Classic Mode

Presto

Issue: 1925 2032

10
July 4, 1925.
PRESTO
PROPAGANDA HELPS
GERMAN PIANO SALES
William Thomson of Glasgow Shows British
Dealers at Convention the Necessity for
Decisive Action.
The McKenna duties on pianos are supposed to
help the British piano manufacturers when they are
on, but the German piano seemingly is benefited in
sales whether the duties are on or off, according to
William Thomson, head of the progressive firm of
William Thomson & Son, Glasgow, who described
the situation in a speech at the recent annual Music
Trade Convention held at Llandudno, Wales. Mr.
Thomson said:
"This is a matter of importance. The McKenna
Duties are just shuffled on or off according to what-
ever party happens to be in power. But there is just
one little point in regard to these duties, and this is
that every time the re-shuffling takes place it acts as
propaganda for German pianos. When the tax was
taken off our papers were flooded with paragraphs
telling the public that beautiful German pianos could
be had for £20. When the tax was put back again,
we were told that people would prefer the better tone
of the German piano even if they were a little dearer.
"I do not believe that the German manufacturers
have anything to do with it. You are fighting the
German Empire. I am against the re-imposition of
the McKenna Duties, as they do not allow the British
manufacturer the chance of fair honest trading.
"During the war Germany made a very much bet-
ter piano than she does today. But Germany uses
a carefully planned propaganda, which is aided by the
solid fact that the dealer nets a bigger profit from the
German than he does from the much better British
piano, which has to depend solely on its merits for
recognition. This is where I think the Federated
Board should come in with a safe, truthful, straight-
forward propaganda for the British piano."
In supporting Mr. Thomson's resolution, M. E.
Ricket of London said: "You have to realize how
The Lyon & Healy
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CINCINNATI
INDIANAPOLIS
LOUISVILLE
INCORPORATED
CHICAGO
DALLAS
ST. LOCIS
DENVEK
NEW YORK SAN FRANCISCO
this German propaganda started. It started very
many years ago from the Court of this country,
where everything had to be German, if it was good.
Everybody had to speak German, otherwise they
were not well received. All that work has to be
undone, and it is part of the Federation's duty to
undo it. The dealer should come behind the Federa-
tion, back them up and tell the truth. But if the
dealer is going to tell his customer that the German
piano is.a better one, for the sake of a little extra
profit, then the Federation can do nothing for you."
• Colonel Tatton said: "I should like to inform Mr.
Thomson that the manufacture of British pianos has
now reached over 90 per cent of the pre-war scale,
whereas the importation of German pianos is now,
without anything to do with the McKenna Duties,
less than 50 per cent of the pre-war scale. There are
two factors which account for this. One is the un-
doubted superiority of the British article, and the
other is the propaganda which the Federation has
done and is doing for the British piano."
QULBRANSEN CO.DECLARES
COMMON STOCK DIVIDEND
WITH THE MEN OF MUSIC
IN DENVER, COLORADO
C. E. Campbell has purchased the controlling in-
terest in the Niagara Falls, N. Y., store of Goold
Bros., Inc., Buffalo, and has changed the name to
the C. E. Campbell Music Co. The new owner has
been manager of the store for many years and is
widely known in that section.
Increase in Current Sales Showing June Best Month
of Year So Far Also Reported.
The Gulbransen Company, Chicago, has declared
a dividend of 2 per cent on outstanding common
stock, payable July 1 to stockholders of record June
29. This action was taken at a meeting of directors
held at the offices of the Company, Monday, June 29.
The company reports an increase in current sales,
and that June has proved to be the best month of the
year thus far. There is every prospect of increasing
volume of business during the balance of the year,
particularly in view of the many dealers' helps and
sales plans, some of which are in operation and others
of which will shortly be announced.
CHANGE IN NIAGARA FALLS.
An Employee in the Trade Who Gained Musi-
cal Education from Playerpiano, and
a Folding Violin.
Darrow Music Company announce that a young
man who is now working his way through college,
playing piano with an orchestra, obtained his musi-
cal education exclusively from a Laffargue player-
piano. He has never had a lesson from any teacher.
