Presto

PRESTO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editors
Telephones: Chicago Tel. Co., Harrison 234; Auto. Tel. Co., Automatic 61-703.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code)
"PRESTO," Chicago.
*nir<»r«(j as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the Post Office, Chicago. Illinois
•*
under Act of March 3, 1S79.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable in advance. No «xtm
«ms«.rjje m TJ, 8. possessions, Canada. Cuba and Mexico
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, III.
Advertising Ratesi-^Three dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insortirai&
Six dollars per inch per month, less twenty-five per cent on yearly contracts. T h i
Presto does not sell its editorial space. Payment is not accepted for articles of de-
scriptive character or other matter appearing in the news columns. Business not ces
will be indicated by the word "advertisement" in accordance with the Act of August
24. 1912.
Rates for advertising in the Tear Book issue and Export Supplements of The
Presto will be made known upon application. The Presto Year Book and Export
issues have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musical!
Instrument trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely and
effectually all the houses handling musical instruments of both the Eastern and West-
ern hemispheres.
The Presto Buyeis' Guide Is the only reliable index to the American Musical
instruments; it analyzes all Pianos and Player-Pianos, gives accurate estimates tb«nr values and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
-3 Ktems of news, photographs and other matter of general interest to the muss*
trades are invited and when accepted will be paid for. Address all communications <*•
presto Publishing Co., Chicago, III.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 1920.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
PRESTO IS ALWAYS GLAD TO RECEIVE NEWS OF THE
TRADE—ALL KINDS OF NEWS EXCEPT PERSONAL SLANDER
AND STORIES OF PETTY MISDEEDS BY INDIVIDUALS. PRESTO
WILL PRINT THE NAMES OF CORRESPONDENTS WHO SEND IN
"GOOD STUFF" OR ARE ON THE REGULAR STAFF. DON'T SEND
ANY PRETTY SKETCHES, LITERARY ARTICLES OR "PEN-PIC-
TURES." JUST PLAIN NEWS ABOUT THE TRADE—NOT ABOUT
CONCERTS OR AMATEUR MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENTS, BUT
ABOUT THE MEN WHO MAKE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND
THOSE WHO SELL THEM. REPORTS OF NEW STORES AND
THE MEN WHO MAKE RECORDS AS SALESMEN ARE GOOD. OF-
TEN THE PIANO SALESMEN ARE THE BEST CORRESPONDENTS
BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY LIKE TO READ AND HAVE
THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FINDING OUT WHAT IS "DOING" IN
THE TRADE IN THEIR VICINITY. SEND IN THE N E W S -
ALL YOU CAN GET OF IT—ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
THE SIZE OF IT
There is always a temptation to indulge in reminiscence at the
beginning of a New Year. So many things have happened since the
late old year began. So many more things happened in all of the
years that range themselves in memory before that. And the oppor-
tunities of contrast are so many, and perhaps equally fruitful of the
good results of experience. But Presto is one of the business publica-
tions that tries to keep the cork pretty tight in the flask of reminis-
cence.
It is now something like thirty-three years since the first Presto
Year Book Issue made its appearance. It was put forth at Christmas
time and, of course, it carried the regulation holly wreaths and other
symbols of the season. And Presto Year Books kept coming, every
year, until in the middle of the nineties the annual book of the music
trade was the biggest magazine ever produced in connection with
pianos and other things of more or less sweet sound.
Since then, other trade papers have also put forth heavy, fat and
handsome Holiday Numbers and Christmas Numbers. And they have
added to the gaiety of the nation, and carried enough special adver-
tising to pay the printers. Without doubt, also, they have paid their
advertisers.
But our fine and fancy special trade paper issues have not
grasped the idea as originally illustrated by Presto. Pretty pictures
and fine printing may be found in a hundred publications on every
newsstand. The trade paper cannot compete with them. But none of
those pretty publications sets forth anything of special value to the
men who make and sell musical instruments—that is, nothing that
can help along the results of their business. Here is where, we believe
and hope, Presto Year Book Issue was as different as it was more
within reason.
