Presto

14
P R E S T 0-T I M E S
September 1, 1929
PASSENGER SHIPS HAVE
CAPEHART ORCHESTROPES
JOTTINGS ON A SHORT WISCONSIN TOUR
Automatically-Played Phonograph Music Now Heard
on Great Lakes Steamers.
A motor trip last week by a Presto-Times repre-
sentative through southern and southwestern Wiscon-
sin gave visible indications of excellent crops: Abun-
dant yields of small grains; hay and clover and
tobacco, which is now an important product in sev-
eral sections of southern Wisconsin. The butter and
cheese centers are active. At Monroe, known and
advertised as a great center for Swiss cheese making
and advertised on large bulletins as one enters the
town as the greatest Swiss cheese center of the coun-
try, we learned of the good condition of this indus-
try. Numerous cheese factories, large and small, are
scattered along the highways and all seem to be busy.
Pastures are fresh and green and dairymen conse-
quently happy.
Automatically played phonograph music was
chosen for a new field of entertainment recently with
the placing of Capehart Orchestropes on the large
passenger steamships of the Goodrich Lines for the
purpose of furnishing music in conjunction with the
regular boat orchestras during the summer excursion
season.
For many years the Goodrich Lines have catered to
Great Lakes vacationists by offering a number of
pleasure trips, all of which featured dancing and
music as a part of the regular entertainment. Orches-
tras served this purpose in the past by playing at
intervals during the daily trips. By July of this year,
DANCING TO ORCHESTROPE MUSIC ABOARD
GOODRICH STEAMSHIP.
however, the demand for longer musical programs
became so great that Capehart Orchestropes were
added to the ships' equipment in order to satisfactor-
ily furnish music continuously.
After but a short trial it was found that dancing
continued for the entire trip when the Capeharts
were turned on during the periods that in the past had
been intermissions. Furthermore it was demonstrated
that by playing the instruments for an hour before
the big ships left their moorings, a good deal of favor-
able attention was gained from the public while at
the same time passengers who arrived early were
entertained in a way that had not previously been
profitable.
Park model Capeharts were selected for this new
entertainment because of their weatherproof con-
struction, the instruments being placed out of the
sight of the dancers with large remote speakers for
the reproduction centered at the end of the room.
The automatic features of the Capehart Orchestrope
that make it possible to continuously repeat a pro-
gram of 56 selections entirely without attention, the
adjustable volume control and the life-like tone of its
reproduction that is gained bringing it through three
stages of audio amplification and a dynamic speaker,
were, given as the reasons for the selection of this
type of instrument as an additional entertainment
feature of the Goodrich excursion trips.
Three Illinois Piano Towns.
Before reaching Wisconsin the trio of musical in-
strument manufacturing towns—De Kalb, Oregon
and Rockford—were passed, and in passing through
visits were made at the Wurlitzer Grand Piano Co.
and Clark Orchestra Roll Co. factories in De Kalb;
the Schiller piano factory and the Paragon Piano
Plate factory at Oregon, and the Schumann and the
Haddorff piano plants at Rockford.
Down through the Paragon plate works, in a search
for Mr. Reed, where gangs of men, stripped to the
waist, pouring into the moulds in a shed or room
of large dimensions and every space taken for scores
of grand and upright plates, one involuntarily asks:
"What is all this hell-a-balloo one hears in many
places about the retardation of the piano business?"
As your correspondent looked over the scores and
scores of moulds, each representing one piano in the
making, the process to be duplicated again and again,
it was plainly to be seen that the piano business is
yet very much alive. At any rate things were "hot"
and lively the day we were hunting for busy Joe Reed
in his own factory and as we passed out of the place
his superintendent hailed us with this bon mot: "Say,
you Presto-Times man, be sure to go over to the
Schiller factory; you'll find a pretty live place there,
too."
And we did; the piano plate superintendent
was right, and he knew he was right.
Roll Man's Aviation Interest.
Mr. F. G. Clark, head of the Clark Orchestra Roll
Company, is taking a great deal of interest in aviation
these days. He is one of the founders of the DeKalb
County Airport and the secretary of the corporation
which carries on an enterprise in aviation that is re-
flecting great credit to the city of De Kalb and the
public spirited men who are carrying on the good
work of making their city and community an impor-
tant center for aviation. By the way, the Clark Roll
Company uses air-mail service extensively in ship-
ments of rolls, especially to far-away points. Many
of their orders are for rush delivery and the air mail
fits in with their business very nicely.
Automatic Instruments Very Popular.
If the itinerant tourist stops at the resorts which
abound in this land of lakes and resting-places, he
will doubly appreciate those that provide music with
automatic and nickel-in-the-slot instruments. Those
that do so provide, get the better class of guests and
become the money-making places.
Particularly did this tourist notice in the best of
the resorts instruments of well-known manufacturers,
including the popular self-rolling pianos and self-
feeding instruments of the piano-phonograph class.
The Selectraphone of the Western Electric Co., of
Chicago; the Coinolas of the Operators Piano Co.,
Chicago, and the Orchestrope of the Capehart
Corporation, Fort Wayne, Ind., were in evidence and
giving satisfaction at many places.
These are some of the new instruments that have
taken the places of the older and more ancient auto-
matic instruments. Their use shows the development
that is being made in their construction and points
to an increasing field for the expansion of business
along this popular line.
