Presto

January 10, 1925.
which they expend their genius is worthy of
of their efforts.
Without doubt, many of the clever lines
which appear in the column to which atten-
tion is called this week, will be adapted to
musical instrument promotion. For the only
thought that is new comes by rearranging the
old. A diamond shines the brighter the more
it is polished. And the solitaire sparkles best.
The lines of the ad-smiths, standing away
from the verbiage which often surrounds them
in the complete advertisements, seem to
sparkle like solitaires of literature.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
(January 10, 1895.)
Mr. Phil A. Starck, traveling representative of the
Story & Clark Co., left on Tuesday for an extended
trip in the South.
Mr. Charles Tonk, of Wm. Tonk & Bro., New
York, who was in Chicago last week, is having a
most successful trip, receiving substantial orders in
every place visited.
The last year proved a good one for the Newman
Bro.'s Conipany despite the hard times, and they
enter on '95 in excellent shape for increased busi-
ness as the prospects indicate.
Miss Mary Fuller, daughter of Chief Justice Fuller,
and Miss Emily Hutchinson, ensemble pianists, will
use the Chickering pianos at their concert in Central
Music Hall, Chicago, on January 14.
The change of base made by Mr. W. B. Price has
already been noted in Presto. He goes from the
house of Kimball to the Chicago Cottage Organ Co.,
where he will have full charge of the retail floor.
It seems quite like old times to see Mr. E. N.
Kimball and Major Howes of the Hallct & Davis
Co. around the Kimball warerooms once again and
going out to lunch with the good deacon, W. W-,
and Secretary Conway.
The Smith & Nixon piano may be said to be fairly
started on the road to success. It has been on the
market a comparatively short time but in that time
has demonstrated its fitness to be classed with older
and more famous instruments,
Messrs. E. N. Kimball and Major Howes, of the
Hallet & Davis Co., who have been in the city this
week attending the annual meeting of the Hollen-
berg Music Co., of Little Rock, Ark., express them-
selves as highly pleased with the business for 1894
and the progress the famous old piano made, artis-
tically and commercially, during the year just past.
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
(From Presto January 12, 1905.)
A female bandit in the piano business affords
something decidedly novel. The innovation hails
from Kansas City and is heralded by Presto's cor-
respondent at that point in this week's issue.
I N. Rice has withdrawn from the active part
in the Reed & Sons Piano Company and will resume
the business of middle man or special representative
for a combination of out-of-town piano interests.
The exclusive announcement in Presto a few weeks
ago that Kohler & Campbell would erect a new addi-
tion to their already extensive plant on Fiftieth street
and Eleventh avenue is sufficient evidence in itself of
the condition of the business of this firm.
A cable from Paris on Monday of this week con-
veyed the interesting announcement that the For-
eign Office of the government of France has an-
nounced that Mr. Chas. H. Steinway, at the head of
the distinguished house of Steiuway & Sons, has been
appointed to the Legion of Honor:
The new Melville Clark piano factory at DeKalb,
111., will soon be in active operation. "We expect to
begin to move our machinery in the latter part of the
coming week," said President Melville Clark to a
representative of Presto last Friday.
Speaking of carloads and shipments, here is an
extraordinary record: For every week day during
the last year the Cable Company of Chicago received
on an average orders for and shipped accordingly a
full carload of pianos, irrespective of smaller ship-
ments.
The will of the late W. W. Kimball was placed on
tile in the Probate Court on Friday last, just what
the entire estate figures was not made known, no
petition being filed. The provisions of the will
bequeath over $2,000,000 to the widow, Eva M. Kim-
ball. and large amounts to several nephews and
nieces. To Eva K. Salisbury, niece, are bequeathed
3.234 shares of the capital stock of the Kimball
Piano Company: to Curtis N. Kimball, nephew,
2,383 shares; to Wallace W. Lufkin, nephew, the
same number of shares.
11
PRESTO
THINGS SAID OR SUGGESTED
"Mac" Mounts Pegasus.
Henry McMullan, for a quarter century on Presto's
editorial staff, is now conducting a paper in Detroit.
It gives especial attention to the suburban town dis-
tricts of Lincoln Park and Springwell, where the
McMullan families are large property holders.
A recent issue of the Springwell Independent con-
tained a poem by Mr. McMullan, in which this verse
gives a key to the situation:
Our smoke it is rising from factories great,
The biggest in all of the nation or state,
Success is the word that our blackest smoke spells—
We're prouder than kings of our smoke in Spring-
wells.
Trade Paper Troubles.
Is a trade paper a newspaper? Can it be a news-
paper? Alex McDonald, of Sohmer & Co., one of
the brainy men of the piano business, told a Presto
representative that this paper was not enough of a
"newspaper." A week later Presto published the
fact that a prominent Chicago piano industry had
purchased a new building and would soon move into
it.
Promptly another Presto representative was called
to the captain's office and told that it was wrong to
print the information until it had been "released" by
the manufacturers interested. And yet the story had
already appeared in a daily newspaper. What to do!
What to do!
The editorial department again begs the manufac-
turers to send in the news, and to give advance notice
when suppression is essential. Certainly the trade
papers are newspapers!
;|; *
*
A Fair Division.
