Bassett's Scrap Book, Vol 11, No 7
Articles in this issue
- Opening editorial noting the L. A. W. begins its year in September after past starts in June, January and April, and likening the F. A. M.'s racing squabbles and proposed move of its secretary's office to Chicago to the L. A. W.'s own history.
- Opens with a shop anecdote about a customer asking for the "Belva" after being unimpressed by the "Belvedere" bicycle, a verse urging readers not to put away their wheels for autumn, and a reader's recipe for a bookbinding "perpetual paste" made from gum tragacanth.
- France's President Poincare tries cycling once and quits after crashing into a friend's rose bush; the L.A.W.'s doctor lists cheese, beans, peas, beef and oatmeal as the best muscle-builders; and Dr. Louis C. Le Roy of New York writes from Rouse's Point, N.Y., describing a tour through New York State and Canada (finding Canadian roads still bad after twenty years) en route to Bretton Woods and the Maine coast.
- Le Roy's letter concludes with a plan to visit the Wheel About the Hub run if passing through Boston in September; a quip notes 29 carloads of cocktail cherries shipped out of Boston; and a former 1880s L.A.W. member, present at the 1892 Columbus Assembly, writes asking how to get back into the League after years away.
- Notes the pending sale (for some $4,000,000) of New York's Grand Union Hotel, site of many 1880s L.A.W. Assembly battles over racing rules and offices, recalling members Jenkins, Egan, Beckwith and others; then reprints an 1847 item from the Isle of Man's People's Press describing new London cabs built with air-inflated rubber tires instead of springs.
- An elderly Maine man claims to have banked $50,000 by riding a bicycle instead of drinking or smoking; and Louis J. Berger, formerly of Chicago and now of Los Angeles, describes coming out of retirement at 48 to ride again, pulling his old Victor cushion-tire Ordinary bicycle out of storage and re-learning to vault into the saddle within days.
- Berger's letter continues describing having his old Victor Ordinary re-nickeled and the curious reactions of passersby and old-timers in Los Angeles; the piece then turns to E. S. Foljambe's report, in the Automobile Trade Journal, on the "cycle car" becoming a fad in Europe, filling the price gap between motor-cycles and automobiles.
- Continues on the cycle car's low cost versus a motor-cycle-and-sidecar; a quip about a friend hearing an odd noise from his bicycle's front wheel; Missouri's Governor Major orders his staff Colonels to spend two days working on public roads; and former cycling writer Frank A. Egan ("The Owl," "Hawkshaw") is reported prospering with a yacht and automobile at the Motor Print of New York.
- Reports the end of Missouri's volunteer road-building experiment (with Kansas's governor planning to start a similar one, and Arkansas considering it), criticized as a reversion to old "working-out-tax" road methods; and the U.S. Senate passes the Underwood tariff bill section cutting the duty on bicycles from 45 to 25 percent.
- The tariff bill's cut to motor-cycle duty (reduced further by the Senate committee, to 5 percent) is detailed; then a Miami Metropolis reprint recounts L.A.W. founder Kirk Munroe's history -- importing the third bicycle ever seen in New York in 1878, founding the New York Bicycle Club, and calling the League of American Wheelmen's first meeting in 1880 -- leading into the story of his first bicycle ride in Miami.
- The Miami Metropolis reprint concludes, crediting Munroe as the first to ride a bicycle on Miami's streets in 1896; a note adds Munroe wrote his adventure books there and bought Miami land in 1896 for $550; and W. F. Ball, writing in the Birmingham Daily Mail, compares a new horse-racing speed record (37.5 mph) to top cyclists, concluding a horse could give a champion cyclist a handicap over short distances but not over three or four miles in twenty.
- L. A. W. membership terms, listing annual dues of 75 cents, life membership at $10, application instructions to Secretary-Treasurer Abbot Bassett of Newtonville, Mass., the Cyclist Touring Club privileges for members touring abroad, and badge and supply prices.