Bassett's Scrap Book, Vol 11, No 9

Articles in this issue

• NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, L. A. W.

  Report of the adjourned National Assembly held at the Boston City Club on Oct. 21 with President Kilby in the chair, printing the special committee's report (George L. Cooke, Charles J. Obermayer, Marriott C. Morris) on the life-membership history since 1886 and its recommendation to start a guarantee fund to keep the monthly official organ going; Secretary Abbot Bassett then reports pledges from the Wheel About the Hub and a $15 contribution from Louis Rubenstein of Montreal, and announces that with the new volume starting in March the paper will be renamed from Bassett's Scrap Book to "The L. A. W. Scrap Book" and "official organ" to "official bulletin."
• [National Assembly minutes concluded, and the obituary of William E. Gilman]

  Constitution and by-laws amended to substitute "Bulletin" for "Organ" and adopt "L. A. W." in place of "Bassett" in the title, the Assembly adjourning sine die; then an obituary opens for William E. Gilman, who died suddenly Oct. 13, 1913, aged 74, collapsing on an electric car between Worcester and Springfield -- a Chelsea civic figure who built and rode velocipedes, co-founded a Chelsea weekly with Bassett in 1872, led the celebrated 1879 White Mountains bicycle tour, and succeeded Louis Harrison as editor of the Bicycling World in 1881 (with Bassett joining as business manager).
• [Gilman's obituary concluded, and a Boston Herald retrospective on the bicycle's thirty-year rise]

  Gilman is remembered as a talented poet and miniature-portrait painter prominent in Masonic circles, buried from the Chelsea Masonic Temple Oct. 17; then a Boston Herald piece reflects on the thirty years since the bicycle's arrival in the early 1880s -- first the high-wheelers, then the safeties that filled the roads a decade later -- transforming travel before the automobile's dust and gasoline took over.
• [The bicycle retrospective concluded, Charley Reed's Pickwick Bicycle Club homecoming, a Manchester 'catch as catch can' race, and the C.T.C.'s royal patronage]

  The Boston Herald retrospective concludes on the "progress of civilization"; the Boston Monday Club welcomes home Charley Reed after he is made a member of England's Pickwick Bicycle Club; a Manchester, Eng., race introduces a "catch as catch can" elimination format with twelve riders; and, via the C.T.C. Gazette, the Prince of Wales intimates he would be pleased to join the Cyclists' Touring Club, three years after the King became its patron.
• [The C.T.C.'s royal patronage note concluded, notes on L.A.W. members who became U.S. Presidents, and the editor's philosophy for the Scrap Book]

  Notes the Royal Family's support for the sport; recalls the L.A.W. once counted Hon. Wm. McKinley (enrolled in person at the 1892 Columbus Assembly) and Theodore Roosevelt as members, and that Grover Cleveland rode a tricycle but could not be persuaded to join; and Bassett explains why the Scrap Book doesn't follow other wheel papers' focus on racing and mechanism, aiming instead to be broadly readable.
• APPRECIATION FROM THE WEST.

  A letter from W. H. Field of Green Bay, Wis., praising the Scrap Book as successor to the old official organ and the L.A.W.'s work for good roads; Field recounts joining the League in 1888 on an "ordinary," compiling a road book and map of Brown County in 1899, and his wish to attend the National Assembly at Boston.