Presto

September, 1030
P R E S T 0-T I M E S
ISSUED THE
FIFTEENTH IN EACH
MONTH
FRANK D. ABBOTT
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.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the
Post Office. Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $1.25 a year; 6 months, 75 cents; foreign,
$3.00. Payable in advance. No extra charge in United
States possessions, Cuba and Mexico. Rates for adver-
tising 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.
lication day to insure preferred position. Pull page dis-
play copy should be in hand three days preceding publi-
cation day. Want advertisements for current issue, to
insure classification, should be in three days in advance
of publication.
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 three days preceding date of pub-
lication. Latest news matter and telegraphic communica-
tions should be in not later than 11 o'clock on that day.
Advertising copy should be in hand four days before pub-
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.
three days 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
that date. If they concern the interests of manufactur-
ers or dealers such items will appear the issue following.
CHICAGO, SEPTEMBER, 1930;
No excuse, pretense or specious plea is needed in
offering a good piano for sale. It cheapens the piano,
belittles the whole piano business and actually holds
up the dealer to ridicule if he makes excuses and cuts
prices below a profitable basis. To his rivals and
competitors, such pretexts seem to be aimed at the
ruin of the whole trade.
* * *
A piece of ingeniously reticulated pretense is easily
torn apart, for in advertising a piano on that basis the
falsity is expressed by the context, and the make-be-
lieve and fiction stand out bare and as thoroughly ex-
posed as are the gangs in gangland when the strong
boxes are opened. Some men advertise a piano sale
as though they were telling a fairy tale to little chil-
dren, without even the saving grace of the circus
clown who told the tots that they were "not to believe
one word of it even if it's true." Anyway, a trivial,
groundless or fallacious plea or reason is poor stuff
to offer in connection with offering a good piano.
Such pabulum is like pious pretenses—thin and easily
seen through.
* * *
The piano business is now emerging from hard cir-
cumstances and disabilities not of its own making. As
a doctor would put it, the trade has been suffering
from insufficient nutriment. Now, richer food is being
set before the patient and it is able to sit up in bed
and partake. The regulating of vital conditions is
going on at the factories and the piano is commencing
to soar far higher in the scale of existence. An im-
mense range of possible activity is opening out before
the dealers who are no longer at the mercy of external
influences.
* * *
In the assortment of strange accumulations of per-
sonal property found in the small room of a wealthy
recluse who disappeared from a Newark, N. J., lodg-
ing house last month, were found 100 phonograph
records and an old phonograph built to appear, when
closed, as a family Bible. In his room the police found
a will giving all his property to his sister in Australia
and bank books with total balances of $1,274.30.
* * *
Articles that powerfully help the trade in general
appear from time to time in Presto-Times—discus-
sions of conditions from inside knowledge written by
the most prominent men in the industry of manufac-
turing and marketing the instruments of music. This
publication is always glad to get hold of such well-
written articles and gives them the prominence that is
their due. Such an article appeared in the August
number of Presto-Times from the pen of A. G. Gul-
bransen, under the title "The Piano Business Is Stag-
ing a Come-Back." Proof that it was widely read and
is still exciting comment is being piled up from day
to day in the great number of extra copies of this
publication that are being ordered, most of the writers
saying they want to read Mr. Gulbransen's article.
Every wide-awake piano man will read that article,
and as for the sleepy ones, it certainly will wake them
up.
* * *
Radio manufacturers of this country are being con-
gratulated and thanked for the part they are taking
in pushing export trade. Anything that helps to in-
crease our exporting trade in one line acts as a stimu-
lant to increase it in many other lines. The radio men
are setting a good example to the manufacturers of
pianos and other musical instruments to do likewise.
BALDWIN MILWAUKEE MANAGER.
Congratulations are in order for both the company
and the man in the appointment recently by the Bald-
win Piano Co. of Hugh M. Holmes as manager of
the Baldwin store at Milwaukee, Wis. Mr. Holmes
resigned as vice-president and general manager of the
Bradford Piano Co. at Milwaukee to take his new
position with the House of Baldwin.
CREATIVE^COMPLEX CUSTOMERS
An occasional correspondent of Presto-Times residing in New York, whose wit is refresh-
ing, whose judgment is based on experience rather than on the fun he gets out of satire at
which he is a past master, in his latest letter to this paper says: "Always the creative impulse
will endure, and some are not content to be merely listeners. To those with the creative im-
pulse we must look for our future piano customers. And I have faith that the number will
be sufficient to maintain the piano industry until the piano is replaced with something better,
which is not visible at this moment." Presto-Times agrees with this correspondent in his
statement that a substitute for the piano is not in sight and joins in his belief that "rooting"
for the performances of another, even though that other is a master, does not give the satis-
faction that one gets out of personal performance, even though that performance is much
inferior to that of the master. With the piano and the radio in the home, one gets both the
pleasure of performing and the hearing of the master at second-hand and frequently in a
far-distant city.
* * * *
PURSUIT
The pursuit of happiness motivates a large percentage of human actions, and the pursuit
of the piano business is an activity that contributes directly to the happiness of many. The
piano soothes away the fretfulness that is brought on by the roar of the "L" trains, the blah-
blahing of loud speakers in static and the nervousness caused by a thousand daily narrow
escapes from instant death by leaping out of the path of automobiles. It replaces nervous-
ness with music, and a musical sound is an emotional force—its character is subtler than
ambition, or love or hate. Piano music is the music of the immortals, and selling pianos is
the highest class of merchandising. It is no vain pursuit, for the piano today instead of fall-
ing into the languor of oblivion is staging a tie .v era of successful activity.
* * * *
FORMULAS
The most cataclysmic debacles in business, in battles or in politics, upset things only tem-
porarily and are always self-adjusting. The changes which cannot be embodied in a formula
are far more important and far-reaching than those that are easily classified, ear-marked and
filed away. The piano, the phonograph, the p'ayer-piano and the radio each brought radical
changes and each later became self-adjusting, only adding to the great cause of music while
fitting into the general scheme of things. New devices and new ideas always meet with oppo-
sition, for the world is full of reactionaries who invariably discount the postulate of initial
perfection, too incredulous, many of them, to believe the evidence of their own eyesight. Radio
is now adjusting itself to the musical field generally, no longer "sassing up" to the piano, but
recognizing it as the senior partner, the dean of the music college.
* * * *
COMBINATION RADIO-PHONOGRAPHS
The highest development is soon to be reached in the use of phonograph records by mak-
ing the radio-phonograph instruments as convenient as the radio; in other words, using de-
vices in the combination instruments which play the phonograph automatically with all the
convenience the owners enjoy in playing their radio. This opens the door to more profits for
dealers, as H. E. Capehart, president of the Capehart Corporation, Fort Wayne, Indiana, ex-
plains in an article on another page of this issue. The piano, the radio and the phonograph are
co-extensive means of spreading music before the world, and Mr. Capehart, in his own very
readable style, points out how a delight hitherto accessible only to the comparatively few,
can now be enjoyed by the many everywhere.
* * * *
HIDDEN INSPIRATION
The piano is full of hidden inspiration; not in music alone, but also in inspiring men and
women to go forth and sell more of the instruments. That's the reason why persons who left
the piano business years ago are returning this fall to their former line and setting their
former pace. Once a piano man, always a piano man—at least at heart. Selling pianos is like
newspaper work—it gets into the blood. It is like writing short stories, like running a loco-
motive, or playing ball in a professional nine—the game's the thing.
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