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
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