Presto

PRESTO
presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. DANIKLL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
- Editor*
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
mercial Cable Co.'e Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. S*. 1811, at the
Post Office, Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March J, 1ST*.
Subscription, 92 a year; 6 months, f1; Foreign, $4.
Payable In advance. No extra chargre 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
d e p a r t m e n t s to PRESTO P U B L I S H I N G
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
CO., 417 South
SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1925.
MATTERS OF COURTESY
This business of trade paper making is
sometimes lively. But it is also sometimes
sad, as witness the following outburst by a
contemporary:
Last week we printed the following statement:
We have been asked as a matter of courtesy to re-
frain from printing several important news items this
week. As a rule when such requests are made, some
paper, in the desire for a "scoop," prints the story re-
gardless. It remains to be seen whether this will hap-
pen in the present case.
"It remained to be seen," all right. One of the well
known trade papers printed the most important among
the items upon which we were requested to withhold
publication. It does not pay to be courteous.
The item which appears to have distressed
our contemporary referred to the nurclmse of
a new building in Chicago by a prominent
piano industry. It was nothing more than a
plain item of fact and it did not even originally
appear in Presto and so was not one of those
things known to amateur "journalists" as a
"scoop." It had already appeared in a local
newspaper several days before the date of
Presto's publication. And certainly there was
no request made to this paper to withhold it
—or not till the item had gone to press. Con-
sequently there was no breach of courtesy.
It is equally certain that it would not have
been printed had this paper understood that
there could be any objection.
But the main point of our sermon is to ex-
press surprise at the statement that "courtesy
doesn't pay." Courtesy is one of the best divi-
dend payers* possible. It is more than a mat-
ter of courtesy to regard a request, whether
in compliance there is only the loss of a little
"scoop," or a delay in setting forth an impor-
tant trade paper item. Scoops are the cheap-
est and poorest things in business. They are
as often hurtful as helpful. Presto doesn't
care a cent for any "scoop" that is not helpful
to some of its clients and friends.
Not long ago a prominent piano man chided
Presto on the score that it was not a "news-
paper." That is, it did not deal largely in
"scoops." And now by indirection we are
charged with discourtesy because we printed
an item of common knowledge just ahead of
a contemporary. It is too bad. But it mustn't
lead any novitiate into the false notion that
"it does not pay to be courteous," for it does
—alwavs.
EXCITEMENT IN ELKHART
Rumors of international complications have
not been rare of late. But none of them
proved startling until the cable brought word
from Berlin that the German musicians had
threatened to cast jazz into the sea, or ocean,
or Rhine, or something.
Berlin is nothing if not artistic when not
goose-stepping, and it would be impossible
to do that to syncopated music. Consequently
the musicians of Berlin decided that the jazz
allies, England and America, should be de-
ported in the persons of the syncopators. The
band players of Berlin declared that jazz was
an interloper not fit for the cafes and dance
halls of the German capital. It was decided
that the modern dance epidemic threatened
starvation to the performers of Strauss and
Bach and Beethoven, and that Irvin Berlin
had libeled Under den Linden by having his
name spelled that way. Berlin could not tol-
erate rag-time, and jazz must be thrown out
of everything but the police courts.
But the drive of the German musicians was
not successful. The cafe owners noticed that
their best customers liked jazz, and the more
they got of it the more they invested in ac-
companying refreshments. So that the threat
of a new fracture in international relations
broke out. And it is said that immediately
Elkhart, Ind., became the scene of unwonted
industrial activities. The peace pact, by
which armament of all kinds has been cur-
tailed and our sea-fighting monsters sent to
the bottom, seemed to have suggested a new
and better way for settling the dispute. It
was noticeable that the scenes of great ac-
tivities during the last war were not stirred
up at all. Elkhart, and some other band in-
strument making towns, have felt the instan-
taneous impetus. There was at first a lot of
mystery about it.
