Presto

P R E S T O-T I M E S
The Americjin Music Trade Weekly
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
PRESTO P U B L I S H I N G CO., Publishers.
Editor
F R A N K D. A B B O T T
- - - - - - - - -
(C. A. DAN I ELL—1904-1927.)
J. FERGUS O'RYAN
_ _ _ _ _
Managing Editor
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 0234.
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, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1.25; 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 correspondents, and
their assistance is invited.
Payment Is not accepted for matter printed in the edi-
torial or news columns of Presto-Times.
Where half-tones are made the actual cost of produc-
tion will be charged if of commercial character or other
than strictly news Interest.
When electrotypes are sent for publication it is re-
quested that their subjects and senders be carefully indi-
cated.
Forms close at noon on Thursday. Late news matter
should be in not later than 11 o'clock on that day. Ad-
vertising copy should be in hand before Tuesday, 5 p. m.,
to insure preferred position. Full page display copy
should be in hand by Tuesday noon preceding publication
day. Want advertisements for current week, to insure
classification, should be in by Wednesday noon.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 417 South
Dearborn Street. Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, DECEMRKR 29, 1928. .
The last form of Presto-Times goes to press
at 11 a. m. Thursday. Any news transpiring
after that hour cannot be expected in the cur-
rent issue. Nothing received at the office that
is not strictly news of importance can have
attention after 9 a. m. on Thursday. If they
concern the interests of manufacturers or
dealers such items will appear the week follow-
ing. Copy for advertising designed for the
current issue must reach the office not later
'ban Wednesday noon of each week.
WHAT TRADE NEEDS
other lines. For in selling the smaller things
there are many promptings that impel buyers
to buy. In piano buying there are but one or
two. In more commonplace lines of trade,
where the eye, the stomach or other senses,
create a natural desire of possession, no sales-
manship is required. Mere suggestion creates
sales and there must be customers no matter
how small the sales ability. But with pianos
and other things that appeal to the special,
rather than the universal needs, it is different.
There the inducements are of a kind that in
themselves add to the zest of business, and
bring proportionately greater satisfaction to
the successful seller.
PARADOX EXPLAINED
To build up the piano business we also must
indulge in a little destructiveness. That sounds
paradoxical but sounds reasonable when ex-
plained. Piano propaganda must create new
admiration for piano music and arouse am-
bitions—in the young people especially—to
acquire a knowledge of the piano playing art.
That is a constructive scheme.
But there is an old line of thought asso-
ciated with pianos that must be destroyed. It
is the notion, first created by piano men them-
selves, that a piano has qualities for perpetual
existence. The dealers who sold some of the
old instruments encumbering parlors today,
at the same time sold an immortal belief that
the piano was good for the buyer's lifetime
even though he or she in time emulated that
ancient longtimer, Methuselah, and kept on
living beyond the allotted span. That is why
such reverence is attached to decrepit old
thumpboxes with spavined hammers and
iangling wires, found in many homes by sales-
men, on the quest for new prospects. In pub-
lic places everywhere, in homes, you hear
pianos that grate on your ears. You hear
singers say that it is a shame they are ex-
pected to sing well to the accompaniment of
a piano that has lost all the musical quality it
may have possessed at one time. This is true
of the most expensive as well as cheaper in-
struments.
You see pianos with barely any varnish left
on them, scuffed and scraped. You see pianos
that are oversize, large, hideous, unattractive.
How can it be expected that lacquered pianos,
pianos of fancy design, small uprights, small
grands, roll-played pianos and all the other
modern pianos will meet with greater demand
as long as the thought is still kept alive that
pianos are different from anything else and
should go on looking like back-numbers in the
midst of their modern surroundings.
One of the things needed now is a strong,
aggressive campaign, to modernize the pianos
in homes and institutions. The accomplish-
ment of this will not only increase the volume
of piano business, but will do an incalculable
amount of good in putting over the piano as a
modern musical instrument entitled to a just
share of the familv's home furnishing funds.
At the beginning of a new year is a good
time to consider that the old year's habit of
finding fault should be dropped. The cry that
there is something the matter with the piano
business must be stilled. A new energy is
needed. More live retailers are in demand.
And the new year will be a good one.
"Fluctuation of effort is the curse of a great
many piano men," was an estimate of conduct
of his fellows in the business, voiced by a
veteran piano man this week. The conditions
in the piano trade were being discussed and
this man interjected the emotional causes that
have affected, and still effect, piano sales.
"There are men in business whose success
is spotted by periods of progress and depres-
sion, due to a sort of fluctuation of effort," he
said. "Such men are elated by a spurt of good
trade and discouraged by a slowing down of
sales. They think it is the fault of the busi-
ness, and fancy that in no other line are there
such uncertainties. A little study of their
Public interest in any commodity usually
neighbors' troubles would change their esti-
precedes
its increase in sales. A great many
mates in this respect."
active
agencies
of piano propaganda are at
The observation was that of a keen observer
work
and
it
is
natural
that a reaction should
in the field. In any business it is the steady,
be
felt
in
piano
sales.
persistent and sanguine outlook that counts.