One of the features of last week's issue of Presto was the "Suc-
cessful Styles of the Year" section. In that feature was the real
January 15, 1920.
basis of the issue—that and the succinct review of the twelve months
recently ended. And it needs no words to tell why the two features
are of practical value to the industry and trade. The Successful Styles
this time were not as full or diversified as in some earlier issues. That
was partly because the manufacturers have not been turning out so
many new styles, partly because they have been so engrossed in trying
to supply the demand; partly because some of them got the notion
that Presto wanted only styles of its advertisers, and so did not re-
spond to the invitation to contribute. But this paper is not so narrow
as the latter suggestion would imply.
The purpose of the Successful Styles feature is to help the deal-
ers; to afford a means of comparison and contrast not to be found
anywhere else. Of course the more handsome case designs shown for
tha purpose the more valuable the feature. However, there were
enough for the purpose and more of them would have added to the
bulk of the paper—not a desirable result.
The last sentence reminds us that some Presto Year Book issues,
in times past, were the largest trade papers ever produced. They, in
some instances, were so bulky as to make the biggest and fattest of
recent holiday numbers seem small. And one cf the real efforts in
preparing this issue of Presto has been to keep the size within com-
fortable proportions. If we could squeeze all of the features, and
other timely matter, into the regular 32 pages that would have been
done. However, next year's Presto Year Book's issue may put forth
a paper consisting of at least 300 pages. We say it may!
CHANGING PLACES
While the turning-back season is at its full, take a look behind
at the changed places of some one-time prominent old piano concerns
and some newer ones. There are old names, almost forgotten today,
which were once on every piano man's lips and to be seen in the
newspapers when great things in music were under discussion. And
there are comparatively new names in the piano world that are so
conspicuous that no one could miss them in any consideration of
the industry or trade.
What has brought about the near-extinction of the piano names
once so great? What has given to the newer names so much power
and virility?
Of course, when a great man in any department of effort closes
his book of life, the story, so far as his individual initiative goes, is
done. If what he has accomplished is to persist it must be because
there are inheritors of his genius and his material assets, possessed of
ambition and abilities not unlike his own. If there are no such suc-
cessors, the name must gradually sink into forgetfulness, and the
industrial towers of the great life go to decay.
Apply that to some of the one-time powerful piano names and
industries. We, who know and keep track of the progressive news of
the piano, and who must also note the retrogression of seme of the
others, can tell in a sentence the names of both kinds. And a few of
the industries that were built by brainy men, and are now dying
because of small controls, present remarkable contrasts. It would be
of curious interest could some Sir Oliver Lodge get out the myste-
rious apparatus by which the hearts and souls of the dead are said to
throb in intelligent accord with the living, and get in touch with some
of the piano makers of the past. There are great piano names, of
years gone, that are now rapidly losing their lustre and fading even
from the memory of old-timers. We could print nearly a column of
them, and they would be significant of the folly of little men in big
places.
And in another column we could print the names of younger men
who are carrying forward the names they have inherited, in a way
to insure a greater future than anything in the past. It is young men
of the latter kind that have brought the estimated values of good
piano names from tens of thousands to full millions of dollars. An
illustration of the latter estimate appeared in a recent issue of this
paper. And to give special emphasis to this matter of a broad-gauge
administration of an old piano left by its founder to the younger gen-
eration, it would be easy to turn to New York and point to one of
several that have grown from comparatively small things to giant
proportions embracing nearly every branch of manufacture from
smallest supplies to completed instrument.
It would be folly, of course, for a trade paper to draw any such
invidious comparisons. It would be almost as needless to emphasize
the subject by pointing to the highest peaks of efficiency in New
York, as to the lowest specimen of inefficiency in Chicago. But it
could be done. It could be shown that in New York there is a piano
industry so great, so adroitly and liberally conducted, that it reaches
out to the ends of the world in disposing of the product of a score of
factories. And it could be shown, by way of contrast, that in Chicago
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