Bassett's Scrap Book, Vol 8, No 11
Articles in this issue
- The January editorial leader opens 1911 with a string of poker- and New Year-themed quips on resolutions and rights, then reports the death of English cycle-industry pioneer Thomas Humber at age 60, and adds that 80,000 people attended London's Olympia cycle and motorcycle show and that United States Motor Co. president Benjamin Briscoe forecast 600,000 bicycles to be built in England in the coming year.
- A humorous poem wishing for an unbreakable New Year's resolution, as strong as strong drink or the strongest cigar.
- A quip computing that school teachers effectively work only 41 days a year; then quotes Dr. Samuel Johnson's "Prayers and Meditations," a very human record of a man who fails his resolutions as often as he makes them, reproducing his 1761 list (avoiding idleness, regulating sleep, journaling, church-going) and beginning his 1769 New Year note.
- Johnson's 1769 resolution to rise earlier concludes, noting he was then sixty; New Haven attorney John V. O'Brien tours Connecticut by bicycle campaigning for assistant clerk of the state house; and the Nylaw club's December 17 meeting at the New York Athletic Club opens, honoring guest Abbot Bassett on his 24th year as L.A.W. Secretary-Treasurer, with members traveling from Poughkeepsie, Elmira and Buffalo under President Wm. H. Hale.
- President Hale introduces Bassett with a verse tribute, "The Abbot of Boston Town"; Bassett then gives reminiscences beginning with his first election as Secretary in 1887.
- Bassett recounts his St. Louis trip and the Good Roads Convention, with Wm. M. Frisbie also speaking; new Nylaw officers are elected (President Jarvis C. Howard, Vice-President E. F. Hill, Secretary L. P. Cowell) and the club votes to meet three times a year; and a quip on League President Atwater's visit, ostensibly to check the books but really to take the writer out for a meal.
- Massachusetts Congressman Weeks tells the Massachusetts Highway Association he opposes nationalizing road-building, arguing highways are a local responsibility and that national road control would cost more than the Civil War; he would seek reimbursement for Massachusetts's own road spending if such a bill passed.
- A rebuttal argues Massachusetts, being wealthy, can afford roads that poorer states cannot without federal help; a C.T.C. Gazette reprint announces King George V has become the Cyclists' Touring Club's Patron, the Club's first in its thirty-two-year history; and the American Association for Highways Improvement forms to coordinate a national road system, with dues of $100 (sustaining) or $5 (regular) members.
- Lists the new association's leadership -- Logan W. Page (director of the federal bureau of public roads) as president, James S. Harlan as temporary chairman, with a large board of directors including railway and industry figures; and opens a note that bicycles enormously outnumber automobiles in Paris, as in American cities where a similar count has been taken.
- Advertises Bassett's 45-page periodicals catalogue and prints a multi-page club-price list of popular magazines such as Bicycling World, Century, Cosmopolitan and Outing.