Presto

Issue: 1929 2231

8
PRESTO-TIMES
ISSUED THE FIRST AND
FIFTEENTH IN EACH
MONTH
FRANK D. ABBOTT - - - - - - .-r -
(C. A. DAN I ELL—1904-1927.)
July IS, 1929
PRESTO PUBLISHING CO.
Publishers
417 So. Dearborn St.
Chicago, III.
The American Music Trade Journal
Editor
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 0234.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
mercial Cable Co.'s Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Enterpd as second-class matter Jan. 29. 1896. at th<*
Post Office, Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription. $1.25 a year; 10 months, $1.00; 6 months,
75c; foreign. $3.00. 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.
Wherp 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 preceding date of
publication. I>atest news matter and telegraphic com-
munications should be in not later than 11 o'clock on
that day. Advertising copy should be in hand before
Tuesday, 5 p. m., before publication day to insure pre-
ferred position. Full page display copy should be in hand
by Tuesday noon preceding publication day. Want "vi-
vertisements for current week, to insure classiflcatioA
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.
The last form of Presto-Times goes to press at 11 a. m.
Thursday preceding publication day. Any news trans-
piring after that hour cannot be expected in the current
issue. Nothing received at the office that is not strictly
news of importance can have attention after 9 a. m. of
Thursday. If they concern the interests of manufactur-
ers or dealers such items will appear the issue following.
CHICAGO, JULY 15, 1929
STIMULUS OF BIG CONCERNS
A word or two now in praise of the big concerns in the piano
industry and trade that at their own expense have been giving a pow-
erful impetus to business by furnishing bands with instruments, help-
ing players to get piano and band instrument lessons and otherwise
stimulating, quickening and activating young and ambitious musicians
and musical students to achieve their desires. Big corporations are
able to do this and bear the burden of the costs in a way and on a
scale that small houses cannot, yet the small firms come in on the
benefits and this they ought to recognize and appreciate. On the
other hand, the big concerns must not lord it over the little fellows
on the theory that advanced ideas are impervious to the hindmost,
for the hindmost may serve by giving warning of danger in the rear.
Even insects learn by experience, as men who study the bees and
hornets declare, and when Mutt calls Jeff an insect he means it gen-
erally as a compliment to his astuteness; as much as to say the lower
limit of human knowledge includes even the stupidest.
WHY COMMUNITIES GO SLACK
He is a lazy piano man and a slow thinker who imagines that
children are too slothful to go through the preliminary drudgery of
practicing on the piano. . The fault is his, not the children's. If
children do not cultivate a certain orderliness, their elders are to
blame for not teaching them. What can be expected of a child whose
parents set an example of inertness? In whole neighborhoods habits
are formed and customs become general through the imitation of the
adult leaders. Good community work can die negatively by inaction
as surely as it can die positively by destruction.
WHY COMMUNITIES DEVELOP
Governed by foresight and reason, any American community can
become a delightful place to live. If the town is slow, whose fault
is it ? To complain about one's own town being slow is to induce a
judicial blindness about it. One of the fundamental requirements of
that town is your own progressiveness. It needs you as a live wire,
not a yapping croaker. If you are in the piano business, see that its
capacities for enjoyment of music are developed. The piano can
show the people all the advantages an individual gains in a society
and loses in isolation^ Remember that children have a greater ma-
turity of comprehension of music at 14 years of age than young folks
of 16 or 17 years had a few years ago.
MEN WHO GET CREDIT
The man whose credit is good need not trust to luck. Credit
is readily extended to men who have a reputation cf attending strictly
to their own business, and that is why success conies from good work
oftener that it does from good luck. Credit managers are very apt
to grant credit to enthusiastic men, believing that few people trouble
themselves to generate enthusiasm for things in which they have no
interest. But credit is never granted to men who are attempting
to build a skyscraper on a bungalow r foundation.
EARLIEST USE OF MICROPHONE
"Wire broadcasting" was done in this country as early as 1878,
just two years after Alexander Graham Bell successfully demon-
strated the practicability of the telephone, according to Angus S.
