Presto

May 16, 1925.
PRESTO
presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT -
Editors
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
mercial Cable Co.'s Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 2!», 1896, at the
Post Office, Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, f4.
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
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 MAY 16, 1925.
IN THREE WEEKS
Only three weeks remain before the clans
of music will begin to head for Chicago and
the Silver Anniversary Convention. Usually
the silver anniversary has reference to the
twenty-fifth year, but evidently the pleasing
designation was overlooked when the gather-
ing of two years ago took place at the Drake,
in Chicago. And two years, more or less, can
make no difference anyway. Under any other
name the convention which will open Monday,
June 8th, Avill be one of the largest, if not
actually the largest, in the history of the
music industry and trade.
There are many who will attend who can
recall the first of the present series of meet-
ing at Manhattan Beach. A number of the
men who took prominent part in that gath-
ering will be present next month. And there
are a few who can remember the first of all
the meetings of piano men for the purpose of
organization for the common good of the piano
industry. That meeting took place in old
Steinway Hall, New York, away back in 1875.
Its purpose was not identical with that of the
later conventions, for it was called as a mat-
ter of self-protection by the piano manufac-
turers of New York City.
The occasion which prompted the first piano
association was a factory workers' strike
which threatened to tie up all of the New
York piano industries. The late Mr. William
Steinway made the suggestion and, as a re-
sult of the meeting, the original piano manu-
facturers' association was formed. It was at
first a local affair, but it was the parent sug-
gestion from w r hich the later associations have
been born. And, incidentally, as one of the
results of that first piano makers' meeting,
the first American music trade paper was
issued.
Dealers who expect to attend the forth-
coming convention in Chicago, should be get-
ting ready so that the store—in very many
cases—may not suffer from the absence of
the "boss." Prospects should be so lined up
that no sales may escape. And this is a mat-
ter of vastly more importance than the aver-
age layman can comprehend. Only a man who
has conducted a music store in a small city or
almost any city, for that matter, aside from
the biggest—can fully understand what it
means to have competition in piano selling and
find that, because of some lapse of his own or
his salesman, a prospect has been induced to
buy the "wrong" instrument at the "wrong"
store.
Anyway, the June convention is to be a big
one. There can't be too many dealers present.
And all who do come will be glad of it for a
long time after the last meeting ends during
the week of June 8th.
MORE TUNERS NEEDED
There is a call for piano tuners which seems
to exceed the supply. It is not uncommon to find
such calls in Presto's classified adv. columns, and
within a week one progressive piano dealer,
not far from Chicago, has written to this trade
paper asking if it wouldn't be well to suggest,
editorially, that more young men enter the
remunerative and always pleasant vocation.
Judging by appearances, there is nowhere a
more cheerful or satisfied lot of workers than
the professional harmonizers. In no other
pursuit is the work done in the parlors of the
most intelligent class of home lovers. And
nowhere else is it possible to become equipped
for a life work in so short a time or with so
large an equation of general information.
More than all, nowhere else, or at least in few
other lines of work, is it possible to do more
good or add more to the happiness of the
whole people without adding in the least de-
gree to the pain of any.
There are several well-appointed and com-
petently equipped piano tuning schools in this
country. One of them has recently taken pos-
session of an entirely new building in one of
the prettiest of the middle-west towns, where
there is also located a progressive piano indus-
try. We refer to the Polk College of Piano
Tuning of La Porte, Indiana. For nearly
fifty years that institution has been turning
out tuners from its former location at Val-
paraiso, Ind., in which city it was founded by
the late C. C. Polk.
In its new location the Polk College of
Piano Tuning, headed by Mr. Willard R.
Powell, an acknowledged expert, has every
possible convenience and advanced equipment
for teaching the art of putting pianos in con-
dition to fulfill their function in the home life.
Why there should be a dearth of competent
tuners is something of a mystery. Young
men in piano stores should see to it that the
void is quickly filled.
HELPFUL ADVERTISING
Now and then— not too often—you will
find some piano house doing the kind of ad-
vertising that ,casts its beams abroad and
helps wherever its rays may hit. One of the
retail houses of that kind is the Griffith Piano
Co., of Newark, N. J. And a recent advertise-
ment of the Newark house will serve to prove
it. Here is an extract, which appeared under
the head "What measure should you apply
to a work of art?"
