The Bearings, Vol 11, No 24
Articles in this issue
- In an exclusive Philadelphia interview, L.A.W. Racing Board Chairman Gideon explains his decisions suspending Sanger and expelling Johnson for selling a prize bicycle, describes his lenient treatment of Eck, and reveals that Philadelphia Inquirer reporter George Hynes informed on Sanger and Sims after learning of their dealings during a friendly dice game.
- Twenty-three members of the Century Wheelmen of Philadelphia, led by Capt. A.H. Allen, sail aboard the American line steamship Southwark for a bicycle tour of Ireland, England, France, and Germany; they intend to cover over 2,000 miles without using railroads.
- Three road races held in Evanston on the Fourth: the North End race went to Fred Kappelman, the Monarch C.C. sealed handicap was awarded to C.H. Hildebrand after James McCulla was disqualified for accepting pace, and the Sheridan road race was won by George Weiland.
- T.W. Winder, attempting to ride around the border of the United States in 300 days, arrived in Chicago last Sunday having ridden since March 14; he still has 12,000 miles to cover and rides an Eclipse fitted with M. & W. tires.
- Correspondent's daily dispatches (Sunday through Wednesday) from the L.A.W. national meet at Asbury Park, N.J.: massive arrivals of 5,000-plus visitors including 76 Denver Wheel Club members, the racially charged refusal of privileges to Miss Kittie Knox of Boston, Zimmerman's popular presence at the Ocean Hotel, and preparations for three days of racing on the third-mile track.
- Editorial congratulating the Asbury Park wheelmen on far surpassing all expectations for the 1895 national meet, with at least 5,000 visitors by Tuesday and promising racing ahead involving several prominent riders who have been unusually quiet for weeks.
- Editorial noting that the Fourth of July has become cycling's greatest day, with nearly 200 L.A.W. sanctions issued this year across every city and hamlet; the South Side Cycling Club Derby at Washington Park alone drew 12,000 spectators for five hours of racing.
- Editorial calling for the Racing Board to simplify the more-than-thirty record categories now recognized, arguing only the fastest times at any recognized distance—professional or amateur, paced or unpaced—should count; blames manufacturers' advertising greed for resisting reform.
- John S. Johnson and trainer Eck, speaking from Syracuse, report that Johnson has earned about $5,000 in recent professional races; A.E. Weinig of Buffalo has already earned nearly $700; both endorse the L.A.W.'s decision to sanction professional events alongside amateur racing.
- Two Cleveland racing men outwit a streetcar company's no-bicycles rule by boarding at different stops with dismantled wheels, successfully transporting their racing machines to the Newburg track without the conductor noticing.
- A.J. Watson wins the five-mile amateur championship at Herne Hill with a final-straight sprint past Elijah Scott; Piatt Betts wins the ten-mile open; Belgian R.T.C. Protin takes the professional mile championship from Harris and Harden; Fontaine wins the Putney 24-hour event with 474 miles, beating Shorland's record at 23 hours 14 minutes.
- Twelve thousand spectators fill Washington Park for the South Side Cycling Club's July 4 meet; G.L. Emerson wins the third-mile open in :40 1/5 in record-breaking conditions, Van Nest and Fairmon take the tandem handicap in a beautiful sprint, and the club clears $6,000 on the day.
- B.W. Twyman, paced by the Morgan & Wright team at Louisville's Fountain Ferry track, rides 407 miles 84 yards in 24 hours, breaking records at 2, 6, 12, 18, and 24 hours as well as the 100-, 200-, 300-, and 400-mile marks; Prince Wells' road race, won for time by Joseph Skelton, and De Cardy's exhibition mile in 1:56 2/5 are also covered.
- Eighteen-year-old George Schmidt of the Badger Wheelmen wins the Milwaukee-Waukesha road race in 50:50 from the 9:30 mark, while A.C. Mertens of St. Paul takes the time prize in a new road record of 45:32 after recovering from a spill at Elm Grove and overtaking all scratch competitors at the tape.