The Wurlitzer Grand Piano Co. at De Kalb is
pleased at good orders from Gordon Laughead on his
late extensive tour of the East.
TRIP TO ST. LOUIS AND PIEDMONT
By HENRY MACMULLAN
A trip to Piedmont, Missouri, last week, among
the tallest of the Ozark Mountains—a region of most
entrancing beauty and particularly refreshing after
enduring weeks of torridity in overheated Chicago—
was the fulfillment of a life-long dream. Piedmont is
129 miles almost due south of St. Louis—a wee trifle
west.
T crossed old Tip-Top, the second tallest mountain
in Missouri, but he is a railroad-side mountain and
every traveler on the Missouri Pacific has seen him.
To come into a real paradise, one must go inland
west of Gads Hill, to the Black River and where the
toot of a railroad train never penetrates. Our old
flivver, dignified at Piedmont by the name taxi, see-
sawed up and down hill in the forest trails used for
hauling out ties, either the right-hand side or the left-
hand side of the machine in a rut cut by mountain
streamlets, which with satanic instinct always choose
one and never both of the wheel tracks of the road to
gouge out. One turns into this rough road from a
great and smooth state highway a half mile west of
Gads Hill, which is six miles north of Piedmont.
Mine Host Fitz, of the American Hotel, Piedmont,
serves the best meals one ever ate—all American
cooking at that. John Wilkinson, postmaster of Pied-
MOISTURE CONTENT OF VENEER.
The moisture content of a veneer Y\ inch thick mont, is ex-county surveyor, and is only one of the
does not change as quickly as one Y% inch and less; many well-posted and intelligent gentlemen to be met
however, if exposed for long enough time to a con- in that community. Piedmont was at one time the
stant set of conditions, the *4 inch will eventually railroad division headquarters and regrets that they
come to the same moisture content as the thinner were moved to Poplar Bluff, a few miles to the south-
veneer and will then exert a very much greater force west.
A Place for a Piano Store.
on the glue joint. For short periods of exposure to
changed conditions there may be some foundation
1 believe that Piedmont would be a good town for
for tbe statement that the thicker veneer is less the piano business. It is easy to see why many of
affected.
our most widely traveled piano men who are known
and esteemed from coast to coast are unknown to the
AN 87-YEAR-OLD FLYER.
many music-loving people of Piedmont and vicinity.
J. A. Bates, 87 years old, well-known piano dealer It is due to that old notion that only big towns are
of Middletown, N. Y., who was the Bates in Ludden to be visited by piano travelers. Prof. Stephen A.
& Bates, the southern music firm, broadcasted a Douglas, of Pickard, Mo., who recently visited Chi-
"Flag Day" speech June 14 at New York and flew cago and bought a carload and a half of pianos for
back by airplane the same day to deliver the same cash, is a living example of the way to sell pianos in
address in the State Armory in Middletown at night. small towns.
This seems to be a pretty good stunt for an 87-years'
Here is a pointer for Frank M. Hood, of the Schiller
youngster.
Piano Co.; for E. P. Williams, of the Baldwin; for
H. A. Stewart, of the Straube; for E. J. Radle, of
"A pessimist is a guy who is never happy until he New York, or for a hundred and one of such enter-
isn't," said the piano wareroom philosopher.
prising characters.
Wurlitzer Business Gaining.
I spent three days in St. Louis. Not having visited
that great metropolis for a number of years, I was not
surprised to find it had grown out of my remem-
brance. One of the stores at which I found life and
activity w r as Wurlitzer's. R. Z. Vernell, manager,
said: "Business is .noticeably picking up since people
have commenced to~return from their vacations. The
outlook for improvement in the fall trade is good."
Baldwin Rebuilding Operations.
Received cordial greetings from G. W. Lawrence,
division manager of the Baldwin Piano Co. This is
one of the largest divisions territorially and in impor-
tance for development in the United States. Mr.
Lawrence is a son-in-law of H. C. Dickinson, vice-
president of the Baldwin Piano Company. His divi-
sion includes all of the great commonwealth of Mis-
souri and several surrounding states—an empire in
vastness; a mint in wealth. A cordial gentleman is
H. R. Dickinson, retail St. Louis manager. He is not
related by blood to H. C. Dickinson of Chicago. Ex-
tensive rebuilding operations are going on on the
lower floors of the Baldwin Building on Olive street,
but trade is going on just the same and the office
force are busy as beavers. They kept right on through
the scorching heat of a St. Louis typical summer.
Lehman's Seven-Floor Store.
"We were planning to go out of the piano business
until I suddenly discovered that it was beginning to
come back," said Philip A. Lehman, of the Lehman
Piano Co., Olive street, St. Louis. "I then bought a
lot of grands and they are going well. Business is
coming back right now in pianos." Mr. Lehman then
conducted the visitor through the seven floors of the
big establishment and every floor except the main or
street floor is devoted to pianos.
"This does not look much like quitting the piano
business, now does it?" he said. "I find that I am a
piano man, and while I am doing a very large busi-
ness in radio, my previous training, my love for the
piano, the basic musical instrument, makes me feel at
home in the piano line."
Seven floors with many pianos on each! Surely no
one is likely to rise up and accuse the Lehman Piano
Co. of deserting the piano trade.
Busy at Starck's.
George H. Day, manager of the P. A. Starck Piano
Co.'s store at 1018 Olive street, St. Louis, was not in
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