A struggling piano manufacturer was telling of the
difficulty he had experienced with a country banker
who had. agreed to discount his customers' paper.
And to illustrate the way he wanted to do it, the
piano man told this story:
"A Milwaukee sausage manufacturer was called to
court on the charge of using prohibited materials in
his products. He was asked:
"'Why do you call your links "Rabbit Sausage"?
Do you use rabbit meat in them?'
" T sure do!'
" 'And isn't it true that you use horse meat in your
sausage ?'
"'Sure! Fifty-fifty.'
"'What do you mean by fifty-fifty?'
"'One rabbit and one horse!'"
•
* * *
Long Distance Control.
The ideal life of the strong control of modern in-
dustry has several exemplifications in the piano indus-
try as well as in other lines. There are two eastern
piano manufacturers whose homes are in California.
•\\ho have the invisible direction of their industries.
And they say that things move along better than as
if they were at the factory offices in person.
Their view of things is broader, and the minor
affairs and time-wasters are eliminated from their
consideration. Anyway it is noticeable that the in-
dustries themselves seem to thrive and expand with
remarkable results.
In time perhaps most of the big industries will be
controlled from some far-away retreat of beauty and
semi-indifference to work-a-day affairs. And then,
too. perhaps the pianos will be still more beautiful as
a result of the day-dreams of the men in financial
control. It's the ideal life.
* * *
"Shoppe" and "Conference."
That bright pa'ragraphist, O. O. Mclntyre, who is
syndicating some of the best "stuff" the dailies are
printing, recently paid his regards to some of the
minor follies of business. There are many who will
appreciate the following, especially busy salesmen and
others who have been kept warming outer office
chairs in anticipation of a few minutes' interview with
heads of the house, or heads of departments:
1 never enter a place that calls itself a "shoppe."
Nor do I associate with newspaper r/.en who call
themselves "journalists." Irvin Cobb is still content
to be called a reporter, and one of the finest estab-
lishments in New York remains a store.
All of this is apropos of finding a man supposed to
be very important in the industrial world in ''confer-
ence." He perhaps doesn't know it, but he was to
be the topic of a magazine article that would have
been very beneficial to him. Indeed, I imagine if
such article were marketable he would have paid
many
thousands of dollars for the tribute. When he
w r as "in conference" I didn't think him worth a line
of space. Had he been busy that would have been
an entirely different matter. I've been busy myself,
despite the tittering. But never "in conference." No,
my, no!
* * *
Present-Day Experience.
A man who is not walking about half dead or who
is not so immersed in and preoccupied with his own
business stunts as to be stupid to all outside impres-
sions, may have an experience occasionally cropping
up alongside of other experiences—an experience
which seems to be, more than any other, realized
fully in the present, without intrusion of past or
future to overcast its blue day with shadow. Some-
times this experience is for the ear:
And now 'twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the heavens be mute.
Or like this:
The silver sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmur in the water's fall:
The water's fall, with difference discrete,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call:
The gentle, warbling wind low answered all.
A modern factory is a place where the workman
who has ideas may express himself at all- hazards.
With gush of power, many of the workmen have
made mistakes, but mistakes that led upward.
God pity the man who always has to be told what
to do. He is in a deep rut. Nature is of such
exhaustless bounty that she gives to each man or
woman an individuality of talent, and the up-to-date
manufacturer recognizes that fact in handling his
employes. ' He causes the man who has a fluctuating,
miscellaneous way of going at things to concentrate
and get results.
He builds large, thoroughly-equipped daylight shops
for his workmen; he pays well without paying enough
to make the dollar unduly preponderant; he treats
his men as human beings, not as doormats to wipe
his feet on; in short, he does nothing in doubtful
taste.
* * *
Straightforward, dignified advertising must have
done more for good pianos than all the fuddling
around with guessing contests and other devious ways
of beating up the bushes to scare a customer there-
from.
Those methods are the resort of petty men who do
not realize that it is a fatal weakness either to see
what is not to be seen or to do what is not to be
done. If such a man were running a farm paper he
would be likely to offer a prize for the man who can
graft asparagus on the artichoke so as to make it
eatable at both ends.
* * +
The important changes at the beginning of the
year will be found noted throughout th'is- issue of
Presto. There weren't so many of them tfius far as
customary. The workers in the musical world, and
their employers, seem to be pretty well content with
one another.
The year past brought several mergers, but none
that promises to lessen either the progress or the
output of the industry.
* + *
One of the departments of Presto that has done a
great deal of good during the past year is the
Classified Want page. This paper, by means of that
department, has located hundreds of workers where
their skill and energy are winning good rewards. It
has helped the manufacturers and merchants to se-
cure the kind of help required, and to adapt lines to
their trade representatives for their instruments. If
Presto has neglected any opportunity to be of assist-
ance to any of its friends or enemies, it has been be-
cause of comprehension elsewhere than here.
* * *
The grand piano feature of this issue must be of
unusual interest to dealers and salesmen. The plan
was to have it much more complete, but the manu-
facturers did not seem to understand in time to lend
their aid. About three dozen grands are shown, and
they are all handsome instruments. Some of them
are art designs, and from the least to the most dis-
tinguished they deserve the place in the gallery of
good things for both trade and public to study and
draw the contracts which are often essential to satis-
factory choice.
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