"To people who think a good playerpiano in the home
will keep a child from learning music, we will be glad
to give the name and address of the young man men-
tioned. We always recommend having a good music
teacher, but any boy or girl can obtain a knowledge
of time and expression and develop a love for an
appreciation of good music with a Laffargue Natural
Expression playerpiano."
George Nicodemus, W. W. Bradford, Bert Wells
and Charles O. Bohon, of the Knight-Campbell Music
Company met the members of the Artist Colony on
their arrival in Denver. There were eighty-seven in
the party, and after seeing Denver the artists pro-
ceeded to Estes Park, where they will attend the five
weeks' session of the Rocky Mountain School of
Expression and Dramatic Art, and the Rocky Moun-
tain School of Musical Art. The visitors are from
Dallas, Texas.
Presto's correspondent just read that some fellow
has invented a violin which may be folded up and
used for a walking stick. Am wondering if it
wouldn't go good when a cake walk is asked?
BRIEF RECORDS OF PIANO
DEALERS ACTIVITIES
Incidents in the Energetic Pursuit of the Prospec-
tive Buyer Told in Short Sentences.
Quarters in the new building at Depot Square, New
Keniston Block, Gardiner, Me., have been obtained by
James A. Morang, music merchant of Randolph, Me.
George C. Wille, president of the George C. Wille
Co., Canton, Ohio, has been elected president of the
Canton Lions Club, in the affairs of which he has
been active for several years.
The Woodford & Bill Piano Co., Menominee,
Mich., is holding a clearance sale in all departments
of its establishment preparatory to retiring from
business after forty years of musical instrument mer-
chandising.
Johnson Bros. Piano Co., Boston, has moved from
343 to 388 Tremont street.
Ben Duvall, of Aledo, a graduate of the Aledo, 111.,
high school and the University of Illinois, goes to
Japan on a three-year contract to take charge of the
piano department of a large music house's branch in
that country, according to the Warsaw, 111., Bulletin.
PROHIBITIVE OCEAN FREIGHTS.
J. W. Alexander, of Bowmanville, Ontario, presi-
dent of the Dominion Organ & Piano Co., also presi-
dent of the Canadian Piano & Organ Manufacturers'
Association, when called as a witness before the
Ocean Rates Committee at Ottawa, Ontario, on May
15, asserted that ocean rates had increased 400 per
cent over 1913 and 700 per cent over 1910. The wit-
ness declared that his company was doing practically
nothing in the United Kingdom export trade now.
"The ocean rate is not only restrictive but practically
prohibitive to our business," he said. Canada and the
United States had practically controlled the export
organ market to the United Kingdom, but "now the
United States seems to be able to get their organs
across at a lower rate than we can."
SPENCER
The Intrinsic Qualities of This
Piano Command Attention
A High Grade Instrument at a
Moderate Price
Class Factory and Equipment
Ample Production and Service
SPENCER PIANO COMPANY, Inc.
FACTORY: Thirty-First St. and First Ave.
OFFICES: 338 Etat 31st Street, New York N. Y.
E. Leins Piano Co.
Makers of Pianos and
Player Pianos That Are
Established L e a d e r s .
Correspondence from Reliable
Dealers Invited
Factory and Offices, 304 W. 42nd S(
NEW YORK
"Built on Family Pride"
Doll & Sons
Represent the Artistic
in Piano and Player Piano
Construction
JACOB DOLL & SONS
STODART
WELLSMORE
Jacob Doll & Sons, Inc.
Southern Boulevard, E. 138rd St.
E. 134th St. and Cyprea* Ave.
NEW YORK
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/
11
PRESTO
July 4, 1925.
COUNTRY DEALER'S
KURTZMANN
ALLURING PLEA
Grands—Players
Walter Ayres, Missouri Music ' Merchant
Visiting Chicago Wholesale Warerooms
in Vacation Season, Finds Many Ab-
sentees and Hears Explanations.
Manufactured by
C KURTZMANN & CO.