But upon closer investigation it was discov-
ered that, in anticipation of trouble with the
classical Berlin musicians, vast stores of saxo-
phones, tubas and bandoliers were in the mak-
ing, and plans were under way for special
Conn, Martin and Buescher legions to take the
Berlin bull by the horns in the event that com-
plications suggested the need of coming to
blows, or blowing.
There are wholesale piano distributors who
sold thousands of pianos last year. And there
are a number of piano salesmen who barely
got through with paying expenses. If some
of the latter will try to forget the rules of
"personality," and do more hard work, di-
rected by reason and absolute adherence to
facts, in the presentation of the instruments
they sell, they will do better this year.
* * *
If last year was really a poor one for you,
now is the time to begin to get even. Follow
the admonitions of the modern schools of
mental and physical thought healing and say
to your business: "You are whole, strong,
prosperous and growing bigger and bigger
every day." Then "go to it" and get more
business than you thought was in you. You
can do it if you try hard enough.
* * *
In the words of another trade paper, Presto
January 3, 1925.
this week has a lot of good news up its sleeve
which it might distribute, but it doesn't dare
to. And some of it pertains to the mysterious
movements and sphinx-like silence of a one-
time old piano industry on the Michigan shore.
* * *
It is just twenty years since the playerpiano
began to take the shape it now retains. Prior
to that time it was in the form of a separate
cabinet, to be rolled to the keyboard when
"automatic' music was desired and then
rolled away again.
* * *
Since the advent of Mr. Volstead the cus-
tom of turning over new leaves has fallen off.
But at the beginning of the New Year is just
as good a time as ever to take a new hitch on
your business trousers and resolve to do bet-
ter next time.
* * *
One of the notable announcements at the
beginning of the new year is that of a reduc-
tion in the selling price of Q R S player rolls.
Full particulars appear in this issue of Presto.
* * *
And now, once again and all together, let's
start the new year right and see if we can't
end it more all right and well.
* * *
Don't make it a rule to press attention to
the lowest price in the store without finding
out what your customer wants.
* * *
Piano owners are the logical radio prospects.
Consequently the established piano store is the
ready-made radio station.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
(January 3, 1895.)
Mr. Ben Starr, of the Starr Piano Co.. Richmond,
Ind., was in New York last week.
On Friday, December 21, 1894, the firm of Wessell,
Nickel & Gross celebrated the twentieth anniversary
of the establishment of their business.
True to his belief in home products Governor Mc-
Kinley, of Ohio, has purchased one of the handsomest
A. B. Chase pianos, a style 18 in figured walnut.
There was something for the trade to be thankful
for at the end of a poor year after all. None of the
music journals got out a special Christmas number!
Mr. A. M. Wright, of the Manufacturers Piano Co ,
is very highly pleased with the new Weber grand.
In fact, he is enthusiastic over it. There will be one
in Chicago for the opening of the new warerooms of
the Manufacturers Piano Company.
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
(From Presto January 5, 1905.
Full particulars of the merging of the Steck piano
with the Aeolian were given in last week's Presto.
The Tammany Organette Company, Stamford,
Conn., will shortly commence the manufacture of
automatic musical instruments.
The advance in popular favor of the small grands
was one of the past year's features in the trade. It
is a movement which promises to continue this year
with redoubled force.
Kohler & Campbell, manufacturers of the Auto-
piano, bring out this strong line in reference to that
instrument. They say:: "It is a high grade piano
with a piano player action inside, giving you two in-
struments in one." This is brief and to the point and
a strong descriptive statement.
A careful estimate of the number of pianos pro-
duced by the American manufacturers during 1904
will bring the figures up to not far below 200,000.
The estimates of some of the trade papers is so far
from accurate as to barely escape absurdity. Our
own figures of 170,000 are not far from correct, and
are a little below rather than above the true mark.
The last month of 1904 leaves a wide breach in the
American piano manufacturers in the passing of two
of the most distinguished in American history. W.
W. Kimball in the West and James W. Vose in the
East are names that live among the leaders in the
piano industry in all that the term suggests. Both,
in a large measure, shaped and molded the industry
and trade, and their combined influence was as great,
probably, as any other two men in the whole history
of the American piano.
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