- Fred Biglow of West Jefferson, Ohio, wins the Poorman road race at Cincinnati with a four-minute handicap, also capturing the time prize over E.A. McDuffie and W.S. Furman; 106 entries, 74 starters, 58 finishers, with protests lodged against Wagner and Runyan.
- At the tenth annual Missouri Division meet in Shelbina, Willie Coburn of St. Louis wins three races and is hero of the day while Bert Harding captures the mile state championship; St. Louis riders take eight firsts out of ten races, and Robert Holm is nominated for chief consul for the seventh consecutive time.
- At Baltimore's July 4 annual meet, Charles Church of Philadelphia wins the mile open Class B in a driving finish from a field of eight, and R.H. Carr, Jr., takes the mile state championship; Charles Spencer fails to lower the 2:11 track record, finishing in 2:13 2/5.
- Tom Cooper of the Monarch team dominates at Jefferson, Iowa, winning the Class B mile and quarter-mile opens; Emil Kostomlatsky of Oskaloosa sets new state records at two and five miles; F.H. Cummins finishes the last half of the two-mile in 1:03 2/5, nearly four seconds under the state half-mile record.
- Five thousand attend the Garden City Cyclers' track in San Jose for the Northern California Division's most successful-ever League meet; Charley Wells of San Francisco wins both Class B events by just six inches over young Allan Jones, who is tipped as a dangerous 1896 national circuit contender.
- Five state records fall at Canton despite a stiff headwind: F.C. Schrein takes the half-mile state championship and mile open; the five-mile record drops to twelve minutes flat; fifteen-year-old S. Lee Stowe of Isleta rides a half-mile in 1:04 for the state age record.
- Frank Rigby of Toledo (C.O.P. team) captures the half-mile and five-mile Class B opens at Kearney; W.A. Pixley of Omaha wins the quarter-mile open and two-mile state championships; F.M. Tessier sets state records for unpaced mile (2:20 2/5) and paced half-mile (1:03 1/5).
- John S. Johnson lowers the competition mile record from 2:01 4/5 to 1:58 2/5 in the second heat of his match against Sanger and Tyler at Waltham, paced by a quadruplet; a six-woman cycling costume contest at the same meet is won by Miss Kittie Knox in a gray-checked shirt-waist, short coat, bloomers, and tight leggings.
- At Salt Lake City's Hot Springs track on July 4, Frank Thatcher lowers Ziegler's quarter-mile state Class B record to :31; Hyde sets a Pacific coast record for the two-thirds Class A in 1:30 2/5; George Weiler wins the Class B mile scratch in a new state record of 2:16 1/5.
- Comprehensive listing of July 4 race winners from more than 100 meets across Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Kansas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Dakota; brief notes include Boyschau's multiple victories at Rock Island and the Omnium Club of Paris opening its private installation at the Buffalo track.
- American racer Banker defeats a stale Belgian champion Protin in the 2,000-meter scratch at the Velodrome de la Seine, Paris, and later holds on through Protin's blistering first-half pace (1:02 2/5, record time for Europe) in the mile handicap before Protin is pumped out; Morin wins the Prix de Charleroi, and a rematch for $500 per side is set for July 7.
- At the Canadian Wheelmen's Association's thirteenth annual meet at Waterloo, Fred Loughead of Sarnia wins all Class A championships except the five-mile; sole American entrant C.R. Coulter wins the half-mile international, taking the thoroughbred horse Meadowbrook and a diamond ring as prizes, and rides an exhibition paced mile in 2:05 2/5.
- Boston: the Massachusetts Bicycle Club plans a $12,000 brick clubhouse near the park system entrance; Arthur W. Porter rides a fast mile at Waltham in 1:51 2/5; the Boston Press Cycling Club loses its L.A.W. sanction indefinitely after refusing to explain the Sims-Sanger check affair, handing the Consolidated Cycling Clubs a clear field at the new Charles River track on September 2.
- At the Connecticut Division meet managed by the Bridgeport Cycling Club, twelve hours of prior rain and a sea breeze from Long Island Sound combine with a dangerous track drop to limit speeds; Maddox divides honors with Ziegler and Macdonald, while Gardiner, Brown, and Johnson spare themselves before Asbury Park.