BECOMES ADVISER
Factories and General Offices
526-536 Niagara Street
BUFFALO, N. Y.
STRICH & ZEIDLER, Inc
GRAND, UPRIGHT and PLAYER
AND
HOMER PIANOS
740-742 East 136th Street
NEW YORK
BRINKERHOFF
Grands - Reproducing Grands
Player-Pianos
and Pianos
The Line That Sells Easily
and Satisfies Always
BRINKERHOFF PIANO CO.
OFFICES, REPUBLIC BLDG.
209 State Street
CHICAGO
The Heppe, Marcellus and Edouard Jules Plam
manufactured by the
HEPPE PIANO COMPANY
•re the only pianos In the world with
Three Sounding Boards,
^•tented In the United States, Great BrltalBi
Prance, Germany and Canada.
Uberal arrangements to responsible agents only*
Main Office, 1117 Chestnut St.
PHILADELPHIA,, PA.
Prescribes an All-the-Year-Round Vacation Selling
Pianos with Flivver in Wide Open
Spaces.
A walk through the piano factory offices and
wholesale warerooms in Chicago this week convinced
Walter Ayres, a music dealer of Oak Ridge, Mo., that
the vacation season was upon us. Every place he
went he found men he expected to meet represented
by substitutes. "George is having the time of his life
up at Ba&s Lake," or "Harry is hitting the highways
in his Umpah Six somewhere out in Colorado today,"
are samples of the explanations. Mr. Ayres said
the substitutes talked piano in a perfunctory way with
a faraway look in the eye that possibly saw visions
of their own particular vacation joys.
The Oak Ridge dealer couldn't understand. Being
surrounded by scenery all the time, he has no crav-
ing in that way. With his faithful old Ford roadster
and a piano-laden Bowen Loader he spins along the
paved highways or bumps over the byways bringing
the instruments to demonstrate or deliver, all in the
way of work day in and day out. What Harry of
the Chicago wholesale house considers a vacation
thrill he experiences as part of his job.
Locating Them.
It is clear that Mr. Ayres found the city in a sea-
son when numbers of piano men craved the so-called
simple life. Should he encounter some of the absent
vacationers on their return he would possibly find
that they discovered complexities instead of sim-
plicities while away. But ideas of the simple life are
as varied as characteristics.
For George, the normally correct dresser and piano
wareroom dand3' the simple life is one associated with
short-sleeved sport shirts, baggy-kneed canvas
trousers and a flapping brimmed hat of no shape and
little cash value. It is George for the carefree exist-
ence, where the stings and arrows of outrageous
gnats and mosquitoes are defied and where he finds
a heaven free from the conventionalities and piano
problems.
Honk! Honk!
The simple life for Harry of the Umpah Six is a
choice shared by a great army of piano men. They
are close to nature during the vacation period, al-
though they usually don't stop for a close-up ex-
cept during forced pauses to fix a tire or something.
For complete forgetfulness of the problems of the
daily task, there is no recreation like a trip in a
balky gaswagon.
Fore!
Mr. Ayres found in his circle of the piano sales-
rooms and factory offices in Chicago that a large pro-
portion of piano men are supremely happy if per-
mitted to golf undisturbed through the vacation
days. He says he learned a dozen new ways to drive
last week, the lessons being given in pantomime by
enthusiastic golfers chained to the job by a cruel
fate. Illustrating with a feather duster one fan in
the Republic Building gave him free the original
Laird McGoosalem drive whack of the little ball, an
effective way handed down in his family.
Besides those who are happy if allowed to golf
through the joyous but not always calm days and
those to whom the honk of the automobile horn is
sweeter than the music of babbling brooks and the
dust of clay roads more enjoyable than the leafy
clouds in Valambrosa Wood, there are others who
voice a great variety of tastes. The man from Mis-
souri met them all.
The Recompense.
The pleasures that piano men get out of their
vacations are some of the profits of the year's work.
ADAM SCHAAF, Inc.