Hibbard, formerly vice-president and first general superintendent of
the Chicago Telephone Company. Chicagoans adjusted their head-
pBones and heard the Apollo Musical Club in concert at the old Cen-
tral Music Hall, located where Marshall Field's retail store now
stands. In an interview published in the Chicago Daily News last
week, Mr. Hibbard said : "Microphones were installed in the music
hall and the concert, directed by William L. Tomlins, was trans-
mitted and heard by groups of people in various parts of Chicago and
by a large group in Milwaukee, Wis."
FEAR SINKS ENTERPRISE
One of John Galsworthy's characters says : "Fear is the black
godmother of all damnable things." Anyway, fear is a primitive
mood. Sometimes it comes from conjuring things from nothing and
it has an impalpable quality that halts enterprise. It is out of har-
mony with nature's designs for us, for men who indulge their fears
lose the knowledge of which is which and what is what. Fear comes
crashing through the nfght on its invisible way. It seizes the timid
introspective piano merchant by the throat, sinking him down into
a habit of slothful, indiscriminating acquiescence.
A PECK OR A "STIMPART"
The pessimism of some fellows simply shows that the piano
business is undergoing a change, and although unrecognized so far,
as popular dicta, that change is coming. It requires vision to see this,
and where there is no vision the people perish. If the pancake is
brown enough on the underside, why not turn it over? The influ-
ences of the changes that are coming to the piano trade are so subtle
and show themselves so gradually, that it's time to quit sitting in
the office and go out to see how the people act. Don't associate with
pessimists—who keeps company with a wolf learns to howl. You
are not entitled to all of the business, but get some of it. "Them
that canna get a peck must put up wie a. stimpart" (Scotch for half
a peck).
LUCKY RADIO
Apparently, by all the tests of analysis, it is nothing but luck
which makes one man or one line of business successful while others
bewail the want of luck. Yet, perhaps, much of what we call good
luck is in reality unconscious skill in the arrangement of those ele-
ments which go to make up events. Luck is generally not hard of
access; it just comes. No impetuous charge, no use of sawed-off
shotguns, no arbitrary encroachments on the preserves of long-
established lines of business were practiced by radio in achieving its
wonderful success. It just came. Like a note, it was due. It came
like every other advance step in the gradual enlightenment of igno-
rant and stupid mankind. The lucky men were those who got in
step with it.
ESTHETIC EFFECTS
Things which are a real part of the esthetic effect are never
overlooked in the planning and construction of the finest pianos—
instruments in which the element of cost is entirely subordinated
to the paramount purpose of obtaining through perfect workmanship
and the use of perfect materials, perfect results. The pianos shown
in the June 15 issue of Presto-Times were all constructed with this
idea used as a command. There are many other instruments made
in the factories of this country which w 7 ere not pictured in our brief
list, that are really esthetic, and this publication will publish cuts of
them from time to time as occasion arises and we get room to use
them.
"
,
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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).
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July 15, 1929
PRESTO-TIMES
some time at his former home near Hanover and
may reside there permanently.
By the death of Ernst J. Knabe, the American
p'ano manufacturing world lost one of its most prom-
From THE PRESTO, July S, 1894.
men, the city of Baltimore a noted and public
How many piano manufacturers would object if a inent
spirited citizen, music a lover, his family a devoted
general strike were decided on?
Arnica and Anarchy appear to be the most promi- father, and a host of people a dear friend.
Everything appears to be booming again in the
nent things after this Fourth of July celebration.
village of Dolgeville. All the factories with
The employees of the "Big Four" struck on Mon- thriving
exception of the Giese wire factory are running
day—the Big Four railway, not the Manufacturers the
on full lime again, and that factory will shortly be
Piano Co. See?
The Lindeman piano has been before the public started up.
THIRTY=FIVE YEARS AGO
for nearly three-quarters of a century, this being the
seventy-third year since its establishment.
Mr. C. G. Curtiss, President, of the Manufacturers
Piano Co., who sails for Europe this week, takes with
him the best wishes for a pleasant voyage of a host
of friends, both in and out of. the music trade. Mr.
