Presto

PRESTO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
C. A. DAN I ELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editors
November 27, 1920.
dull. With that kind of dealers things will stay dull. People who
buy pianos are usually prepared to accept the prices without argu-
ment. They want musical instruments and the world has not yet
accepted the silly idea that pianos are things of cheapness. It is the
dealer himself that spoils his own prospects by talking high costs of
things and the absolute necessity of their dropping. That is the blue
side of it. It isn't the side that sounds musical. The bright way is
always the better way. Keep on the sunny side and promote your
business just as if you did not know that prices had been lower or
would ever again be lower for such splendid instruments as you
carry in stock.
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234. Private Phones to all De-
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.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable In advance. No extra
charge in XL S. possessions, Canada, Cuba and Mexico.
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, 111.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 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 BETTER WAY
It would be difficult to produce a better illustration of the in-
fluence of a good name in business than is seen in the result of the
lower-price announcement of Lyon & Healy. The Chicago music
house, in a trade paper display, told why-a price-reduction is possible
in Lyon & Healy pianos and added that in making the concessions
the manufacturer's profits would be sacrificed. While there was no
intimation that piano prices in general should come down, the trade
at large seems to have jumped at the conclusion that such is the con-
dition. Few other business houses could have stirred up so much
discussion, or created so wide-spread a notion that the rank and file
of the piano manufacturers were holding up their prices without full
justification.
But, on the other hand, there is little sign of any breaking in the
cost of the essentials in piano manufacture. The supply industries
do not seem ready to give any sign of a return to anything like pre-
war prices. In fact there are intimations of a rise in the cost of some
of the indispensables, and the supply industries adhere to a system
which came to life when the highest peaks in prices had been touched.
It is to give to their customers guarantees that, should prices recede
within five or six months, rebates will be granted and the consumer
thus be protected from loss.
Certainly that doesn't look like a drop in prices. Piano manu-
facturers can not be expected to cut the selling prices of their finished
products until there has come a drop in the cost of their essential
supplies. So that the retail piano merchants who hold back from
buying in the expectation that prices will soon be lower, are sure to
lose more by missing sales than they can hope to gain when the at
present fictitious fall in prices may become real.
Retailers who are trying to keep business alive are succeeding.
Those who think that a discussion of high prices and a lugubrious
forecast of trade conditions are winning arguments are finding things
WHEN WIT AWAKES
There used to be an unrighteous notion, harbored by many peo-
ple, that men whose daily lives are mixed with music and its affairs
are apt to be mentally or intellectually lopsided. They are credited,
too often, with knowing a lot about the things divine but little about
the rough and ready side of business life, and that, while particularly
moral and good—get that?—they couldn't discuss a thing or quote a
sentence in which pianos, harps or consecutive fifths and octaves,
have no part. Of course any such idea as that is only a relic of con-
ditions as they once were, when all men of music were not so much
merchants as musicians, and perhaps not so much musicians as
"professors." For in the early days the average piano dealer, for in-
stance, tended store while he taught the young fingers how to play,
and sold instruments between lessons. That is all changed now.
Today the men who make musical instruments are rarely, if ever,
the men who make music. And the men who sell musical instruments
are seldom the' men who know much about the "exercises and scales."
They are business men who know more about their banks than about
Mozart or Beethoven. And they are men who graze as frequently in
the pastures of literature as in the fields of art. And so it has come
to pass that the men of the piano trade mingle freely with the minis-
ters, lawyers, doctors, and financiers. They are up in all of the topics
that interest the orators and the golfers, the scientists and the—well,
the profiteers.
All this is shown in the way in which piano men acquit them-
selves when they mingle with men in the liberal professions or still
more liberal trades, to cross mental rapiers and parry wit and wisdom.
A good illustration may be had in the recent "farewell" banquets in
which particular friends of Mr. Geo. P. Bent participated. Take the
one in Chicago last month. It was an impromptu affair and the host
had charged the crowd that there must be no eulogies, and that the
talks must be short and snappy. And do you .suppose, eliminating
the thought which must have been uppermost in every man's mind,
cutting out the almost irrepressible desire to say well-deserved things
about Mr. Bent, and his loyal characteristics, his manliness and big-
heartedness, that there was any stammering for timely topics or any
stuttering in the manner of their discussion ?
Read the few specimen stories, lifted from their graceful settings,
and presented in this issue of Presto. You will, of course, observe
that most of the stories are new. There is no fuzz on them. And
they seem to have fitted into the time and purpose. They rolled from
the tongues of men who knew what they had come together for—to
be happy and to help assure Mr. Bent that his having been with them
so long had contributed to their happiness. It is seldom that a trade
paper finds occasion to leave the factory and store, and to look into
the heads and hearts of the men who have also for an hour stepped
away from trade and its worries. And the fact that in this way we
have for contributors such story tellers as Messrs. Matt Kennedy,
J. W. Elliott, M. H. Adams, William D. Gates, Wallace Heckman,
Eugene Whelan and the rest, justifies the diversion into the field of
fiction. In that boquet of eloquence there were blossoms from the
law, the press and the piano—a fine combination. And poetry! well,
no gathering of the makers of the "best sellers" could do better. The
"Ifleal Life" by Mr. Lapham, pictured Mr. Bent better than any
artist's brush could do it. And the verses, "At the Gate," quoted by
Mr. Elliott, are too good to miss. A "pome" recited by Mr. Mangold
was also fine as, having ourselves set it going, way back in the nine-
ties, we should be in position to know. You'll find it in many places—
if you want to—and it's called "Sand." Mr. Mangold quoted it to il-
lustrate the pluck of his host of the occasion. And we all know that
Sand is Mr. Bent's "middle name." Of course no "poick" could object
to liberties with his improvisation when his "Flushtown" is adroitly,
and so appropriately, rechristened "Bent-Town." But, where all were
so good, there is little need of repeating that the piano industry and
trade have grown into a fine status as the dwelling place of orators
and tellers of good tales. Mr. Bent's dinner only added a new proof
of it. And we are ready to wager that there is no other business—
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