Presto
Issue: 1920 1753 - Page 6
PRESTO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
C A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editor*
Telephones: Chicago Tel. Co., Harrison 234; Auto. Tel. Co., Automatic 61-70S.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code).
"PRESTO," Chicago.
Kntere «
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable In advance. No «Etra
•uarge
rge in Ti S. Dossessions, Canada. Cuba and Mexico
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, III.
Advertising Rates fc--.Three dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insertion*
Six dollars per inch p«r month, less twenty-five per cent on yearly contracts. Th«
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 notices
will be Indicated by the word "advertisement" in accordance with the Act of August
S4, 19*2.
Rates for advertising in the Tear Book issue and Export Supplements of The
Preato will be made known upon application. The Presto Year Book and Export
issues have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musica-
instrument trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely am)
•ffectually 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 m
their values and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
fc Items of news, photographs and other matter of general interest to the must*
trades are invited and when accepted will be paid for. Address all communications to
Prcato Publishing Co.. Chicago, III.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 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 NEWS-
ALL YOU CAN GET OF IT—ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
There are business friends and friends in business. Perhaps the
distinction may seem vague. But there are a good many men in the
piano business who will recognize the difference when they contrast
the late Mr. Fayette S. Cable with some other men with whom the 7
have done business in times that were good and some other times when
things were not quite so good. And it is just that difference that made
the founder and head of the Cable-Nelson Piano Co. a man for whom
there remains, with a good many other men, a feeling deeper
even than respect and more lasting than is usual in the relations be-
tween merchant and manufacturer. Mr. Cable was one of the uncom-
mon men who are always ready to say the right thing. His lexicon
did not seem to possess any of the sharp, cutting terms with which
most men of affairs seem familiar. He was sunny and genial, eve*i in
times when his friends could see that he was possesed of worries
or r-odily weariness. For he was a hard worker and filled with ambi-
tion. He had undertaken a large thing at a time when business was
not especially certain. And he had made it win in the face of obsta-
cles. But he never even so much as suggested a doubt, and he was
one of the most willing men in the world to listen to the troubles of
others, and to hear the advice of any who thought he had a panacea
for the ills of the world, or its special affairs.
That was one of the secrets of the rapid development of the in-
dustry which Mr. Cable founded less than seventeen years ago, and
which had outstripped many older ones before it had passed its open-
ing days. It may be said that, being a Cable, he could not do less
than succeed. For there were three of the Cable brothers who became
heads of large piano industries by reason of their own initiative.
February 26, 1920.
Fayette S. was the youngest of the three, and it was his elder brother
who liked to refer to him as "my little brother." While the sugges-
tion which rests in the term can not, in the average sense, apply to
the younger of the three brothers, it does seem to convey something
of the feeling aroused in his intimates by his slender physique and sin
cere character. And there are few who knew him well that do noi.
mourn unaffected at his death.
To this paper—every member of the staff who knew Mr. Cable—
the word of his passing, which came to the office last Monday morn-
ing, brought a sense of personal loss. Not many of the paper's
friends had been so loyal, and few had displayed the same sense of
appreciation of whatever it might have been possible for the trade
paper to do of a helpful nature. And it seems such a little time since
the last interview, in which there was no hint of the end, but only
the steady faith in the power of effort and the same loyalty to ideals
that had actuated him from the first meeting more than thirty
years ago.
What Mr. Cable has done in the piano trade has made a good
chapter in American industry. And the place he had made in the
esteem, even the affection, of his cotemporaries and associates in the
business world, is one that will feel his going through all the shifting
changes of the future.
BEST YEARS AHEAD
If a well-posted piano man, in any department of the business,
were to be asked to pick out a jury of the best posted men of the
industry and trade, one of the occupants of the box would be Mr.
Richard Lawrence, president of the Kohler Industries, Inc. We do ,
not think we make any mistake in that statement, for Mr. Lawrence I
has a way of letting the piano world know of his presence and the
effect of his being here. He has the power of expression, and he has
a habit of looking steadily ahead.
In a recent statement by Mr. Lawrence is the positive assertion
that the best years of the piano business are ahead. Good as is the
present, notwithstanding its obvious drawbacks, the years ahead
promise much better things. And this in spite of the tendency to
doubt the iconoclastic faith in today and to cling to the Bourbon-
like fondness for what is past. It is the optimism of the man who
plans ahead, and who balances the future upon the scales of experi-
ence and a careful study of all tlje elements of progressiveness.
