Presto

PRESTO
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 61-70S.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code),
"PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the Post Office, Chicago. Illinois,
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable In advance. J No «xtra
rge in U. S. possessions, Canada, Cuba and Mexico
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Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, III.
Advertising Rate«t*.Three dollars per Inch (13 ems pica) for single Insortioaa,
8Ix 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
24, 1912.
Rates for advertising 1 ' 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 an'd
•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 Mustoal
Instruments; it analyzes all Pianos and Player-Pianos, gives accurate estimates •*
their values and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
Items of news, photographs and other matter of general interest to the muil«
trades are invited and when accepted will be paid for. Address all communications to
Prett* Publishing CO., Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1920.
MRS. FRANK D. ABBOTT
ABBOTT—Eva S. Abbott died Tuesday, June 1,
wife of Frank D. Abbott of Chicago and Glen
Ellyn, 111., mother of Mrs. Bertha Abbott Miller
of Glen Ellyn, sister of Mrs. Cornelia S. Waite,
Chicago; Mrs. Emma S. Baker, New Haven,
Conn., and Mrs. Mary C. List, Thetford Mines,
Quebec. Funeral services Friday, 9:30 a. m., at
chapel, 4227 Cottage Grove avenue. Interment
private at Glen Ellyn, 111.
Facing with wonderful fortitude, for several years, the summons
which she knew might come at any moment, Mrs. Frank D. Abbott,
wife of the founder of this paper, died of cerebral hemorrhage at noon
of last Tuesday, June 1. The call came with a suddenness that left
husband and friends stunned and bewildered. For, while Mrs. Abbott
had so long awaited the end, which she knew was inevitable, to
others her cheerfulness and the philosophy of her faith carried no sug-
gestion of death and surrounded her with an atmosphere of hopeful-
ness and confidence which disarmed the apprehensions of her family.
Happily the summons came so suddenly that there was no least
shade of pain, and the transition from, artificial sleep to the peaceful
repose that ushers the eternal rest was as that of a child that closes
its eyes at night to wake again in the beauty of the morning. But the
pall that dims the comings and goings of the husband, daughter, and
friends who knew Mrs. Abbott well, can not soon be lifted.
Mrs. Abbott was one of the intellectual order of women whose
attainments were hidden beneath her dislike of anything resembling
display. She was a student of the uncommon in art and literature,
and she was herself a ready writer of both prose and poetry. In the
early days of this paper, too, she sustained a share of the editorial
responsibilities, and proved herself in that work also well equipped.
But more than all, aside from her domestic ties, Mrs. Abbott's chief
delight was in travel, the cultivation of flowers and in the reading of
good books. She was also a linguist, some of her translations from
French, German and Spanish bearing evidence of her varied talents.
One of the trade papers last week dug up a word that belongs to
the antediluvian period. It told of a "scoop," of which it had been
in some way guilty. When Chas. A. Dana promulgated his famous
list of terms taboo, "scoop" was the first one among the journalistic
sibilants.
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Irrefutable arguments in favor of standardization in the piano
industry are presented in this issue of Presto. No retailer can read
the remarks of the prominent supply manufacturers without realizing
that if there is to be any lessening of prices the standardization prop-
osition is one of vital importance. In years past the effort was to
June 5, 1920.
see how many styles could be created. When one manufacturer tried
to change the tide, and announced but a single case design, varied
only by the finishes, his plan was received so coldly that he had to
shut up shop in less than two years.
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Memorial Day means as much to the music trade, by reason of
personal bereavements, as to almost any other. It is estimated that
the piano industry contributed 108 heroes to the list of American
dead of the war. The first man killed was an employe of the piano
industry of F. Radle, New York.
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The story of the recent New York Music Show is to be told in
book form. The accomplishments of the special week of music have
been written up by Mr. C. M. Tremaine, and the Music Industries
Chamber of Commerce assumes the responsibility of putting it forth.
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A literarily-inclined young piano man writes to Presto that he has
compiled a list of 300 beautiful paragraphs about music by famous
authors, ancient and modern. And he wants to know whether Mr.
C. M. Tremaine is offering any reward for research of that kind.
Respectfully submitted.
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After a month's sojourn in the Middle West, buying pianos and.
contracting for future supplies, Mr. Frank R. Perrot, of Australia,
has gone to New York. There he will remain for another month, on
the same mission for his houses in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
From New York Mr. Perrot will sail for London, and expects to be
back in Australia before winter. During his stay in Chicago Mr.
Perrot invested nearly $100,000 in pianos and phonographs.
Mr. Frank E. Morton thinks that there should be just three sizes
of uprights and four sizes of grands. He is for standardization in the
material sense, at least. This subject was very fully discussed in
Presto a year or more ago. But why does Mr. Morton think that
"the supply man has been too tolerant of the people who have been
using him." The piano manufacturers, on the contrary, believe that
they have been using the products of the supply man—and not
enough of them, at that.
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Death has made another deep mark in the ranks of the music
trade in the passing of O. K. Houck, head of the very active and
progressive houses which bear his name at Little Rock and Memphis.
Mr. Houck may also be named among the piano manufacturers, for
he was a director in one of the most prominent eastern industries and
for years a piano which was named after him played a good part in
the trade. As a man, O. K. Houck was all that was genial, honest,
large-minded and ambitious. He was versatile and so personally pop-
ular that Memphis regarded him as the foremost citizen in many of
her most liberal activities. No trade or industry can have too many
such men as O. K. Houck, and every one of them that passes leaves
a void which for a long time can not be filled.
COST SYSTEMS
Every now and then this paper is asked for a practical cost sys-
tem applicable to the piano business in a general way. The latest
request of this kind comes from the Public Library of Newark, N. J.,
and we have been obliged to reply that to this time no working model
of a piano cost system is available. There have, it is true, been many
attempts to formulate rules for the guidance of piano manufacturers
in the regulation of factory management, and for security in predicat-
ing prices. But to this time no skill sufficient to be trusted upon
general principles has been developed so far as a uniform piano cost
system is concerned.
To experienced piano men this doesn't seem strange. There is,
especially in such times as the present, no basis upon which to found
a reliable cost system. Even the largest and most thoroughly organ-
ized piano industry can not with absolute certainty so adjust and
classify the figures pertaining to the various factory departments as
to present anything like a permanent cost system. The fluctuations
in every item that goes into the piano, the uncertainty of labor and
the long-sustained doubt concerning the fundamental supplies, make
it impossible to draw conclusions with enough certainty to formulate
anything like a fixed rule.
In the piano industry a cost system must take into consideration
every item that in any way affects the ultimate expense, from the
first sawing of the lumber to the delivery at the factory. The over-
head, in all its various particulars, must equally be considered and
the time of skilled labor taken into the problem through the almost
numberless processes of manufacture. It is a complicated problem
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