REP
P?A D NOS ING
GRANDS AND UPRIGHTS
Established Reputation
FACTORY
1020 So. Central Park Ave.,
Corner FUlmore Street
EANO|
and Quality Since 1873
OFFICES AND SALESROOMS
319-321 So. Wabash Ave.,
These are profitable pleasures or pleasurable profits,
just as you like to call them. The most successful
piano men in all the activities of the business, manu-
facturers, dealers, travelers, factory men, find pleas-
ure as well as profit in their work. When the profits
are not up to the expected figure the pleasures of the
job are a compensation. The summer holidays are
all the more pleasurable because well earned.
Mr. Ayres wondered why the interesting life of the
rural piano salesman was never mentioned by the
medical columnists of the daily newspapers as a sum-
mer occupation for the city man with tired nerves.
The Invitation.
"Wheat harvesting in Kansas, Nebraska and the
Dakotas has been prescribed as a sedative and log
rafting on the big rivers and berry picking in the
fruit belts are given as helpful aids for the neurotic
victims, but no learned doctor of the newspapers has
yet announced the toxic virtues of piano selling in the
rural sections," said Mr. Ayres.
"Possibly it is an oversight, for the life of the rural
piano salesman will cure the worst case of nerves—
if it doesn't kill the victim in the first week. But the
occupation is plainly helpful to the condition of
nervous debility supposed to follow impairment of the
spinal cord. That is because the stiff backbone is
encouraged as a' necessity and the work naturally
superinduces the stiff upper lip.
Hot Work, Cold Cash.
"I have found it hot work at times, my brothers,
but the recompense is cold cash. But apart from the
profits, which may be in equal ratio to the energies
employed, the life has its healthful and esthetic
charms. My advice to the city boys of the piano
trade is to make an all-the-year-round vacation work-
ing at piano selling for a small town store, where it
seems that the whole world is a sphere of activity.
Instead of the distracting clatter of city traffic one
hears the merry tinkle of cowbells, the musical songs
of birds and the harmonious buzz of insects. In
short, it is the poetry of piano life, and there's money
in it."
GERMAN PIANO INDUSTRY
HAS BRISK EXPORT TRADE
In Stuttgart, Manufacturers Have More Orders from
Abroad Than They Can FilL
According to Vice Consul Erik W. Magnuson,
Stuttgart, Germany, the Stuttgart piano industry has
more orders on hand than it can fill and the export
business is unusually brisk. Great Britain is by far
the best individual market for German pianos, with
Australia as another important leading market. Ger-
man pianos are sold principally in Europe, but large
shipments are also made to British South Africa, Ar-
gentina, and Brazil.
The following table gives the numbers and values
of pianos exported by Germany during the months
of October, 1924, to February, 1925, inclusive, the
name of each month being followed by the number of
pianos, value in marks and last, value in dollars:
October, 1924
5,633 5,606,000 $1,335,000
November, 1924
5,527 5,627,000 1,340,000
December, 1924
5,746 6,115,000 1,456,000
January, 1925
5,912 6,210,000
1,479,000
February, 1925
4,998 5,329,000 1,269,000
BUYS HOUSTON STORE.
V. G. Gaines is manager of the Baldwin Music
Shop, recently opened at 717 Travis street, Houston,
Tex. The full line of Baldwin uprights, grands,
players and reproducing pianos is shown in an ad-
mirably arranged set of showrooms. C. H. Fantham
is salesmanager.
PRAISES STORY & CLARK GRAND.
The Milliken Conservatory of Music, Decatur, 111.,
is equipped with Story & Clark pianos and the opinion
of Lowell L. Townsend, director, of the grand is ex-
pressed in the following letter to the Story & Clark
Piano Co.: "Permit me to express my appreciation
of your new grand piano. I was much pleased with
the beauty and depth of its tone. These qualities
combined with an evenness of scale and a responsive
action make it a piano of exceptional merit."
RADLE TONE The Musician's Delight
Whenever you hear the name RADLE you immediately
think of a wonderful tone quality, durability and design.
Musicians insist on RADLE
New Adam Schaaf Bulldlnft,
CHICAGO, ILL.
F. RADLE, Inc* Est 1850.
609-11 W. 36th St., New York City
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/

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