A piano is a work of art and should be purchased as
you would select a precious stone, famous porcelain or
rare piece of furniture. In such matters you must have
implicit confidence in the merchant whose shop you
visit or you cannot enjoy choosing what your heart de-
sires. When the very name of the institution bespeaks
the highest attainments in expert knowledge and service
to the community then your selection from among 1 its
carefully gathered wares is a long-to-be-remembered
day in your diary of life's happiest moments. Though
our warerooms are host to many visitors each day, as-
sisting you in reaching a decision never becomes trite to
us. There are more famous makes of pianos to be seen
here, side by side, than anywhere else in the entire
Metropolitan District.
There is serious truth in what is said in that adver-
tisement. It is the kind of statement that helps to lift
the average "prospect'' above the shop window signs,
and dispels the "bait" sort of thing. In times gone
by there was an edge of art in every piano sale. The
thought of "how cheap" had not yet overshadowed
the finer thought of a means for making music in the
home. The matter of price had not become the domin-
ating thought when the idea of a piano came to mind.
The statement of the Newark house, that "a piano
is a work of art," is one that should be true. But it
isn't—not always, by any means. The word "piano"
has lost its original meaning. The sentiment has gone
out of it. From manufacturers to dealers, and on
through salesman to customer, the upermost thought
is no longer art. It is cheapness.
A piano should be selected "as you would a precious
stone." But how often is it so selected? How often
does the salesman even think of the piano in any such
sense ?
Nevertheless, it is a good sign to find a retailer of
pianos making use of such terms as appear in the
Griffith advertising. And it is, in consequence, interest-
ing, and perhaps instructive to other dealers, to note
the line of instruments that is dignified by local pub-
licity of a kind befitting works of art. Here is the
list of instruments whose names appear in the model
advertising of the Newark house: "Steinway, Sohmer,
Krakauer, McPhail, Lester, Kurtzmann, Brambach,
Hallet & Davis, Griffith, The Duo-Art in the Steinway,
Weber, Steck, Stroud, Aeolian."
And the motto of the house is very correctly, also,
this: "Let us be known by the quality of the Pianos
we sell."
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
(May 16, 1895.)
A lady whose name is withheld from a curious
public is said to have written an opera under the in-
spiration of Beethoven's ghost. This precious work
is to be produced in London in the course of the
season.
The golden jubilee of Theodore Thomas will be
celebrated with the present year. Mr. Thomas has
recently been the recipient of a handsome silver
punch bowl, lined with gold, of Louis XV design.
The New York Herald of last Sunday contains
about two-thirds of a column of matter rehearsing
the correspondence that has recently passed between
Hardman, Peck & Co., the honorable secretary of
the treasury of the United States and R. E. Preston,
director of the mint, Philadelphia, concerning the
publication of World's Fair medals.
Chicago has been a Mecca for piano and music
trades' men and has entertained some very notable
men in the business during the past week, among
whom may be mentioned Messrs. Charles and Fred
Steinway, Nahum Stetson, Karl Fink, Rufus W.
Blake, A. F. Brooks, Calvin Whitney, Marc A. Blu-
menberg, Harry E. Freund, Willard A. Vose, Wm.
Rohlfing, Otto Bollman, W. J. Dyer, J. B. Wood-
ruff, E. W. Furbush, J. Mueller. C.'H. O. Houghton,
R. O. Burgess, W. C. Newby, Otis Bigelow, Jno.
Anderson, H. J. Raymore, J. C. Minton, C. H. Becht,
and S. D. Porter, and they said some mighty nice
things about the "windy city."
[Ed. Note, May 13, 1925: Could there be a single
paragraph more suggestive of the uncertainty of life
than the foregoing in which appear 25 familiar names
of piano men of whom 15 have passed away since
the item appeared in Presto? But the survivors are
better known today than then—and most of them
still hard at it!]
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
(From Presto, May 18, 1905.)
There is scarcely any other business that affords
such wide opportunities for men of the intelligent
kind as that of selling pianos. The young man who
can close sales is more rare even than the employer
who can pick him out when he applies.
The last of the old guard in the all 'round music
trade passed away when P. J. Healy died. Ditson,
Pond, Balmer, Peters, North, Church, Hempsted,
Faulds, Brainard, Root—all of the old-time leaders
in the first Music Trade Association—have gone.
And the music business as they knew it has become
a thing of the past also.
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/