
piano, Reproduco, Ampico, Manualo, Duo-Art,
Cecilian, Carola, Celco, Euphona, Welte-Mignon,
Interpreter, Gulbransen, Melostrelle, Solo Concerto,
and many more, both fanciful and proper names of
the manufacturers. And many of them will stay
long after the novelty of the instrument that vies
with the artists in their performances, shall have lost
their novelty, and the hand played piano becomes
fully reinstated in the hearts and homes of the music
loving people.
Up to the Trade.
But there is nothing that will bring back the old
piano, nothing that will stimulate the love of musical
performance for the love of it, nothing that will
create the educational urge for the piano, so surely as
the energy of the piano dealer and his salesmen. It
is still up to the trade to do the piano business, and
to keep alive the piano love which is deeper than
any automobile desire, or any craving for the milder
sensations of radio.
The latter novelty will wear away more quickly
than any other of the modern musical wonders. It
is already wearing away. It will help the piano
dealers, but it, will never make for them a business.
It may be a good annex to the piano store, but alone
it will be small as compared with even some of the
lesser things of the music store.
Opportunities Are Ample.
The piano business will never be any "duller" than
the piano dealers permit it to become. In the dull-
est time there are people in need of pianos. The
piano is, after all, the only really great source of
home music that is inexhaustible in its possibilities.
It is the instrument that is coveted by every house-
hold. It was never a thing of great popular demand.
It is a thing to be sold by intelligence to intelligent
people. Tt is an article of argument, of competition,
because of its monetary value. It will be sold, more
and more, as the people acquire substantial posses-
sions of which the piano itself is one of the evidences.
Get busy! Stay busy! Sell pianos. One of the
brightest of modern writers on business subjects,
said of his own salesmanship:
'I did not merely lay cornerstones and get things
into shape. I did not secure a promise of an order
the next time. I did not fix the man for future
trade, and then brag about it. I got the man's name
on the bottom of the order sheet." And, further,
"the salesman is the patient, smiling personality who
believes in himself and never hears the word 'No.' "
If you are that kind of a salesman you understand,
and trade is not so dull.
CAUGHT BIG GAME FISH.
George P. Bent, now at his beautiful home at Los
Angeles, Cal., is enjoying life with his family, rela-
tives and friends, after several months of quite in-
tensive work between Chicago and the Pacific Coast.
He has recently been on some fishing trips, on one
of which he and two companions caught, in four
hours, twenty albecore, the total weight of which
was 520 pounds, or an average of twenty pounds
each. The albecore is a real game fish, almost as
good fighters as the "yellow tail" are.
MRS. BESSIE S. STEINERT DIES.
Mrs. Bessie S. Steinert, prominent in musical
circles of Boston, Mass., and wife of one of the most
widely known of the piano men of New England,
died at her summer home in Beverly on August 8th.
She was the wife of Alexander Steinert, treasurer of
M. Steinert & Sons of Boston and the daughter of
the late Abraham Shuman, a leading Boston mer-
chant. Mr. Steinert has the sympathies of countless
friends in and outside the piano industry throughout
the country.
A new retail store has been opened by the Kurtz-
mann Piano Co. at 38 Main street, Batavia, N. Y.
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