Presto

PRESTO
Presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. D A N I E L L and F R A N K D. ABBOTT
-
-
Editors
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com*
mercial 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 United States
possessions, Cuba and Mexico. Rates for advertising on
application.
Items of news and other matter are solicited and if
of general interest to the music trade will be paid for
at space rates. Usually piano merchants or salesmen
in the smaller cities are the best occasional corre-
spondents, and their assistance is invited.
Forms close at noon every Thursday. News mat-
ter 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 current
week, to insure classification, must not be later than
Wednesday noon.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 417 South
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1925.
REAL BOOSTERS
Whenever a great need develops it is almost
a certainty that nature—human or otherwise—•
seems ready to furnish it. Just now the
cause of music is, in general, in a sense, some-
what chaotic. Interferences and diversions
have twisted the public mind away from the
finer things of life, of which music and the
instruments of music are first.
And so the public needs something by
which to save it from losing the best influence
to pure enjoyment and refined happiness.
And the need is being supplied in a new way.
The state music trade associations are step-
ping into the breach and bringing back again
the enthusiasm and the vigor by which the
American people so long led the world of
music and will continue to lead it.
This year several of the state music trade
associations have met and the influence of
their energy has swept far and wide. The
Ohio convention, at Cincinnati, the Michigan
convention at Detroit, and this week's meet-
ing of Illinois music merchants at Rockford,
prove that there is no shadow of decline in
the enthusiasm of the men whose lives are
devoted to the spread of the instruments of
music.
And there is another factor in the state
meetings which Presto recognizes as of the
utmost importance. It is the personal activ-
ity of men prominent, as both manufacturers
and musicians, who have devoted time and re-
search to the cause of the perpetuation of the
music business as a help to public love and
understanding of the art and its benefits.
A fine illustration may be cited in the
thoughtful and practical address of Mr. W.
Otto Miessner, at Rockford, which is repro-
duced in this issue of Presto. It is by such
presentations of facts and figures as Mr.
Miessner's, by such straight-forward, clear-
cut statements of the purposes of music and
its influences upon the youth of the nation,
that the business of musical instrument mak-
ing and selling is preserved, encouraged and
kept where it must be kept if the art itself
is to remain and flourish.
We hope that no reader of Presto—and cer-
tainly no serious-minded music merchant—
will miss a word of Mr. Miessner's address.
As a musician, composer, director and teacher,
as well as a piano manufacturer, the gentle-
man from Milwaukee is entitled to no small
credit for what he is doing also for the piano
trade, no less than for the schools and music
loving public. Only a love of music can cre-
ate a demand for the instruments that produce
it.
TO ELIMINATE WASTE
The musical instrument industry is among
others in a survey of the Department of Com-
merce to probe charges of waste in manufac-
turing and selling processes. The depart-
ment is now investigating conditions in sev-
eral of the largest business centers. Matters
relating to the dimensions of the lumber used
in factories, and whether they are conducive
to waste in using them, will be subjects of in-
quiry in piano factories and other musical in-
strument manufacturing plants. It is the in-
tention of the government to make the survey
nation-wide.
The faults in marketing and retailing will
also be investigated in the survey, and an at-
tempt will be made to remedy the situation
by showing where services and expenses can
be pruned and the movement of goods from
the manufacturer to the consumer be expe-
dited and facilitated. It is pointed out by the
department that the largest field of waste is
in lack of information on the part of manufac-
turers and distributors, as to the require-
ments of the various sections of the United
States; a lack of knowledge of the problems
of race, occupations, habits, incomes, and pur-
chasing ability.
The result of the survey will be to enlighten
manufacturers and distributors as to the pur-
chasing power of each regional district, so
that sales executives will be able to plan mar-
keting campaigns "on the basis of knowledge
rather than of guesses."
The various regions will be analyzed in a
complete manner that will prove helpful to
the retail music merchant who will be en-
abled to set quotas and plan sales campaigns
in a manner to avert lost motion and blind
appeals to impossible prospects.
