Presto

8
PRESTO-TIMES
ISSUED THE FIRST AND
FIFTEENTH IN EACH
MONTH
FRANK D. ABBOTT - - - - - - .-r -
(C. A. DAN I ELL—1904-1927.)
July IS, 1929
PRESTO PUBLISHING CO.
Publishers
417 So. Dearborn St.
Chicago, III.
The American Music Trade Journal
Editor
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 0234.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
mercial Cable Co.'s Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Enterpd as second-class matter Jan. 29. 1896. at th<*
Post Office, Chicago, 111., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription. $1.25 a year; 10 months, $1.00; 6 months,
75c; foreign. $3.00. 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 correspondents, and
their assistance is invited.
Payment Is not accepted for matter printed In the edi-
torial or news columns of Presto-Times.
Wherp half-tones are made the actual cost of produc-
tion will be charged if of commercial character or other
than strictly news Interest.
When electrotypes are sent for publication it is re-
quested that their subjects and senders be carefully Indi-
cated.
Forms close at noon on Thursday preceding date of
publication. I>atest news matter and telegraphic com-
munications should be in not later than 11 o'clock on
that day. Advertising copy should be in hand before
Tuesday, 5 p. m., before publication day to insure pre-
ferred position. Full page display copy should be in hand
by Tuesday noon preceding publication day. Want "vi-
vertisements for current week, to insure classiflcatioA
should be in by Wednesday noon.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 417 South
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
The last form of Presto-Times goes to press at 11 a. m.
Thursday preceding publication day. Any news trans-
piring after that hour cannot be expected in the current
issue. Nothing received at the office that is not strictly
news of importance can have attention after 9 a. m. of
Thursday. If they concern the interests of manufactur-
ers or dealers such items will appear the issue following.
CHICAGO, JULY 15, 1929
STIMULUS OF BIG CONCERNS
A word or two now in praise of the big concerns in the piano
industry and trade that at their own expense have been giving a pow-
erful impetus to business by furnishing bands with instruments, help-
ing players to get piano and band instrument lessons and otherwise
stimulating, quickening and activating young and ambitious musicians
and musical students to achieve their desires. Big corporations are
able to do this and bear the burden of the costs in a way and on a
scale that small houses cannot, yet the small firms come in on the
benefits and this they ought to recognize and appreciate. On the
other hand, the big concerns must not lord it over the little fellows
on the theory that advanced ideas are impervious to the hindmost,
for the hindmost may serve by giving warning of danger in the rear.
Even insects learn by experience, as men who study the bees and
hornets declare, and when Mutt calls Jeff an insect he means it gen-
erally as a compliment to his astuteness; as much as to say the lower
limit of human knowledge includes even the stupidest.
WHY COMMUNITIES GO SLACK
He is a lazy piano man and a slow thinker who imagines that
children are too slothful to go through the preliminary drudgery of
practicing on the piano. . The fault is his, not the children's. If
children do not cultivate a certain orderliness, their elders are to
blame for not teaching them. What can be expected of a child whose
parents set an example of inertness? In whole neighborhoods habits
are formed and customs become general through the imitation of the
adult leaders. Good community work can die negatively by inaction
as surely as it can die positively by destruction.
WHY COMMUNITIES DEVELOP
Governed by foresight and reason, any American community can
become a delightful place to live. If the town is slow, whose fault
is it ? To complain about one's own town being slow is to induce a
judicial blindness about it. One of the fundamental requirements of
that town is your own progressiveness. It needs you as a live wire,
not a yapping croaker. If you are in the piano business, see that its
capacities for enjoyment of music are developed. The piano can
show the people all the advantages an individual gains in a society
and loses in isolation^ Remember that children have a greater ma-
turity of comprehension of music at 14 years of age than young folks
of 16 or 17 years had a few years ago.
MEN WHO GET CREDIT
The man whose credit is good need not trust to luck. Credit
is readily extended to men who have a reputation cf attending strictly
to their own business, and that is why success conies from good work
oftener that it does from good luck. Credit managers are very apt
to grant credit to enthusiastic men, believing that few people trouble
themselves to generate enthusiasm for things in which they have no
interest. But credit is never granted to men who are attempting
to build a skyscraper on a bungalow r foundation.
EARLIEST USE OF MICROPHONE
"Wire broadcasting" was done in this country as early as 1878,
just two years after Alexander Graham Bell successfully demon-
strated the practicability of the telephone, according to Angus S.
Hibbard, formerly vice-president and first general superintendent of
the Chicago Telephone Company. Chicagoans adjusted their head-
pBones and heard the Apollo Musical Club in concert at the old Cen-
tral Music Hall, located where Marshall Field's retail store now
stands. In an interview published in the Chicago Daily News last
week, Mr. Hibbard said : "Microphones were installed in the music
hall and the concert, directed by William L. Tomlins, was trans-
mitted and heard by groups of people in various parts of Chicago and
by a large group in Milwaukee, Wis."
FEAR SINKS ENTERPRISE
One of John Galsworthy's characters says : "Fear is the black
godmother of all damnable things." Anyway, fear is a primitive
mood. Sometimes it comes from conjuring things from nothing and
it has an impalpable quality that halts enterprise. It is out of har-
mony with nature's designs for us, for men who indulge their fears
lose the knowledge of which is which and what is what. Fear comes
crashing through the nfght on its invisible way. It seizes the timid
introspective piano merchant by the throat, sinking him down into
a habit of slothful, indiscriminating acquiescence.
A PECK OR A "STIMPART"
The pessimism of some fellows simply shows that the piano
business is undergoing a change, and although unrecognized so far,
as popular dicta, that change is coming. It requires vision to see this,
and where there is no vision the people perish. If the pancake is
brown enough on the underside, why not turn it over? The influ-
ences of the changes that are coming to the piano trade are so subtle
and show themselves so gradually, that it's time to quit sitting in
the office and go out to see how the people act. Don't associate with
pessimists—who keeps company with a wolf learns to howl. You
are not entitled to all of the business, but get some of it. "Them
that canna get a peck must put up wie a. stimpart" (Scotch for half
a peck).
LUCKY RADIO
Apparently, by all the tests of analysis, it is nothing but luck
which makes one man or one line of business successful while others
bewail the want of luck. Yet, perhaps, much of what we call good
luck is in reality unconscious skill in the arrangement of those ele-
ments which go to make up events. Luck is generally not hard of
access; it just comes. No impetuous charge, no use of sawed-off
shotguns, no arbitrary encroachments on the preserves of long-
established lines of business were practiced by radio in achieving its
wonderful success. It just came. Like a note, it was due. It came
like every other advance step in the gradual enlightenment of igno-
rant and stupid mankind. The lucky men were those who got in
step with it.
ESTHETIC EFFECTS
Things which are a real part of the esthetic effect are never
overlooked in the planning and construction of the finest pianos—
instruments in which the element of cost is entirely subordinated
to the paramount purpose of obtaining through perfect workmanship
and the use of perfect materials, perfect results. The pianos shown
in the June 15 issue of Presto-Times were all constructed with this
idea used as a command. There are many other instruments made
in the factories of this country which w 7 ere not pictured in our brief
list, that are really esthetic, and this publication will publish cuts of
them from time to time as occasion arises and we get room to use
them.
"
,
!
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/