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
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partments. 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.
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Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., 407 So. Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
Advertising Rates:—Five dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insertions.
Complete schedule of rates for standing cards and special displays will be furnished
on request. The Presto does not sell its editorial space. Payment is not accepted for
articles of descriptive character or other matter appearing in the news columns. Busi-
ness notices will be indicated by the word "advertisement" In accordance with the
Act of August 24, 1912.
Rates for advertising in Presto Year Book Issue and Export Supplements of
Presto will be made known upon application. Presto Year Book and Export issues
have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musical in-
strument 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.
Presto Buyers' Guide is the only reliable index to the American Pianos and
Player-Pianos, it analyzes all instruments, classifies them, gives accurate estimates
of their value and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
Items of news and other matter of general interest to the music trades are in-
vited and when accepted will be paid for. All communications should be addressed to
Presto Publishing Co., 407 So. Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 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—E&PECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
A STURDY VETERAN
The story of one of the real pioneers in the piano trade, which
appears on another page this week, will interest every member of the
trade. It will be especially interesting to that large share of retailers
who have, for fifty years or more, been looking to the houses estab-
lished by Mr. H. L. Story for their supplies. And to most of those
who did business with the old houses of Story & Camp, and later the
Story & Clark Co., in its earlier organization, it will not be easy to
realize that Mr. Story is within fifteen years of the century mark.
There is a suggestion of youth and vigor about the name that seems
to deny the 85 years of the founder of the house, and perhaps that is
because of the activities of the sons who so readily and competently
assumed the responsibilities and carried the old house to its present
day place with increasing vitality.
As with other staunch old houses the one founded by Hampton
L. Story in Chicago in 1867 has proved the nestor of a number of
other influential concerns. To name the successful offshoots of Story
& Camp and Story & Clark would be to mention some of the most
successful manufacturers and merchants in the piano business. And
it would give emphasis to the remarkable physical vigor of Mr. Story,
in the fact that he survives the majority of younger men who joined
him,, shared his success and have passed from the scene. Perhaps it
is Mr. Story's philosophy of life, and how to enjoy it, that has kept
him in vigorous health. He has never wholly suspended his responsi-
bilities and he has been ready at all times to extend counsel, and the
advantages of his experience, to his younger associates. Furthermore,
he has also the rare power referred to by Cowper of "doing nothing
with a deal of skill," because in doing nothing he is not slothful but
filled with the ideals of things to be done at his discretion.
There is historical music trade data in the story of Mr. Story's
career which possesses permanent interest to every reader of Presto.
And there are, of course, many incidents in the gentleman's long asso-
ciation with the piano-trade which can not be told in a brief sketch.
But there is inspiration for every beginner in the trade in the life
October 9, 1920.
of a leader who began in a Vermont town music store, on a salary of
$50 a month, teaching school "on the side" for the purpose of saving
money enough to buy out his employer, and then branching out as
a piano manufacturer ten years later. In five years more we see Mr.
Story leaving Burlington, Vt., for Chicago to take up the agency for
the Estey organs in the Western states. After a year more he took
the late I. N. Camp for a business partner and soon the firm of Story
& Camp had branch stores in other cities. In 1884 another change
was made and the late Melville Clark came into the business which
became that of Story & Clark with the elder son of the founder, Mr.
Edward H. Story, at its head. From that time forward the career of
the house is modern history.
As the company's vice-president and "sclent partner," the
veteran founder continues to sustain his interest in the business and
gives his encouragement to every onward move of his younger son,
Mr. Frank F. Story, who has followed his father and his brother in
the guidance of the old Chicago house.
Presto joins with numberless other friends of Mr. Hampton L.
Story in the wish that he may continue many years more in the
enjoyment of what Milton sings of as "retired leisure that in trim
gardens takes his pleasure."
A BELATED IMPROVEMENT
Shakespeare somewhere advises us to "dull not device by cold-
ness and delay." It is not easy to apply that admonition to the piano.
But it sometimes happens that delay in the discovery of some device
pertaining to the purposes of the piano seems to largely lessen fruits
of attainment. An illustration is afforded in the new and very
ingenious "Junior unfolding pedal" with which Lyon & Healy pianos
are now equipped. The announcement is so interesting as to justify
divergence of a Presto rule so far as to permit of the reproduction
of part of an advertisement in these columns, as follows:
If piano teachers will make it known that children should begin the study
of the piano early, and that pedaling should be taught at the very first lesson,
there soon will be a great gain in musical art.
The Junior Unfolding Piano Pedal makes it possible for the littlest child
to control the pedal as securely as a master. The Junior Pedal simply unfolds
—up and out.
Piano men will need no diagram to explain the simple operation
of the unfolding pedal. It "unfolds" at the outer end, to create the
elevated rest for the child's feet, the inverted toe protection affording
the flat surface for pedal pressure purposes. The idea is, like most
such inventions, so obvious that the wonder is that it was not thought
of long ago. And it is perfectly practicable, the only reason why its
approval may not be great being that the player-piano may have
largely cut down the percentage of children who study the piano.
Had this Lyon & Healy unfolding pedal come into notice
twenty-five or more years ago it would have been alone sufficient to
popularize the piano that controlled it. There have been scores of
devices designed to bring the pedals within easy reach of the little
feet. Some of the devices have been so complicated as to require
special instructions for their application. They have borne names as
hard to commit to mind and to comprehend as some of the titles of
modern player-pianos. And they have cost their inventors, or pro-
moters, small fortunes on their way to failure.
Some of us can remember the childhood days when we mounted
piles of heavy music books, placed upon the chair seat, that we might
reach the keyboard for the exercise of our Czrney and Diabelli. Of
course, the pedal was then a very remote impossibility. The twin bits
of metal glistened far beneath the small feet and, indeed, we were
warned that pedals were not for children's use. That made the small
sufferer in music's toils the more eager to push down upon the secret
of the "loud" noises and to drown the melody in a sea of inharmoni-
ous mixtures of tonics and subdominants. But later the music teach-
ers became more human and realized that, if the youthful ear was
ever to appreciate the gradations of tone and to manipulate the
sources of its creation, the pedal should also have some share in the
performance.
And then came the devices for lifting the pedals
within reach of the little toes.
It often happens that help comes too late. This does not apply
in any full sense to the Lyon & Healy unfolding pedals. They present
the first really sensible extension pedal device that has been offered
in the piano. And, without doubt, the fact that the unfolding pedal
is introduced by a house of standing and applied to Lyon & Healy
pianos, will insure their acceptance in professional circles. We only
wish that the "Unfolding Piano Pedal" could have appeared years
ago—about the time Louis Staab, Wm. Ludden, Fred Root, H. R.
Palmer, W. B. S. Matthews, and the rest, were giving lessons in
Chicago and making Lyon & Healy's their headquarters. President
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