It may easily be proved that the man who ex-
pects business will get it, while the one who
Considering the age and maturity of the
is absolutely sure that "trade is dead" will piano industry and trade, the year closing has
find it so. And in piano selling the attitude of been very prolific in baby uprights and baby
mind counts as much or more than in most grands.
December 29, 1928
THIRTY YEARS AGO
(From Presto of Dec. 29, 1898)
There are heroes in every walk of life, and no one
has ever questioned that there are heroes in the piano
trade. Consequently the story of brave piano sales-
man Peters, who saved the lives of many panic-
stricken girls at the Terre Haute fire last Monday
morning, did not surprise anyone. Mr. Peters is a
traveling sales for D. H. Baldwin & Co., and his mis-
sion in Terre Haute was, of course, to gladden the
hearts of the people with Christmas pianos.
We are indebted to M. Anselmo Lopez of Havana,
Cuba, for a coupy of "Tributo el Maine, Marcha
Funebre para piano por J. Marin Varona."
Among subscriptions received for PRESTO this
week were a number from foreign countries, including
Mexico, Buenos Aires, Argentine and Japan. This in
itself is not important, further than it shows how wide
the interest in America's music industries is becoming.
Mr. Geo. P. Bent has his entire stock of damaged
pianos now in the old salesrooms, these rooms having
been put in presentable condition. Mr. Harcourt is
the salesman in charge there.
R. H. Bach, the hustling music dealer of Owatonna,
Minn., is not only doing a splendid local business, but
is selling pianos and organs in all directions within a
radius of 150 miles.
One of the Boston pianos that closes the year with
colors flying is the "Poole," a piano which has de-
served all the success that has come to it.
D. H. Baldwin & Co. have opened up a first-class
music store in Clinton, Ind., with Mr. J. R. Vaughn
as manager.
The large piles of lumber in the Steger factory yard
at Steger, 111., are being moved to make room for the
extensive addition to be put up in a short time.
Henry Lindeman, heretofore superintendent of the
factory of the New York company which bears his
name, will go to Boston, January 1st, to enter the
Ivers & Pond factory.
John Abbott, one of the poineer piano makers of
America, died in Newark, N. J., on December 9. His
age was 89. He was a brother of Mr. James Abbott
of Abbott & Sons, piano action makers of Fort Lee,
N. J.
With characteristic large-heartedness, Mr. J. V.
Steger will treat every child in the town of Steger
with something from Santa Claus' store. Toys and
candies will be as free as ari to the little ones, and
a Christmas tree will delight their eyes in the Steger
Sunday School Mission. And though he won't say so
himself, Mr. Steger will enjoy it all as much as the
happiest of them.
In the orders received by Lyon & Healy yesterday
was one for one of their harps, from Havana, Cuba.
This order is significant of the tastes of the music
lovers in the recently liberated island, and is indica-
tive of the future of music and the music industry
there.
The year ends under most auspicious conditions
for the house of William Tonk & Bro., New York,
and the Western associate house of the William Tonk
& Bro. Co., Chicago. Trade with both establishments
has grown steadily during the year and was never
so large as now.
S. D. Mclntyre, representative of the Packard Piano
and Organ Co., is visiting agents of those instruments
in Wisconsin.
A transaction that will result in one of the finest
improvements yet made in Wabash avenue has just
been negotiated, said Monday's "Tribune," referring
to the new Cable Building, described in last week's
Presto, by Aldis, Aldis & Northcote, representing a
syndicate of Chicago capitalists, and Rounds &
Wetten, representing the Cable Piano Company. The
Whitfield building at the southeast corner of Wabash
avenue and Jackson boulevard will be torn down and
a fireproof building erected on the site for the Cable
Piano Company.
Editor Presto:
Dear Sir: In your edition of December 15, 1898,
you gave us quite an extended notice. Well, I am
glad to be able to write an ad which attracts atten-
tion enough to be noticed, even if it is an account of
a blunder. As regards giving music away, we might
just as well be generous in that line for all the profit
there is in it out here in Council Bluffs and Omaha.
Mr. Flanner of Milwaukee is duplicated by Hayden
Bros, of Omaha, and Bennett & Co. of Omaha, goes
one better and advertises a full line for three cents
a copy; and so the world goes on. We will have a
Merry Christmas for all that.
Respectfully yours,
M U E L L E R PIANO CO.,
Council Bluffs, Iowa, December 19, '98.
It is reported that the "fiddle string" factory near
Marion, 111., has made an assignment on account of
the duty not being sufficient to protect its interests.
B. H. Carter was appointed receiver.
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/