Presto

July 11, 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. 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 ad vs. 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, JULY 11, 1925.
MUSIC AND THE MILKMAN
Last week's Presto contained an item about
a creamery at Bluffton, Ind., that made com-
plaint against the H. C. Bay Company's big
piano factory, on the ground that sawdust had
dropped into the milk and, presumably, soured
it. The incident, while perhaps not in itself
funny, seems to suggest the germ of an idea
or two. In the first place, it may seem that,
in this age of sanitation and health conserva-
tion, milk depots might as well be located at
some distance from busy industrial centers.
Next door to a piano factory may not seem
just the best place for a creamery.
Not that music can sour the milk, but that
it isn't possible to make the instruments of
music without a good deal of sawing of wood.
And usually sawing wood of any kind creates
sawdust in such quantities that, however great
the precautions taken, it is not possible to con-
fine all of it to the proper receptacle. Fine
sawdust is almost as evanescent as the air it-
self. It permeates the smallest crevice and,
like any other dust, it will creep into the
corners well concealed.
There has been evidence enough that music
is a help to the milk business. It is on record
that a piano may even induce the source of
lacteal fluid to produce more copiously. A
piano in the barnyard has been commended
by scientists who believe in the nourishing
properties of milk. We all know that the
meek-eyed bovine will prick up her ears and
stand in ruminative pose when the music floats
from farmhouse across the pasture.
So that it is not wise for the milkman to
attempt to suppress music. It would be bet-
ter to establish the creamery outside the town
limits, or even far into the peaceful precincts
of the surrounding country. This has been
done by many milkmen, in both private and
corporate activities. Certainly it would be un-
fair to ask a great and well-established piano
factory to move in order that the cows might
not be disturbed, or the sawdust drip from the
busy saw mills into the pure white product
of the dairy.
It's easier to drive the cows than to trans-
port the heavy machinery and the giant
accumulations of lumber, metal and men, of a
great musical industry of any kind, and espe-
cially so fine a product as pianos or player-
pianos in the quantities they are produced in
Bluffton, Indiana.
There is a serious side to this question.
There is some regulation by which the makers
of things for human consumption must pro-
ceed under all possible precaution. Is there
nothing that fixes the proximity of milk dis-
tribution posts remote from the machine
working industries, or is it better that they
be established next door to spreading indus-
tries by which the average community is up-
built. It naturally must seem that the milk-
man would be better off in the woods, or at
least away from the wood working industries.
AN APOLOGY
ing for the names of his customer's friends
who may also have a few dollars to invest.
* * *
If there has been any concern as to what
radio may do to the piano, current discussions
of the subject must be reassuring. The piano
is fixed and cannot be swerved save, possibly,
in its case designs or even its shape. Radio
is, as yet, uncertain and unstable as an article
of commerce
* * *
Encourage the piano teachers. The player-
pianos are in themselves instructors in how
the composition should sound. The piano
teacher is the source of information in how
to make it sound that way, or even better,"by
the exercise of the performer's own indi-
viduality.
* * *
Better than "music weeks," and more effec-
tive than all the money spent in promotive
prizes, of whatever kind, would be a fund
from which to pay good piano teachers for giv-
ing lessons without charge to all piano buyers.
* * *
The Cincinnati Star says that it has been
told that some piano manufacturer has said
that he would make no more uprights. Per-
haps. But it will be a long time before the
piano dealers will cease to cry for them.
* * *
The piano buyer who wants to buy on a
"nothing down" basis, with several years in
which to pay it, is never as worthy of en-
couragement as the one with a $10 bill and
assurance of as much every month.
* * *
The average employer would rather hear his
salesman tell of a single sale just closed than
of six sales he expects to make next week.
Burns says that "to step aside is human,"
and one of the commonest pleas of the side-
steppers is that "mistakes will happen." But,
even so, there is no excuse for the mistake
which, having happened, is permitted to pass
without correction, justification or apology.
And this explains the reappearance in this
issue of Presto of two articles which appeared
—but incorrectly—last week. We want to
make the correction, and the apology, as
promptly as possible, particularly as we con-
sider the two articles of more than ordinary
importance. In their original publication the
"make-up" man had managed to so badly mix
the context of the two articles that neither
was intelligible and in consequence both were
spoiled.
One of the articles told of the forthcoming
of a new book by Mr. William Tonk, the New
York piano manufacturer. To him we apolo-
gize for, in the mix-up, he was made respons-
ible for several statements of which he knew
nothing, but which had been "lifted" from the
From the Files of Presto
other article and inserted in the book review.
The second article which is also reproduced
(July 11, 1895.)
this week, is one of much more than common
It will probably be known within a week or ten
days whether Wabash avenue, Chicago, shall be
significance to the piano trade. It deals with decorated
with the "L" road, or not.
radio conditions as they now exist, and it
Quite an extensive addition has been made to
presents sane argument against any such the already great factory of the Estey Piano Com-
pany in New York. The new part is on Lincoln
thought as that the new wonder, as a com- avenue
in the rear of the main building.
mercial article, can greatly interfere with the
Mr. E. S. Conway, secretary of the W. W. Kim-
progress or permanency of the piano. The ball Co., went up to Madison, Wis., on Monday, to
visit his old friend, W. W. Warner of that city. No-
article will repay a careful reading.
body knows whether Mr. Conway took a day fishing
Of course, the piano has no rival, nor is it or not.
Several of the piano manufacturers have been
likely to have. It is the only instrument, and experimenting
with four and five strings in the
the only household god, in which are all the treble. The result is a very brilliant upper register,
but the liability to get constantly out of tune is so
elements of education, refinement and enter- great
as to over-top all the advantages gained. The
tainment. It is one of the things fundamental last octave of the average piano is sufficiently
with three strings, and there is little need
to civilization and progressive living. It is resonant
of any added strength in that direction.
still comparatively young, and it has the whole
future in which to exercise its sublimating
influences.
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Read the two reprinted articles—correctly
printed this time, we hope—and you will agree
(July 15, 1905.)
that their reappearance justified the space
It is finally settled that the Bush & Lane Piano
they occupy in this week's Presto.
Co.'s factory will be removed to Holland, Mich.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
There are still opportunities for the piano
salesman to learn by observing the ways of
workers in other lines of selling. The life
insurance solicitor is never satisfied with the
policy he has delivered unless he secures also
the names of friends of the newly insured who
may be possible prospects. And the bond sales-
man never delivers the security without ask-
Particulars appear elsewhere this week.
Alfred Dolge, who has been a Chicago visitor
for the last week, was joined here a few days ago
by his able lieutenant, Count Cavalli. On Tuesday
Messrs. Dolge and Cavalli were guests of James F.
Broderick at the Straube factory at Hammond.
"Louder than words," says F. Leithold, La Crosse,
Wis., "are the actions of our patrons who have
bought the Sohmer piano. They are telling their
friends about it, which results in more business for
us. It's a just tribute to the construction, beauty and
tone quality of the Sohmer piano, an indorsement
which means much to you."
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/