There have been other times, similar to the present, in the piano
business—in all lines of business. And in those times there have
been men who saw ahead and prophesied larger things than the past
had ever known. There were, too, men who looked forward into
industrial darkness and permitted their good beginnings to go to
decay until, when the new day actually arrived, they were unfit and
hopelessly left behind.
The piano industry has had men of that kind. The wrecks of
their promising beginnings may still remain, or the evidence of them
may have become wholly obliterated. But the towers of the men
who had faith, and foresaw "the best years ahead," lift themselves
high and no storms can threaten them.
In the smaller sense, too, it is easy to agree with Mr. Lawrence
that "the best years are ahead." Presto makes its first appeal to the
men whose living, and whose fortunes we hope also, are dependent
upon the retailing of pianos. Today the retailers are fretting because
they can not get pianos as fast as they can sell them. They can not
fully understand how it is that the same factories that a short time
back urged them to buy, and proposed attractive terms, are now turn-
ing away orders even when accompanied by the bank drafts. It seems
almost incredible, especially to the small-town dealer whose sales
are not many, and whose needs are correspondingly small. He had
been accustomed to feeling that his trade was so well worth having
that to be obliged to take his turn doesn't seem right.
But the small dealer's troubles are as nothing to those of the
larger dealers whose responsibilities are immeasurably greater. And
the problems of the dealers, both small and large, are almost as
nothing in contrast to the dilemma of the manufacturer whose order
book bulges and whose shipping room assumes the condition of transi-
tory emptiness. It is disappointing to the retailer to have his cus-
tomers on the anxious seat, with loss of profit threatening himself,
and it is still more unpleasant to the manufacturer to know that
because of his liability to ship his representatives he must suffer in
the productive part of the business.
But the "best years ahead" will be better, partly because of the
exigencies of the present. The stores will be thoroughly cleaned up
and the stocks will be bright and new. The manufacturers' books
will be cleaned up and the accounts will represent only reliable cus-
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/
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
C A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editor*
Telephones: Chicago Tel. Co., Harrison 234; Auto. Tel. Co., Automatic 61-70S.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code).
"PRESTO," Chicago.
Kntere «
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable In advance. No «Etra
•uarge
rge in Ti S. Dossessions, Canada. Cuba and Mexico
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, III.
Advertising Rates fc--.Three dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insertion*
Six dollars per inch p«r month, less twenty-five per cent on yearly contracts. Th«
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 notices
will be Indicated by the word "advertisement" in accordance with the Act of August
S4, 19*2.
Rates for advertising in the Tear Book issue and Export Supplements of The
Preato will be made known upon application. The Presto Year Book and Export
issues have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musica-
instrument trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely am)
•ffectually 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 m
their values and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
fc Items of news, photographs and other matter of general interest to the must*
trades are invited and when accepted will be paid for. Address all communications to
Prcato Publishing Co.. Chicago, III.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 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 NEWS-
ALL YOU CAN GET OF IT—ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
There are business friends and friends in business. Perhaps the
distinction may seem vague. But there are a good many men in the
piano business who will recognize the difference when they contrast
the late Mr. Fayette S. Cable with some other men with whom the 7
have done business in times that were good and some other times when
things were not quite so good. And it is just that difference that made
the founder and head of the Cable-Nelson Piano Co. a man for whom
there remains, with a good many other men, a feeling deeper
even than respect and more lasting than is usual in the relations be-
tween merchant and manufacturer. Mr. Cable was one of the uncom-
mon men who are always ready to say the right thing. His lexicon
did not seem to possess any of the sharp, cutting terms with which
most men of affairs seem familiar. He was sunny and genial, eve*i in
times when his friends could see that he was possesed of worries
or r-odily weariness. For he was a hard worker and filled with ambi-
tion. He had undertaken a large thing at a time when business was
not especially certain. And he had made it win in the face of obsta-
cles. But he never even so much as suggested a doubt, and he was
one of the most willing men in the world to listen to the troubles of
others, and to hear the advice of any who thought he had a panacea
for the ills of the world, or its special affairs.