The Department of Commerce holds that
when the goods can be placed on the market
scientifically, instead of mechanically, the
market value of each article will show a profit
of proper proportions.
It seems quite possible that one result of
the inquiry may be to help standardize pianos
and accomplish, to a large extent, what the
fight against "stencil" pianos was meant to do
in the virtuous days of the old National Piano
Manufacturers' Association.
AN INVESTIGATION
It is not surprising that at last a public
spirited member of Congress proposes an in-
vestigation of the "music trust," as the Hon-
orable MacGregor, of Buffalo, calls the Amer-
ican Society of Composers, Authors and Pub-
lishers. The story of that combination is a
long one. Its purposes are, in the public
mind, confusing, complicated and contradic-
tory. It is time that a clearer understanding
of its methods and limitations—if it has any
should be exposed.
As to whether the often severely arbitrary
October 3, 1925.
rulings of the association have really done
any harm to the cause of art may be ques-
tioned. It is usually the so-called "popular"
kind of music that is affected, and perhaps the
public has been protected rather than hurt by
the free-handed system of taxation which has
been enforced or threatened on every possible
occasion.
But that there is something unfair and
coercive in the association has often been sug-
gested, and many hardships have been experi-
enced by promoters of the concert stage and
others. There is not much real genius in the
popular songs about which most of the copy-
right hue and cry is raised. The average com-
position is devoid of genuine originality, and
often to demand a tax for singing or playing
seems to border upon the grotesque.
Anyway, the trade will agree that for the
sake of the publishers themselves, no less than
the composers, the investigation of the Buf-
falo congressman may serve a good purpose.
At the worst it can do no harm.
Now history repeats itself in the piano
trade. There hasn't been a fall season in fifty
years in which there wasn't the comforting
asurance that "the dealers are getting tired
of crying 'no business/ and hustling for busi-
ness." And it's so this year.
* * *
The dealer who sells most pianos in the
average community between now and Christ-
mas will be the one who gets out after his
prospects in his own way and with the kind
of energy that real piano salesmen possess.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
(October 3, 1895.)
The day of the thump-box is already declining.
The painted case of tuneless wires must go.
J. L. Fredrico, a well-known repairer of church
organs, died suddenly, in Cincinnati, as a result of
excessive cigarette smoking.
We read of the "Wonderful Weber Tone," of the
"Crown-on-Top," of the "Marvelous Plectra-phone"
and other things, but none of them surpasses the
pleasant Sohmer smile which greets the wanderer at
Third avenue and Fourteenth street.
Speaking of piano trade in New York, I learned
at Steinway Hall that the aggregate sales of Steinway
pianos Tuesday this week amounted to $10,000. The
average price of Steinway pianos sold from the Stein-
way salesrooms is about $950 per instrument.
In Germany the trade in American pianos and
organs has not grown so rapidly as in England,
partly because there is not the market there, and
partly because the trade is slower to make changes
or to recognize the innovations and popular features
which characterize the American products.
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
(From Presto, October 5, 1905.)
Arthur L. Wessell, of Wessell, Nickel & Gross was
married on Monday of last week to Miss Edith Rich-
ards of Newport.
A foolish man wears his life out trying to write
his name high on the scroll of fame, but the wise man
is satisfied to stencil it on the fall board of a high
grade piano.
All employes of Shimek Bros., organ manufactur-
ers, of 932 and 934 North Broadway, Baltimore, Md.,
went out on strike because their employers had cur-
tailed their daily allowance of beer.
The members of the New York Piano Manufac-
turers' Association received copies last week of the
demands of the union, the only real demand being
one for the closed shop, for which a general strike
was ordered, to go into effect October 1. They de-
cided to refuse the demands, and began preparations
at once for the strike.
E. W. Furbush, of Boston, was in Chicago Monday
and spent part of the time talking over business with
the manager, George J. Dowling. Mr. Furbush ad-
mits modestly that business is good all along the line.
He never tells what his routes are but it is probable
that Mr. Furbush will bob up in one of two other
cities before returning to Boston.
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