- Dr. E.R. Palmer, one of Louisville's most widely known physicians, dies from a fractured skull after losing control of his bicycle at the L.&N. Railroad crossing on the parkway and colliding with William Colston; Mayor Henry Tyler and others have also been injured in a series of recent Louisville cycling accidents.
- The U.S. State Department receives a report identifying six Kurdish men—sons of Rizgo and two sons of Abdurrahman Agha of Dahar—as the likely murderers of round-the-world cyclist Frank Lenz, killed May 10, 1894, near Erzeroum; W. Sachtleben is in the area but deems further investigation too dangerous given the suspects' high standing, and calls on the U.S. government for protection.
- Detroit's common council considers a bicycle ordinance requiring a 10-mph speed limit, bells, lamps, and registration with the city clerk for 10 cents, while banning machines from leaning against fire hydrants; a wheelmen's committee opposes certain provisions, and an amendment penalizing the throwing of broken glass or wire is considered.
- Chairman Gideon rules that Utah Class B rider Frank Thatcher must honor his contract with the Western Hardware Co. to ride a Stearns bicycle or face suspension; Thatcher, who had broken his contract to join the local Rambler team, threatens to quit racing for the season or turn professional in the east.
- Toronto correspondent protests U.S. customs authorities charging Canadian riders 35 per cent duty on racing wheels, making cross-border participation impossible; notes the Canadian side had been passing tourist wheels free, and calls for sensible reciprocal regulations now that American authorities have broken the arrangement entered into last year.
- Prize-winning paragraph ($6 awarded to L.J. Bates of Petoskey, Mich.) argues that forcing Class A men into Class B as punishment for rule violations degrades Class B and punishes the innocent; any rule-breaker should be suspended or expelled within his own class, not transferred against his will.
- Column by O.W. Moore recalls standing at the Grant Monument on Decoration Day 1894, musing on the ten-year transformation from the first Illinois Division L.A.W. formation at Pullman in 1884, when only seven men dined at the Hotel Florence and Van Sicklen and Phil Hammill contested the sole three-mile race.
- Letter by Louise Pierson advises women cyclists to choose narrow skirts (two and a quarter yards wide) reaching to the shoe-top, eton jackets or shirt waists, Stanley caps or small sailors, and gauntlet gloves; warns against heavy veils, which trap heat and cause sunburn through the fabric.
- Short fiction piece by Ada Brooks of Sioux City, Iowa: a man creeps to a dark waterfront at dawn contemplating suicide, then plunges into the depths when a group of cyclists arrives bearing a man in a chair; the only traces left are wooden shoes and an empty bottle labeled Milwaukee Beer.
- Official L.A.W. Racing Board notices: suspensions of 30 days to one year for riders in Illinois, Maryland, and Michigan riding in unsanctioned or Sunday races; Class B transfers for G.A. Kreidler, J.H. Little, and others; P.K. Manning and several Philadelphia and Des Moines men declared professionals under clause (a); E.W. Goff's suspension lifted due to race officials' error.
- Part of the grand stand at Buffalo Driving Park collapses during the Press Cycling Club's July 4 meet, carrying four or five score people thirty feet to the ground and injuring more than thirty, with one man not expected to live; Eddie Bald wins the featured mile open in 2:03 4/5 by six inches over a field including Coulter, Harley Davidson, and Mcintosh.
- Unconfirmed reports suggest P.E. Studebaker and furniture dealer Alexander H. Revell are planning to combine and manufacture cheap bicycles at $60 each from a new Wabash Avenue factory, with a rumored output of 400,000 wheels; each man admits to building bicycles in 1896 but denies forming a partnership.
- Brief letter from C.J. Smith & Sons Co. of Milwaukee corrects trade press reports: the firm manufactures bicycle parts exclusively and has never made a complete bicycle, and has no intention of entering that line.
- John A. Lawson clips 37½ seconds off De Cardy's world 25-mile road record, finishing in 1:03:15 2/5 at the Garfield Park one-mile loop in Chicago while paced by tandems on a Fowler wheel fitted with Morgan & Wright tires; he showed no sign of exhaustion after the ride.
