PRESTO
presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. D A N I E L L and F R A N K D. ABBOTT
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-
Editors
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com.
mercial Cable Co.'s Code), " P R E S T O , " 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 United States
possessions, Cuba and Mexico. Rates for advertising on
application.
Items of news and other matter are solicited and if
of general interest to the music trade will be paid for
at space rates. Usually piano merchants or salesmen
in the smaller cities are the best occasional corre-
spondents, and their assistance is invited.
Forms close at noon every Thursday. News mat-
ter should be in not later than eleven o'clock on the
same day. Advertising copy should be in hand before
Tuesday, five p. m., to insure preferred position. Full
page display copy should be in hand by Monday noon
preceding publication day. Want advs. for current
week, to insure classification, must not be later than
Wednesday noon.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 417 South
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1924.
VACATION PROBLEMS
Now that the summer vacations are about
ended, and the workers are coming back to
stores and factories, it may be a good time to
discuss one of the growing problems with
most business houses. It is the "best time"
vacation problem.
Several large concerns, east and west, have
this summer tried the plan of actually "shut-
ting up shop," and permitting all of their em-
ployes to go away, to wood and water side ;
at the same time. How it has worked out it
is too soon to say. But even if the plan does
not work well in all lines of business, it muse
seem that it can be made to work perfectly
in the piano business.
Pianos are articles of merchandise which
have the advantage of being subjected to the
pushing processes of selling. They are never
really in what may be called "popular" de-
mand. People can wait a day, or even a week,
before deciding upon the purchase of a piano,
and then, they can wait another week or two
before buying. Sometimes they must wait a
week or two after buying before the pianos
can be delivered. So that it is possible, in
the piano business, to suspend both selling and
delivering for a week or two without serious
loss to either buyer or seller. Why not?
In factories the pianos are usually minus
when orders are plus. And, vice versa, they
are too often plenty when orders are minus.
That is one of the perplexities, and perhaps
peculiarities, of the piano business. In the
stores it often happens that the very make,
or style, of piano that the customer perfers
is the one that is not in stock. It is necessary
to wait until the order goes to the manufac-
turer and the railroad brings the instrument
to the store.
This being so, there is a wait of a week or
iWO. Why not, then, the same wait during
the vacation season when the store may be
closed and all of the workers away seeking
refreshment and new energy for the better
business; results which usually follow the va-
cation? This may not apply to all music
stores, but it will apply to nearly all piano
departments.
All that would be necessary is to have the
stores agree to the plan, just as they do to
the Saturday afternoon closing. And, if not,
again, why not, especially in view of the fact
that the going away of certain members of
the force discommodes most of the others and
the going away of several of the force makes
it difficult for the ones remaining to do much
of anything? The proposition may seem like
introducing more of foreign procedure into
American business, but not all foreign cus-
toms are bad ones.
THE PLAYER'S LIFE
A few years ago it was the thing, with the
irade and the trade papers, to talk a good
deal about the "dead" piano and everything
else that signified that- the musical instrument
stood silent in the homes. Today the propor-
tion of silent playerpianos is much greater.
Some of them would be even more "silent"
were it not that they are still pianos, even
if the player mechanism is inoperative.
And the condition is a serious one. It is
next to a fatal menace to the industry and
trade. It calls for some systematic correction.
One influential New York house has applied
a remedy to its own products. As was told
in Presto's report of the tuners' convention
in Milwaukee, the American Piano Co. has a
systematic contract with buyers of the Am-
pico, by Which the action is kept in order—
guaranteed to remain playable for a fixed an-
nual charge of $50. The retail department
makes the contract a part of the sale. And
it is said to work well, aside from going far to
maintain the character of the instrument.
There was discussion at the tuners' con-
vention touching this matter of keeping the
playerpianos in order. We do not understand
that any practical plan was arrived at, or even
suggested. But for the general good of the
i'.idustry it must be plain enough that some
systematic plan is needed—some plan by
which the buyer of a playerpiano may feel
fairly certain that he won't have a "dead"'
instrument in his parlor within two or three
years.
The playerpiano in the store works beauti-
fully. It is really a marvelous instrument.
But it should so remain. No piano, whether
equipped with a pneumatic action or not, can
be expected to remain permanently in good
condition. It isn't in the nature of things.
But if some plan could be devised by which
the retailer would obligate himself to the
manufacturer of a fine instrument to keep it
iii playing condition, a great protection to the
entire industry and trade might be accom-
plished. Who has a practical suggestion?
