Presto

PRESTO
The American Music Trade Weekly
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
Editors
C. A. DAN 1 ELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234. Private Phones to all De-
partments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered ai 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 United States possessions. 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.
Photographs of general trade interest are always welcome, and when used, if of
special concern, a charge will be made to cover cost of the engravings.
Rates for advertising in Presto Tear 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
•f their value and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
Items of news and other matter of general interest to the music trades are in-
rited and when accepted will be paid for. All communications should be addressed to
Presto Publishing Co., 407 So. Dearborn Street. Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 1923.
PRESTO CORRESPONDENCE
IT IS NOT CUSTOMARY WITH THIS PAPER TO PUBLISH REGU-
LAR CORRESPONDENCE FROM ANY POINTS. WE, HOWEVER,
HAVE RESIDENT REPRESENTATIVES IN NEW YORK, BOSTON,
SAN FRANCISCO, PORTLAND, CINCINNATI, INDIANAPOLIS, MIL-
WAUKEE AND OTHER LEADING MUSIC TRADE CENTERS, WHO
KEEP THIS PAPER INFORMED OF TRADE EVENTS AS THEY HAP-
PEN. AND PRESTO IS ALWAYS GLAD TO RECEIVE REAL NEWS
OF THE TRADE FROM WHATEVER SOURCES ANYWHERE AND
MATTER FROM SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS, IF USED, WILL BE
PAID FOR AT SPACE RATES. USUALLY P.IANO MERCHANT8 OR
SALESMEN IN THE SMALLER CITIES, ARE THE BEST OCCA-
SIONAL CORRESPONDENTS. AND THEIR ASSISTANCE IS INVITED.
ADVERTISING INFORMATION
Forms close promptly at noon every Thursday. News matter for
publication should be in not later than eleven o'clock on the same
day. Advertising copy should be in hand before Tuesday, five p. m.,
to insure preferred position. Full page display copy should be in
hand by Monday noon preceding publication day. Want advs. for cur-
rent week, to insure classification, must be at office of publication not
later than Wednesday noon.
LYON & HEALY STOCK
Music as a business has broadened until it now belongs to the
world-interests just as much as do any of the other lines of industrial
and commercial enterprises. For a great many years—from the very
first beginning until comparatively recent times—music as a trade
has seemed to belong to the almost exclusive order of life's activities.
The music stores have seemed as the links between profession and
public; the half-way places at which Orpheus, Apollo and the gods
rested between their flights into the empyrean. People did not re-
gard them as they did the shopping places of the more "material"
things.
That is a condition of the past. Music in its commercial aspects
has become as substantial and practically productive in a larger way
as other lines of everyday and universal attainment. This is now rec-
ognized by the world of finance. Investment is discovering that cap-
ital is safe and that dividends are as liberally certain in the music
business as anywhere else.
That's why two great general music houses have of late Invited
the public to share in the results of their development and enterprise.
And one of the two is such a business institution as presents an ab-
solute guarantee to investors. Lyon & Healy, of Chicago, has thrown
open the possibilities of its great name, and its nearly sixty years of
steady growth, to the public. Stock to the sum of $2,500,000 will be
distributed among investors who realize that 7'Jo interest guaranteed
January 20, 1923.
opens opportunities not often presented in this day of closing gates
and drawing in of generous dividends
When in 1864 the late Mr. P. J- Healy went from Boston to Chi-
cago and established the house which long ago became famous he
could have had no vision of the dimensions of the business as it is to-
day. Chicago was then but little more than a frontier town. The
Civil War was still raging, and the outlook could not have been very
bright. But the then new house of Lyon & Healy was founded upon
a rock. It grew rapidly and despite a series of disasters by fire—one
of which totally wiped away all vestige of Mr. Healy's great attain-
ment, save those intangible but most valuable assets, of honor, credit
and courage—the house has persisted and is today the strongest and
"largest in the world."
Particulars of the popular distribution of stock in the house of
Lyon & Healy were given in last week's Presto. Further details are
told this week. And the broadening of the great business is, we, re-
peat, the best possible evidence of the larger place to which music,
in its industrial and commercial aspects, has attained within the past
few years.
. And the distribution of Lyon & Healy stock opens an unusual
avenue of opportunity for conservative investors.
•f
A CHICKERING CENTENARY
In less than three months more the Chickering piano will enter
upon the second century of its distinguished career. The mere state-
ment is enough to cause a thrill of pride in any piano man who likes
to follow the history of American music. A hundred years ! A full
century of a stately, on-moving piano industry, in which there is not
a blemish, not a blot, upon the written story of its ambitions.
That is a great deal for the lovers of American art to consider.
I t is a large and never-failing asset in the affairs of every piano dealer
who may be so fortunate as to be an accredited Chickering represen-
tative. And it must be interesting to any piano man, possessed of
even small imagination, to picture conditions in the piano world at the
time Jonas Chickering and his partner, John McKay, opened the
little factory in Tremont street, Boston, on April 14, 1823.
In a brochure designed to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of
the Chickering piano, published in 1903, the story of the oldest em-
ployee of the Boston industry appeared. It reproduced the contract
made between David T. Haraden and Jonas Chickering, by which the
apprentice agreed to "come to his work early and stay in the factory
or warerooms till nine of clock in the evening." The agreement was
to continue for six years, and the compensation, which in that early
period was considered ample, was $6 per week for the first year, with
an increase of $1 weekly for each succeeding year. The contract
bears date of February 25, 1836, or seven years after the dickering
industry began. Consider that, you piano toilers of today who "draw
down" from $5,000 to $25,000 annually and are still not satisfied.
And the hours of work by the apprentice were the same as those
of Jonas Chickering himself! That was the way the "father of the
American piano" worked. It was the way the pioneers in all branches
of business toiled when the nation was young. And the Chickering
piano has made history incomparable in the piano world. It has
moved forward in the dignified and splendid manner of an industrial
victor. There is nothing in its history that does not reflect credit
upon the piano industry and trade. No other name seems to shed so
great a luster upon the business by which the world is made better and
the higher aspirations of all classes of people are encouraged and made
secure.
April 14, 1923. is a date of great significance to the piano trade.
The Chickering is the first American piano to pass the century mark,
with a continuous career of unchanged ambitions arid a name to the
fame of which generations of one family have succeeded, until the
immediate male line became extinct. And even then the continuity of
energy and progress still rested upon the descendants of the first
workers in the old Boston industry.
There are men in most of the Chickering departments today
whose forebears worked there before them. The noble factory itself
is the same that was planned by the founder of the house and com-
pleted shortly after his death. Three sons of Jonas Chickering de-
voted their lives and their genius to carrying forward the ambitions
of their father. And they passed on after long lives of consistent
striving and left, in turn, the added impress of their own distinctions,
by which the Chickering piano had profitted and pressed forward.
One hundred years seems a long time for an American piano to
have lived. It suggests that we must cease to regard our country as
one that is "young"! But it suggests also that the American piano
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