Presto

June 6, 1925.
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
•
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, JUNE 6, 1925.
HOW IT STARTED
Picture a big frame building, with broad
veranda overlooking the sea, so close that a
pebble might easily be tossed into the surf.
Inside, and across a wide hall, a large unfur-
nished room save for a lot of chairs, and on
one side a bare stage. Just such a place as
characterized the old-time sea-side hotels.
Across the hall from the big meeting and
dance hall, several small committee rooms
with wide windows looking out upon the
ocean. And, loitering about the rooms and ve-
randa, a lot of the men who make and sell
pianos, most of them New Yorkers, with a
few from Boston and the West.
That was the first of the meetings of the
men of music called to organize the National
Piano Manufacturers' Association of America.
And it is interesting to recall that years after
that first meeting, the late music trade editor,
Marc A. Blumenberg, liked to write that the
newly formed association was not "national"
at all. He claimed that the title was a mis-
nomer, and he spent himself in denunciations
of its purposes and of the men who had made
it. Which is here mentioned because a large
feature of the first meeting, at Manhattan
Reach, was the preponderance of trade paper
editorial oratory and admonition which was
poured out on the occasion. At that time
strangely enough, there were more music
trade papers than there are today. And every
one of them, with a single exception, was rep-
resented and most of them very vociferously
represented at the first convention.
For a time it seemed that the first conven-
tion of the piano men might be also the last,
because of the trade editors. They seemed de-
termined to arrange things their own way,
and that way had much the appearance of the
Kilkenny fair. But if it was an open fight,
it was confined to jabs and jibes wholly ver-
bal. Words were fired across the seats and,
in turn, the editors rose and told the assem-
blage all about the other editors, concluding
with frank opinions of the speaker by the
speaker, advice as to how the new association
should be conducted, and a statement of what
the paper controlled by the speaker had al-
ready done and would still do in the years to
come.
It was a lively convention, quite different
from the one to come off in Chicago next
week, though at least a score of the men who
were present twenty-seven years ago will be
present next week and some of them will
speak.
Things have progressed since the Manhat-
tan Beach meeting. Many of the men by
whose wisdom and purposeful vigor that first
meeting was saved from the orators and
brought into form that fitted it for a future
which will be reflected in next week's con-
vention, have passed from the scene. The
counsel of the first president, Mr. Henry F.
Miller, was there a dominant note, and the
others equally potent on that occasion who
have also gone forward, are in most cases as
vivid in recollection and as examples to their
successors as if they still lived and had an
active part in the still further upbuilding of
the organization to which they devoted their
best thought. It is the memory of those men
that will color much that will be said during
the next week's events at the Drake Hotel in
Chi cairo.
ON INSTALLMENTS
Perhaps because every other topic of gen-
eral interest has been exhausted in the Nia-
gara of criticism that fills the newspapers, the
daily press has of late taken to a vivid dis-
cussion of the terrors of the installment plan
of buying things. It need surprise no one to
read some fine morning that a project is on
foot to prohibit the selling of "luxuries" on
credit. That would be in perfect accord with
some other prohibitions which have already
been placed upon the statute books.
It is about seventy years since the install-
ment plan of selling pianos was introduced.
When the little melodeon appeared it was
sold on what was called the "three year plan."
It was the installment plan on a restricted ba-
sis. The system which the late W r . W. Kim-
ball termed the "endless" or "eternal" plan
was to follow, and when it came the piano
became an article of merchandising worthy of
a great business. It is now pretty late for the
newspapers to find much fault with a plan
which has done more to develop business, in
many lines, than all other systems combined.
No one who knows will deny that the in-
stallment plan has made the piano business.
But for the "easy payment" or long credit
systems this country would now be producing
less than forty per cent of its output of pianos.
The number of piano factories would never
have been sufficient in number to entitle piano
making to a place of much importance, and
pianos would still be sold at prices so nearly
prohibitive as to hold back musical progress
and keep its expansion tied to the stake of
exclusiveness.
But for the installment plan, it is probable
that the player piano would never have come
because there would have been little incentive
for invention. Such pianos as might have
been made to supply the demand of a small
class would still be sold by music teachers, or
direct from the little factories. And this ap-
plies, in a very large sense, to some other ar-
ticles which have been considered essential to
home happiness.
Elsewhere in this issue of Presto there is
a very sensible letter which was written by
the head of a large department house to the
New York Times. Mr. Bloomingdale is also
a piano manufacturer. The tone of his letter
suggests that the New York Times had spoken
editorially against the popular plan of buying
things. That is surprising.
But for the installment plan, the newspa-
pers themselves would probably not present
the signs of the prosperity they enjoy today.
The easy credit systems have supplied the in-
spiration by which merchants have employed
printer's ink and by which the public has
bought liberally. In some lines of trade the
"spot cash" system may be best, as in the cor-
ner groceries. But in the selling of life's big-
ger things that have to do with making the
home more than "four square walls," the in-
stallment plan has been a blessing, and a
source of great saving rather than a lure to
extravagant buying.
By an unaccountable slip in an editorial
mention last week of Mr. Geo. P. Bent's "din-
ner to the aged," the time of that event was
referred to as June 11, whereas in all other
references the day was properly given as
Tuesday the 9th. That is Tuesday next, and
unhappy will be any friend of the popular
gentleman who, for any reason, fails to attend.
* * *
To the man who brings his eyes and ears
with him the annual convention is the best in-
vestment that money can buy.
* * *
Piano salesmanship implies the ability to
talk. But talking alone never sold even a
fiddle string.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
(June 6, 1895.)
It is a mistake for the manufacturer to permit of
any lull in his advertising departments during the
summer months.
Congratulations from members of the trade every-
where are adding to the happiness of Mr. Ernst J.
Knabe, whose marriage to Miss Marie Schlens was
one of the society events of Baltimore on Saturday
last. Presto's best wishes also go to the happy pair.
The intense heat of the past week has not been
conducive to the full, round tone the salesmen love
to tell about. It has been rather more of a melting
finality and not at all encouraging to the trade in any
of its departments. Still the universal feeling is that
after the hot summer is over trade will come with a
rush and continue good.
The passing of two of the old guard of New York's
piano makers furnished the subjects for many re-
miniscences the past week. Frederick Hazelton and
David Decker were two men in the trade who based
all their efforts upon no less an ideal than perfection.
To them the thought of a piano purely from a com-
mercial standpoint was almost abhorrent.
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
(From Presto, June 8, 1905.)
No set speeches at Put-in-Bay convention. All of
the oratory will be hot from the griddle and born of
the inspiration of the time and place. The talks,
like the zephyrs from the lake, will be breezy and
some of them fresh.
It is a fact worthy of particular mention that the
automobile is becoming a part of the piano dealer's
business in some sections of the country. More and
more we find the piano men advertising the "rigs that
run" in connection with their regular lines.
The greatest enthusiasm prevails in every quarter
relative to the forthcoming convention of the Nation-
al Association of Piano Dealers of America, to be
held at the Hotel Victory, Put-in-Bay, Ohio, Tues-
day, Wednesday and Thursday, June 20, 21, 22.
"We are about half moved to our new factory at
South Haven, Mich.," said F. S. Cable, president of
the Cable-Nelson Piano Co., Saturday. "We are
closing up some work at the factory here in Chicago,
getting it out of the way; in other words manufactur-
ing the stock. We will get that off in about a week
or ten days and then the move will be complete."
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