- London correspondent reports Bayliss Thomas supplying bicycles to the daughters of the Duke of Connaught; the John Griffiths Cycle Corporation's annual Dublin meeting reveals an $480,000 total loss and mismanaged American and Canadian operations; saddle pioneer J.A. Lamplugh of Birmingham, who first introduced the suspension system in 1878, has died; Humber & Co.'s Wolverhampton factory outputs over 300 machines per week.
- U.S. commercial agent W.E. Mantins reports that Turin's international cycle show, open May 4 to June 10 under royal patronage, rivaled Milan's and showcased the Overman Wheel Co.'s American machines as among the finest on display against European competition.
- H.A. Lozier & Co. confirms plans to open a second Cleveland bicycle factory at Thompsonville, Conn., to accommodate rapidly developing eastern trade and reduce the risk of total production loss from a single plant fire; Toledo works will continue at full capacity with the same tools and machinery.
- A Bearings reporter visits S.W. Hall's legging factory at 50 Jackson Street, Chicago, and inspects the ladies' English Newmarket (ankle-length legging giving freedom of action) and the gentlemen's Oxford (short canvas or leather legging to protect trousers from the wheel without creasing), available in canvas, tan pebble, Russia calf, and cordovan.
- Editorial feature by 'Holland' argues that correct bicycle tread width (pedal center to pedal center) should match the rider's natural step width as measured in sand, proposing this simple test as the standard against the confusing proliferation of manufacturer tread claims; followed by comic reminiscences of League meet incidents at Kansas City and on the Denver excursion.
- Washington D.C. trade correspondent reports new cycle stores opening, debate over a police exemption allowing letter-carriers to ride at night without lights on safety and anti-robbery grounds, and the cycling ambitions of Mrs. Stewart, wife of millionaire Nevada senator, drawing comment from Washington society.
- Sieg & Walpole Mfg. Co. of Chicago purchases the Lane plant in Kenosha, Wis., for $25,000 to manufacture bicycles, employing 200 to 300 men; the plant's machinery originally cost $75,000 to $100,000.
- An unnamed Syracuse manufacturer has been secretly experimenting with seasoned hickory wood bicycle frames, believing the design could allow retail pricing at $40; the main obstacle remaining is achieving rigidity at the crank hanger, which the inventor hopes to solve with tubular joints.
- Eclipse Bicycle Co. moves its factory from Beaver Falls, Pa., to Elmira, N.Y., occupying ten acres of industrial grounds; plans call for a two-floor brick building 700 feet long by 60 feet deep, fitted with patent fire sprinklers and steam heating, contracted to C.A. Allington.
- Product notice for the Brown patent wood bicycle saddle: hand-sewn leather over a rigid wooden base, built on anatomical lines to prevent saddle soreness and chafing, cannot stretch out of shape or break; praised by Denver Wheel Club members at Asbury Park.
- Crown Cycle Co. of LaPorte, Ind., opens its factory with forty men producing strictly high-grade Crown bicycles; the distinguishing feature is a rim made of strips of rope manila paper wound on a spool and shaped as wound, under superintendent M.D. Smalley.
- Sterling Cycle Works' new single-floor Kenosha, Wis., factory, covering almost six acres with a 100x500-foot main building, is designed to be completed by August 1; the company believes single-floor manufacturing optimizes production, making this reportedly the only cycle plant constructed this way.
- Brief trade notes from around the country: Boston Wood Rim Co. incorporated in Berwick, Me.; Hunter Gun Co. of Fulton, N.Y., plans bicycle production; Climax Cycle Co. incorporated in Chicago with $1,000,000 capital; John Lighton Machine Co. of Syracuse enters receivership; numerous agency changes, new store openings, and factory starts reported across many states.
- Monarch team riders Cooper and Barnett win multiple Class B events at the Iowa Division meet in Jefferson; Arthur Lumsden and Levy sweep races at Indianapolis with three firsts and two seconds respectively; Barnett lowers the Iowa state quarter-mile Class B record to :28 4/5 and the unpaced mile Class B state record to 2:10 2/5.