Presto

December, 1930
P R E S T 0-T I M E S
ISSUED THE
FIFTEENTH IN EACH
MONTH
F R A N K D. A B B O T T
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PRESTO PUBLISHING CO.
Publishers
417 So. Dearborn St.
Chicago, I1L
The American Music Trade Journal
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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, $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.
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 of 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-
lication day to insure preferred position. Full 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.
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, DECEMBER, 1930
Advertising is the life-blood of any commercial
business. Piano business dies when it ceases to ad-
vertise. Even any curtailment of advertising pianos
begins to show at once, according to the most observ-
ing of the piano men. John H. Appel of the John
Wanamaker Co., New York, and treasurer of Adver-
tising Federation of America, speaking to the Phila-
delphia Club of Advertising Women, on the night of
November 20, told his audience that advertising is
bound to play a big part in reviving prosperity, for
he said it is vital that advertising of the right kind be
increased instead of decreased.
* * * *
Bankers of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New
York, Detroit and other great financial centers are
declaring that the installment system of purchasing,
which is such a general method throughout the United
States, has withstood the current depression, and they
suggest that the plan be used to increase sales and
minimize the slump in many lines of business. The
piano business—one of the first to use installment
methods of selling—is indebted to the plan for revival
of trade as well as to a continuance of trade during
the last year of slacker business. Bankers' and finance
companies' statistics show that since June 30 there
has been no sharp increase in repossessions of pianos,
automobiles or the many other material things that
have been bought on the installment payment plan.
* * * *
A roseate word-picture of a new era of prosperity
was painted to a group of his friends at Salem, Mass.,
a few days ago by Walter S. Gifford, president of the
American Telephone & Telegraph Co., when he said:
"The United States is about to enter a period of
prosperity the like of which no country has ever seen
before; a new era of big business working for the
fulfillment of its social obligations; a new develop-
ment in industry to work out the problem of dis-
tributing what we have on the basis that we have
plenty to go around."
* * * *
On one of the proofs that are being returned to
the Presto Publishing Co. giving information for use
in the coming issue of Presto Buyers' Guide, the
piano manufacturer writing the letter O. K.'d the
proof and added by way of comment: "We're still
in the ring, and with prohibition knocked out, we look
for better business."
* * * *
The Saturday Evening Post of November 22 pub-
lished a picture showing a fictitious scene pretending
to portray the inside of a music store.. It showed the
storekeeper, coming, forward, with, something .that
looked like a flute in his hand to greet a piano cus-
tomer, a lady who, seeing nothing but radios and a
second-hand piano or two, asked to be shown to
the new piano department. Evidently, from the for-
lorn appearance of the dealer and the prosperous looks
of the lady customer, she left the store in disgust and
a good sale of a fine grand was lost. Moral: If you
wish to make sales, show your pianos.
THE SEASON'S GREETINGS
As the glad holiday season is at hand, Presto-Times extends to its many friends the
greetings of the period. Our good wishes and thanks go out to the advertisers for their
patronage, to the dealers for their subscriptions and their general interest in the paper, the
travelers, correspondents, the officials of the various associations in the trade, and anybody
and everybody who is struggling to better conditions. Friendly to all and with no enemies,
Presto-Times says, "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year." Ready for further service,
eager to help build up trade, with the tide of better times rising, Presto-Times sees no cause
for not making merry.
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THE PIANO AND THE MAN
As one who has a soul for music sits listening to the playing of Paderewski and watch-
ing the man at work, the thought comes that the piano is an extension of muscles and nerves
—the broadening of the individual artistic infusion of spirit to stir everybody in the audience
to similar feelings of delight and appreciation. The piano and the man seem to merge—the
one the complement of the other; more than a master and a mere tool. It requires a great
piano to please so great a performer. There is an old Latin saying, "Causa jequat effectum,"
which is a dictum based upon the supposition that the forces involved in cause and effect
must be equal, or upon the hypothesis that only like can act upon like. As the beautiful music
floats out, the philosophical listener wonders how much is due to the man, how much to the
piano. The piano standing silent on the stage before the artist touches it is an uncut gem.
Paderewski is the lapidary who makes its facets gleam with a thousand brilliant scintillations.
* * * *
INTERVENING STAGE IS PAST
Veterans in the trade know that the piano has scored many victories—victories of a kind
that the man too modern to recognize that there is a road behind him cannot comprehend.
Perhaps the piano has been unjustly sneered at by little men who are out of harmony with
their environment—men who for some time past have looked as if they were in exceeding
dumps—but all their buncombe can be branded as insincere, for such fellows have probably
been in the habit of noting transient thoughts of their own as the opinions of others. The
piano business has safely passed what might be called "the intervening stage," due to world-
wide financial depression, and now, with its ideals undimmed by the few cases of misfortune
and disappointment, its spark-plug is operative and the road ahead is clear.
* * * *
ABOUT BEING ADVENTUROUS
About as many ways to bring back good times have been suggested as there are stig-
gesters making them. Now Presto-Times adds its little advice in two words: "Be adven-
turous." In good times a routine of commonplace does the work, but there are times when
pessimism spreads over a nation or over several nations like a misamic fog and it becomes
harder to sell anything. The stout adventurer is the fellow who then starts things back to
normal ways. Most of our piano trade pessimists are not pessimists at heart. They come
under the description of one of Mark Twain's biographers who said of Twain that he was
"not a pessimist in his head but only by premeditation." Now, if some of these self-
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Co., 120 West 42nd street, same pessimists can sell so many pianos when they are sound asleep, what could they not
New York, published a pledge: "To retain the ser- sell if they were dead? Mark Twain, one day when he was not feeling pessimistic, wrote:
vices of our regular employees just as long as they
care to remain in our employ and perform their duties "The miracle or the power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application
efficiently and satisfactorily. The business of this and perseverance, under the promptings of a brave, determined spirit." While it would be
store has been very good, which shows that in times hardly fair to accuse the pessimist of always following the formula of the inexact, or to say
like these people turn to music for relief and relax-
ation. Don't deprive yourselves and your children that the sum total of his thinking is a delusion, yet he is guilty of working on the uncon-
of music."
scious in the minds of others and so spreading the epidemic of pessimism. He hints that he
* * * *
is too wise to be mistaken and too honest to deceive, and that he has drawn his inferences
The Sampson Music House of Boise, Idaho, states
in its advertisements that "the enrollment in piano with inexorable logic; and so, like the preacher and the lecturer, his message at the time goes
instruction classes in our public schools is more than uncontradicted by the listeners. The pessimist may be described as a man with a one-groove
doubled over that of last year. Are you giving your brain—a man with fanatical, obstinate adhesion to any course he may have entered upon, even
children the advantages of this great opportunity to
take these music lessons? A piano in the home gives after it has shown itself to be unwise and impossible.
the child the opportunity of practicing the piano les-
* * * *
sons taught at school."
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