That was one of the secrets of the rapid development of the in-
dustry which Mr. Cable founded less than seventeen years ago, and
which had outstripped many older ones before it had passed its open-
ing days. It may be said that, being a Cable, he could not do less
than succeed. For there were three of the Cable brothers who became
heads of large piano industries by reason of their own initiative.
February 26, 1920.
Fayette S. was the youngest of the three, and it was his elder brother
who liked to refer to him as "my little brother." While the sugges-
tion which rests in the term can not, in the average sense, apply to
the younger of the three brothers, it does seem to convey something
of the feeling aroused in his intimates by his slender physique and sin
cere character. And there are few who knew him well that do noi.
mourn unaffected at his death.
To this paper—every member of the staff who knew Mr. Cable—
the word of his passing, which came to the office last Monday morn-
ing, brought a sense of personal loss. Not many of the paper's
friends had been so loyal, and few had displayed the same sense of
appreciation of whatever it might have been possible for the trade
paper to do of a helpful nature. And it seems such a little time since
the last interview, in which there was no hint of the end, but only
the steady faith in the power of effort and the same loyalty to ideals
that had actuated him from the first meeting more than thirty
years ago.
What Mr. Cable has done in the piano trade has made a good
chapter in American industry. And the place he had made in the
esteem, even the affection, of his cotemporaries and associates in the
business world, is one that will feel his going through all the shifting
changes of the future.
BEST YEARS AHEAD
If a well-posted piano man, in any department of the business,
were to be asked to pick out a jury of the best posted men of the
industry and trade, one of the occupants of the box would be Mr.
Richard Lawrence, president of the Kohler Industries, Inc. We do ,
not think we make any mistake in that statement, for Mr. Lawrence I
has a way of letting the piano world know of his presence and the
effect of his being here. He has the power of expression, and he has
a habit of looking steadily ahead.
In a recent statement by Mr. Lawrence is the positive assertion
that the best years of the piano business are ahead. Good as is the
present, notwithstanding its obvious drawbacks, the years ahead
promise much better things. And this in spite of the tendency to
doubt the iconoclastic faith in today and to cling to the Bourbon-
like fondness for what is past. It is the optimism of the man who
plans ahead, and who balances the future upon the scales of experi-
ence and a careful study of all tlje elements of progressiveness.
There have been other times, similar to the present, in the piano
business—in all lines of business. And in those times there have
been men who saw ahead and prophesied larger things than the past
had ever known. There were, too, men who looked forward into
industrial darkness and permitted their good beginnings to go to
decay until, when the new day actually arrived, they were unfit and
hopelessly left behind.
The piano industry has had men of that kind. The wrecks of
their promising beginnings may still remain, or the evidence of them
may have become wholly obliterated. But the towers of the men
who had faith, and foresaw "the best years ahead," lift themselves
high and no storms can threaten them.
In the smaller sense, too, it is easy to agree with Mr. Lawrence
that "the best years are ahead." Presto makes its first appeal to the
men whose living, and whose fortunes we hope also, are dependent
upon the retailing of pianos. Today the retailers are fretting because
they can not get pianos as fast as they can sell them. They can not
fully understand how it is that the same factories that a short time
back urged them to buy, and proposed attractive terms, are now turn-
ing away orders even when accompanied by the bank drafts. It seems
almost incredible, especially to the small-town dealer whose sales
are not many, and whose needs are correspondingly small. He had
been accustomed to feeling that his trade was so well worth having
that to be obliged to take his turn doesn't seem right.
But the small dealer's troubles are as nothing to those of the
larger dealers whose responsibilities are immeasurably greater. And
the problems of the dealers, both small and large, are almost as
nothing in contrast to the dilemma of the manufacturer whose order
book bulges and whose shipping room assumes the condition of transi-
tory emptiness. It is disappointing to the retailer to have his cus-
tomers on the anxious seat, with loss of profit threatening himself,
and it is still more unpleasant to the manufacturer to know that
because of his liability to ship his representatives he must suffer in
the productive part of the business.
But the "best years ahead" will be better, partly because of the
exigencies of the present. The stores will be thoroughly cleaned up
and the stocks will be bright and new. The manufacturers' books
will be cleaned up and the accounts will represent only reliable cus-
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/
Future scanning projects are planned by the International Arcade Museum Library (IAML).