Presto

TO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
C A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editors
Telephones:
Chicago
Tel.
Co.,
Harrison
234;
Auto.
Tel.
Co.,
Automatic
61-70*.
£ £ £ ' * * P h o n «« *° a" Departments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'* Code),
"PRESTO," Chicago.
iSntered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the Post Office, Chicago. Illinois,
*
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, f2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable In advance. No «xtm
«iia.r*e in U. S. possessions. Canada. Cuba anri Mexico
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, III.
Advertising Rate*«.Three dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insertions.
Bix dollars per inch per month, less twenty-five per cent on yearly contracts. The
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
14, 1912.
Rates for advertising in the Year 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 Mustesi
Instruments; it analyzes all Pianos and Player-Pianos, gives accurate estimates m
their values and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
* 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
Presto Publishing Co., Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 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.
TRUTH ABOUT COMPETITION
The spirit of the piano trade associations, national, state and city
inculcates the desire for proper and businesslike methods of doing
business. And that desire is naturally accompanied by one for a
clear understanding of what constitutes the kind of competition that
is to be deprecated and the kind to be encouraged.
Competition is what you might call the personal devil of the
business world. 'Tis there and it isn't there. Boards of grave direct-
ors gather about mahogany tables in sumptuous board rooms and
solemnly lay down policies to meet it. Little merchants whisper
about it to their wives. Every piano sale is more or less influenced
by it.
When the piano traveler takes a train to Customville, the per-
sonal devil, competition, has gone before, rides with him on the same
train or is following him on the next. Every piano dealer spends
some part of the day thinking about scheming against or fighting
competition.
Yet with all this thinking, dodging, scheming and fighting, com-
petition is perhaps the least understood factor in the world of busi-
ness. For in a great number of cases it is imaginary, or, when it
really exists, is often necessary and benign. Competition is a good
deal of the same nature as ghosts. Ghosts never harmed anyone. Any
evil wrought in this connection is due purely to the fear of ghosts.
An astonishing point about much of the competition that often
worries piano men is that the concerns they regard as their most
dangerous competitors are not competing with them at all. And even
when there is competition, it proves, when its real nature is found out,
to be of benefit rather than harm.
Competition becomes a worry when business men forget there
are different grades to any human demand for a commodity and that
the whole volume of demand is developed to the best advantage when
there are numerous concerns in a given field, actively taking care of
April 3, 1920.
existing demands and stimulating more. Such conditions rapidly in-
crease the whole volume of business by teaching the public the value
of the commodity and its uses.
Here is where the piano manufacturer or merchant conjures up
his fear of ghosts: When he closes his eyes to the educational work
being done by others in the field and looks at each sale made by others
as so much potential business that would have come to himself had
there been no interference. When he begins to think of competition
in that way he is reverting to a medieval type.
Monopoly is medieval. Competition is modern and typical of
progressive today. What piano man would like to see the piano
business fashioned after the old craft guilds of the middle ages!
The medieval guilds were organized on the assumption that
demand is like a stagnant pool, incapable of enlargement. Instead of
giving it life by fresh streams, the guilds allowed fishing places on
the bank and limited the number of fish that could be taken by a
tradesman.
SHORTAGE OF HARDWOODS
Every intelligent person who reads about the shortage of hard-
woods realizes that the condition is one among others which naturally
leads to higher prices for commodities made from them. Any shortage
in raw material spells increased prices for manufactured products.
Everybody concerned in the manufacture and retailing of pianos is
concerned in the scarcity of hardwoods. And of course it concerns
the ultimate consumers of the pianos, playerpianos, benches and
cabinets.
This generation is paying for the wastefulness of preceding ones.
We owe a lot to the pioneers but they certainly were too hefty with
the axe when they encounterd a patch of walnut trees. The maraud-
ing railroad-tie maker who ran riot among the white oaks in the
South and Southwest also added dollars to our bills today with every
whack of his tree-felling axe. The supply of native hardwoods is
diminishing, and while there is a movement towards reforestation,
this movement will have to become far more general and in any
event will require a long period of years to become effective.
How the situation in the hardwood market affects the piano and
furniture industries is told in a circular recently sent out by Mr.
William B. Baker, secretary of the Chair Manufacturers' Association
of the United States. "Advances in prices are terrific" wrote Mr.
Baker, who adds: "Not only are the prices paid for lumber today ex-
ceptionally high, but the grades of lumber are of such inferior quality
that the chair factory cuts more lumber to secure a given number of
parts suitable for chairs than was the case two years ago."
The reasoning is not an obvious one, but something very definite.
Products into which hardwoods enter cannot be manufactured at
anywhere near the prices that prevailed even a year ago.
THE NEW PROFESSOR
It has been a good many years now since the newspaper wits em-
ployed the "professor" title as stock in their trade. In those days
every man who wore a plug hat, or sported a long black coat, was
dubbed "professor." The negro minstrels, addressed middle-man,
bones and tambourine by the same familiar title. Finally the colored
chiropodists adopted it, also, and the hard working teacher of music
struggled hopelessly to keep away from it.
That was some time ago. Today we have few "professors" of
music, and you might bawl the word even at a musical convention
without bringing a man to his feet. It is due to the incoming of the
playerpiano—heaven bless that remarkable instrument! And see how
beautifully it is working out the destinies of the art itself.
When a piano dealer asked this paper to suggest a subject for
a short speech at a local association meeting, he was told to study
the advertising of any good piano house. We know that the advice
was accurate, and in a last Sunday's newspaper we have a new proof
of it. It is in this fine sentence in the advertisement of the Steger &
Sons Piano Manufacturing Co.:
Not the ability to play good music, so .much as the ability to understand
and appreciate it, constitutes true musical education.
The proportion of piano dealers and salesmen who are in any
sense pianists is nothing as compared with what it was in the older
days. There was a time when the first requisite was the ability to
"show off" the instrument. And in the mind of the retail piano
buyer the instrument was as often regarded as an object of torture
as a thing of beauty. There are thousands of stiffening fingers today
whose owners can recall what the torment of "practice" meant, and
how the youthful joys were beclouded by thoughts of the coming of
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