Curtiss will visit a number of, 'the continental cities.
It is very probable that Mr. Lew H. Clement, sec-
retary and manager of the Ann Arbor Organ Co.,
will take a trip to England and the Continent within
the next three weeks. Mr. Clement will undoubtedly
combine business with pleasure.
The eastern trade papers continue to announce, with
illustrated views, that the Ludwig piano is manufac-
tured at 702 E. 148th Street, New York. Ludwig &
Co., removed to their new and commodious factory,
ten blocks below, two months ago. They are now
near neighbors to the splendid factory of Decker
Bros., on 138th Street.
There is a factory building on E. 137th St., New
York, on every floor of which is a different piano
manufacturing concern. It is a veritable nest of
piano-makers. The instruments made under the same
roof are the Black & Kiefer (who, according to Mr.
Black are doing "nothing"); the F. Muehlfeld & Co.,
(who say things are "dead"); the Dusinberre & Co.,
(one of the partners of which is doing jury duty,
and the other gone a-fishing); and Strich & Zeidler,
who are full of activity and surely building up a sub-
stantial business.
Mr. C. G. Conn, the well-known band instrument
manufacturer of Elkhart, Ind., and representative in
Congress for the Thirteenth Congressional District
of that state, has flatly refused the Democratic re-
nomination. Mr. Conn, in his letter declining the
nomination says that he is directly and bitterly op-
posed to the recent action of President Cleveland, in
calling out Federal troops to quell the disturbances
in Chicago. From another, squrce we learn that Mr.
Conn is likely to use his energies toward a* solution
of the problems between labor and capital, acting as
a representative of labor interests.
Mr. E. P. Carpenter has received official notice of
his appointment as judge of awards, at the Antwerp
Exposition, and sails for Europe on the steamship
"Columbia" on the 19th inst. THE PRESTO has
already intimated that this appointment would be
made and it is, we believe, one that will be creditable
to the Exposition and an honor to Mr. Carpenter.
A Chicago music trade man who has not very much
use for Geo. M. Pullman, is J. V. Steger. Mr. Steger
relates how when he was selling pianos at Lyons,
Mich., he received a square piano in exchange on a
sale and shortly after had a chance to sell it. The
would-be purchaser expressed himself as unable to
pay the price on the terms asked. He told Mr. Steger
how much he could pay each month, and the latter
asked him his business. "House moving," he re-
plied. "And your name?" inquired Mr. Steger.
"Pullman." "Are you any relation to Geo. M. Pull-
man, of Chicago, who was once in the house-moving
business?" "Yes, I am his brother." A little further
conversation gave Mr. Steger to understand that
there was very little love lost on the part of the un-
successful Pullman.
Mr. Lucien Wulsin, of D. H. Baldwin & Co., Cin-
cinnati, has joined the American music trade colony
in Europe.
The Mathushek Company lost a loyal representative
in the death recently of Mr. Geo. Wells, of San Fran-
cisco. Notwithstanding the many temptations to han-
dle cheap goods, Mr. Wells positively refused to give
place in his store to any other make than the Mathu-
shek. He was the only absolutely independent single
piano dealer within our knowledge.
From THE PRESTO, July 12, 1894.
Among Chicago's trade ,visitors this week, is Mr.
Urchs, an energetic attache of the Steinway house.
Mr. H. D. Cable, of the Chicago Cottage Organ
Co., arrived in Paris last week in company with Mr.
Geo. W. Tewkesbury, whom'" he had met in London.
These are the days when the Chicago music trade
paper men are breaking their hearts over the dearth
of news. If this monotony is not broken up pretty
soon life won't be worth living.
Mr. Hampton L. Story, of San Diego, Cal., and
one of the former stalwarts of the music trade of
the West, is in Chicago, the guest of his son E. H.
Story, of the Story and Clark Co.
At a meeting of the committee for relieving the
distress of the working people who suffered by the
great London fire which destroyed the Story & Clark
organ factory last month, a check for twenty pounds
was announced as received from Lord Rosebery, the
English Premier.