As example of what pluck and the applica-
tion of the genius of hard work may do in the
piano industry, the factory of the H. C. Bay
Company, at Bluffton, Indiana, p r e s e n t s
cheerful evidence. Were it not for Mr. Bay's
almost inscrutable objection to discussion of
his own attainments, the bare statistics con-
cerning his industry would make interesting
trade literature. Anyway, the H. C. Bay Com-
pany is busy.
^
T
*P
As showing the influence of Presto Buyers'
Guide, letters arrive at the offices of the pub-
lishers almost daily addressed in ways that
suggest that the book is the source of the
questions asked. One which came on Monday
August 23, 1924.
was addressed to "Presto & Co., Raters of
Musical Instruments," and asked about sev-
eral well known pianos.
* * *
Strange how opinions differ among men
who ought to know as to trade conditions.
One will tell you that things are "rotten" in
die musical world, while another will rise and
say that things are looking up and even
"booming." Can both be risrht?
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
August 23, 1894.
Mr. H. D. Cable, of the Chicago Cottage Organ
Co., sails today, we understand, reaching home about
the first of next month. Mr. George W. Tewksbury
is also, we believe, on his way to America.
Old residents of Chicago are glad to learn that a
movement is on foot among patriotic men of the east
to erect a monument over the grave of Henry C.
Work, the author of "Marching Through Georgia"
and other equally famous war songs. Work lived in
Chicago for many years prior to the war of the
rebellion. He was a printer and was employed in
several Chicago newspaper offices before his success
as a song writer brought him plenty of money.
It seems strange to meet with an eastern piano
maker who is willing to admit that he cannot com-
pete with Chicago manufacturers. We confess that
Presto does not know many such, but there are a
few of them. A short time ago the New York manu-
facturers regarded the piano output of Chicago with
a sort of contempt. It is not so now. But that any
should be ready to admit that the competition is
already liable to drive an easterner out of the western
market is so startling as to be funny.
There is one thing which will start the wheels of
industry moving as they have not moved in years.
Never in the history of the country have merchants
been so short of commodities, or have so few manu-
factured goods been held in stock. Warehouses were
running on the shortest possible time, to keep going
at all, and a reviving demand will find them with so
little on hand that there will be an unprecedented de-
mand for labor. On the whole, therefore, says Mr.
William Steinway, it is safe to say that we have
about reached the end of the business depression.
It is interesting to notice the material advance
which the New York manufacturers have made dur-
ing the last few years. Without stopping to count
them, it is fair to say that at least a dozen new fac-
tory buildings, and as many moves upward into en-
larged quarters, have been made by the New York
piano makers during half as many years. A lot of
prominent names come promptly to mind: Decker,
Haines, Newby & Evans, Doll, Bent, Ludwig, Con-
nor, Keller, Mathushek, all, and several more, are
occupying comparatively new buildings of their own.
In fact the movements upward of the New York
piano trade would make quite a book, if well told, and
a very interesting one also.
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
From Presto, August 25, 1904.
The small half-tones that go skimming across the
bottoms of the pages of Presto this week suggest
that the carload lot habit has struck the Schaeffer
piano dealers in earnest this summer.
P. J. Healy, who has been at his summer home
at Lake Geneva on the shores of Williams Bay all
summer, is looking these days as brown as the
brownest berry. If a lot of the younger ones who
go out of the city could get Mr. Healy's color they
would think that their outing had done them a world
of good.
The Knabe advertising department appears to have
hit upon a new and promising plan. It is to secure
suggestions for illustrated advertisements from deal-
ers and Knabe representatives. Recently a good one
appeared bearing the imprint of a design suggested
by F. J. Schwankovsky, the Knabe representative in
Detroit.
The new Straube factory is becoming less and less
a dream of the future every day, but it is really a
dream in beauty, for it will be one of the handsomest
piano factories in the land. President Broderick in-
forms us that the new machinery for the plant is
now being installed and that next week the movables
of the old factory at Downer's Grove, 111., will be
transferred as rapidly as possible to Hammond, Ind.
Merely as a matter of record it would be interest-
ing to classify the piano industries from which issue
more than one grade or style of piano. Such con-
cerns as the Steinway, Chickering, Hazelton, Knabe,
Steck, Henry F. Miller, Sohmer, Boardman & Gray,
McPhail, Vose, and a few other of the dignified and
distinguished old-time industries, still cling to the
one-piano idea. Even with the vast facilities by some
of them, they still prefer to devote all their energies
to the single piano whose development has been a life
long study.
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