Presto

October 1, 1929
PRESTO-TIMES
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The American Music Trade Journal
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FRANK
D. A B B O T T
- - - - - - - -
(C. A . D A N I ELL—1904-1927.)
Editor
PRESTO PUBLISHING CO.
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CHICAGO, OCTOBER 1, 1929
PIANO TRADE MUCH BETTER
Indications have cropped up within the last week or two—in fact,
they have been revealing themselves since the first of September—
showing- the piano business in a much more active state than it has
been for a long time.
The Cable Company refers to its wholesale trade as excellent and
good trade is reported from the Baldwin Piano Company in all de-
partments, the M. Schulz Company, the Wurlitzer Grand Piano Com-
pany and the Straube.
In the East, too, the revival of piano trade has taken a very active
form. The Jacob Bros.-Mathushek interests feel the impulse of live-
liness and their factory wheels are spinning. As for the Steinway
& Sons* they've never had a bigger trade. This is a very great house,
and it has been lucky, too, in the way things have shaped up in the
piano world of late years. Its reputation for building ideal instru-
ments and reliability stood it in good stead to pull through the piano
crisis with colors flying and with continued increasing output of its
great factories.
NO FREEZE-OUT NECESSARY
Some of the speakers at the recent convention of the Ohio Music
Merchants denounced the spirit of the men who would say, "Oh, let
as many piano firms fail as may—there'll be more business for those
who are left." This spirit was stigmatized as deserving of repre-
hension, an unmanly and un-American attitude to take. Very few
firms, anyway, had come out with affirmative declarations of abandon-
ment of piano manufacturing. The majority of the long-established
firms in manufacturing and retailing were carrying on and did not
seem to be suffering from the direct infliction of injury or incon-
venience by the changes that had been revolutionizing things in gen-
eral. The piano was running its course of action and interaction with
other things; no besom of destruction had appeared to sweep it
away; no whipper-in was trying to guide it; no voracious and intract-
able wolf was barking at its door. The barricades on the piano's
highway had been cleared and so the speakers advised speeding up
for a good drive.
PLAY PIANO FOR EARNINGS
Notable is the change that is dominating the wisest and most
observing of the writers on human progress or the reverse of late.
They are commenting on the things that drag young people down or
lift them up—the sight of jails, armed officers, armored cars trans-
porting payrolls or transfers of cash to banks on the one hand or
CHICAGO PIANO DEALER MOVES.
After IS years of successful trade at 5054 South
Ashland avenue, Chicago, P. R. Buchinski has moved
his store to 5441 South Ashland avenue. As a result
of this change, Mr. Buchinski is transacting business
in more attractive quarters; the new store of the P. R.
Buchinski Piano Co., is easily one of the handsomest
in the district. In this luxurious setting for his line
of high grade instruments, the Charles Frederick
Stein, the Ludwig, the Brinkerhoff, and the Schiller,
Mr. Buchinski is enjoying excellent sales totals. On
a single day last week he sold two new grands, one
of them a reproducer. Mr. Buchinski likes to be
the lessons to be learned on the other hand from law-obedience, start-
ing savings bank accounts, making good use of spare time, such as
attending night schools or learning to play upon the piano.
Recent editorials from the pen of James Francis Cooke, editor
of the Etude Music Magazine, show the wisdom of the proper use
of spare time by those who have the ability to learn to play the piano.
Pointing out that the proper use of leisure has created every civiliza-
tion that has existed, Mr. Cooke declares that a piano gives almost
endless opportunity to employ leisure time not merely with delight,
but with splendid profit. In one of the editorials he tells of the suc-
cess that came to a girl who had wisely taken piano lessons and later
earned a substantial income as a music teacher and as a school
supervisor.
Presto-Times can cite instances of the same tenure that came
under the observation of its editors in Chicago. Not long ago, this
paper published a story of the experiences of a teacher in a public
school of the South Side, Chicago, of similar import.
Another teacher who had been occupying about half of her time
employed in teaching had so cultivated her musical talent by special
study, even when fairly well along in years, that today her compen-
sation for teaching music is greater than she earns in her regular
school avocation.
The piano builds character in the child by stimulating his men-
tality in a wholesome and natural way and exalts his spirits. Further-
more, the child who learns to play well, with real technique, need
never be out of a money-making position.
RADIO MARKET IN PIANO STORES
Roy S. Dunn, western sales manager for the Radio-Phonograph
division of Thomas A. Edison, Inc., and who travels extensively and
is a close observer of the trends of business, is authority for the
statement in this issue of Presto-Times on another page that "the
music house in this country seems to be the hub of the radio industry,
at least in the radio market," and that "in many cities the piano man
is coming into his own and dominates the radio market." Why not?
The radio is a purveyor of music, a conveyor of music produced at
some distant point by a music master, a choir or an orchestra, who
might be classed as surveyors of music. The radio is a relayer of
music, not a betrayer but a good payer to the dealer who is a good
sayer and a good stayer. Furthermore, piano dealers get much better
prices for the radio than the rag-tag dealers who put in radio as a
side-line in connection with junk-shops, pawn-shops or hardware
stores. Piano men are in the habit of selling fine pianos and their
dientele consists of the moneyed people and educated folk of their
cities and towns, the very best class of customers for radio.
known as a piano dealer, but he finds radio a profi-
table sideline. In the two weeks that he has carried
radio stock, Mr. Buchinski has disposed of five
Zeniths. He also shows the Bosch.
PIANO SUPPLANTS REVEILLE.
MIRIAM CABLE WEDS ENVOY.
An Associated Press dispatch to the dailies brings
the news that the Austrian minister to France, Dr.
Alfred Grue'iberger, on September 11 married Mrs.
Von Ternes, formerly Miriam Cable, of Chicago,
daughter of H. D. Cable, one of the founders of The
Cable Company. The lady is well-remembered by
many friends in Chicago and Evanston.
An Associated Press dispatch to the daily papers from
Los Angeles, Calif., says because a Columbia University
professor advanced the theory that sudden and violent
waking is opposed to good health, youngsters of the
E. W. Furbush, well known piano man, has re-
Y. M. C. A. camp near there are awakened each morn- turned to Chicago from eastern cities, including his
ing by a sunrise piano concert instead of the blatant old-home city of Boston, and is now at home in the
bugle blasts.
Belmont Hotel, Chicago.
THE WHY OF STEINWAY SUPREMACY. See Cover Page.
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