The foreign papers continue to speak in the high-
est terms of the very handsome specimens of Packard
organs seen abroad. Some new models made espe-
cially for foreign trade are meeting with extraordinary
favor. Messrs. E. Hirsch & Co., of London, who
handle these instruments, are doing a splendid busi-
ness with them.
Mr. Fred T. Steinway and Mr. Edwin Eshelby the
London manager of the Steinway house attended the
funeral of the father-in-law of Mr. Fred T. Stein-
way, who died at his home in Germany a short time
ago. Mr. Nahum Stetson who was at that time in
London did not go with them but remained in the
city where he doubtles found as much stir and anima-
tion around the Steinway warerooms as he would
witness at Steinway Hall, New York, during the
palmiest days of concert work there. In other words,
Steinway Hall, London, is the scene of much activ-
ity in the line of concert work, which is attended with
much pomp and splendor.
Mr. Phillips, who went to England as head tuner
for the Story & Clark Organ Co., arrived there just
before the fire which destroyed their factory. He
returned to Chicago last week.
Mr. George Foster, of Rochester, N. Y., of the
piano manufacturing enterprise bearing his name, is
in the west this week visiting his agents. Mr. J. T.
Wamelink, Cleveland, has recently added the Foster
to his line of pianos.
For Sale—Uncalled for stocks of pianos and or-
gans. All new and finished in the latest styles. Ad-
dress: Any Piano or Organ Manufacturer, Chicago,
111.
Without doubt the decision of Judge Ingraham in
the Hardman suit has met with the approbation of
the trade as a body and has created a feeling of se-
curity with those firms that might be dragged into
litigation by similar competition. If we were to pro-
ceed on the theory that Hardman & LaGrassa in-
tended to build their reputation at the expense of the
piano made by Hardman, Peck & Co., then the vic-
tory won by the latter is a moral as well as practical
one.
Freeborn G. Smith, for the Bradbury Piano Co., is
offering a thirty-day free trip to Europe, all expenses
paid, to the most popular school teacher in the Dis-
trict of Columbia.. The fortunate one is to be decided
by ballot.
Mr. C. Hinze, lately manufacturing pianos at 105
West Washington street, Chicago, left the city on
BRITAIN RETALIATES IN SONG WRITING.
Britain is making an effective retaliation to the
American song writer's conquest of England. A
twelve-year-old British song, "The Bells of St.
Mary's," has undergone a last possible transition and
as a sacred song has swept America with enthusiasm
during the last three months.
Monday for Germany. Mr. Hinze will remain for
BEAUTIFUL PIANO CASES.
As a rule the piano customer today is keenly in-
terested in the outward form of his piano purchase,
as well as its merits of construction, says London
Music. The name of the manufacturer assures him
of the desired tonal qualities and the character for
endurance in the piano he considers most desirable,
but it depends upon himself to add to these his ideal
of case beauty. And never before have the refine-
ments and elegancies of art entered so much into the
construction of pianos.
THE PRICELESS GIFT OF MUSIC
There are few more priceless gifts belonging to
mankind than music, says London Music. It brings
comfort and joy to old and young, to rich and poor.
It recognizes no class distinction, no racial prejudice,
no geographical boundary, for it lives in every heart
and finds expression on every lip.
CONTINUES CABINET MANUFACTURING.
The Automatic Musical Instrument Co., which dis-
continued manufacture of cabinets for radios, phono-
graphs and other devices at Muskegon recently upon
expiration of the contract, has arranged for their
manufacture as required at the plant of the Sligh
Furniture Co., Grand Rapids, Mich., under supervision
of a representative of the Automatic Musical Instru-
ment Co.
....an all electric set
which features great
range, selectivity and
volume without dis-
tortion in the finest
cabinets offered to the
radio buying public.
Produced by the
manufacturers of the
world renowned
JESSE FRENCH & SONS
PIANO
and worthy of the
" n a m e well known
since 1875"
THE JESSE FRENCH & SONS
PIANO CO.
NEWCASTLE, IND.
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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