The Bearings, Vol 12, No 20
Articles in this issue
- The Bearings exposes a scheme in which a man posing as a Cleveland reporter tried to pressure Waif's Mission superintendent T. E. Daniels into contradicting Tribune coverage of the Chicago Cycle Show, on behalf of a Board of Trade circular accusing the National Cycle Exhibition Company of conspiracy; Daniels denounces the charge as false and offers to make affidavit, while A. G. Spalding, pressed by reporters, admits he 'knows something' about the circular but can offer only suspicion of the Overman Wheel Co.
- Racing men across the northwest continue to rally behind a professional cycling league independent of League of American Wheelmen control, with near-universal support reported from Sioux City and organizer Joe Griebler of St. Cloud, though Griebler now counsels patience rather than an immediate break with the League.
- Reports from Syracuse indicate that prominent local cycling figure Bowe is actively interested in promoting a cash prize league in the east, providing another front in the national push to move professional racing outside L.A.W. jurisdiction.
- Otto Ziegler Jr. returns to San Francisco after seven months on the national racing circuit and is feted by the Olympic Club Wheelmen, while cyclist John McMenomy is fatally struck by a buggy driver named Casey who is said to have deliberately driven into him, and the suspension of Murphy, Cabanne, and Titus divides opinion among California wheelmen.
- Milwaukee racers Edward Roth and Harry Crocker are investigated by League Racing Board representative Fred Gerlach after an affidavit alleges Chief Consul W. A. Brown paid them $5 each to pace the Wisconsin state meet at Marinette, a charge their former trainer Ernest Fails is said to have brought after falling out with Crocker.
- An editorial rebukes A. G. Spalding for fathering the Board of Trade circular that accused the Chicago Cycle Show's promoters of conspiracy, arguing he had only vague rumors to go on and that the circular's ungentlemanly language makes the Cycle Board of Trade a laughing stock.
- An editorial argues the L.A.W. should begin paying division secretary-treasurers, such as the officer serving New York's 10,000 members, rather than relying on unpaid volunteer 'glory work' to run the organization's growing machinery.
- An editorial criticizes American bicycle makers for neglecting gear-cases that protect the chain from dust and mud, unlike English and continental manufacturers, and calls for a light, noiseless, easily detachable gear-case suited to American wheels.
- An editorial argues that despite renewed interest from the National Trotting Association and promoter Tom Eck, horse-racing tracks are ill-suited to cycle competition because their dirt surfaces and larger circumferences are outdated and because horse racing and cycling draw different classes of patrons.
- Racing Board chairman Gideon is besieged by telegrams and letters over the Cabanne-Titus-Murphy suspension and declines to make the evidence public, even as Cabanne asks for 'a trial in open court' and Gideon maintains only Cycle Board of Trade president A. G. Spalding may inspect the record.
- The Stearns, Syracuse, and Barnes teams converge on Santa Monica for a winter of record attempts using sextuplets, quintuplets, and quads, with racers Ulbricht, Hatton, Kiser, Randall, Edwards, and Hamilton training under the eye of the Southern Pacific Railroad's Captain Steer.
- A dispatch on the national circuit's stop in Santa Ana describes a poorly attended meet hampered by inadequate hotel accommodation, alongside a tally-ho excursion through Riverside's orange groves laid on for the visiting racers.
- At the season's final national-circuit meet in Redlands, Tommy Cooper twice defeats Bald in the half-mile and mile opens before Bald rebounds to win the five-mile Class B handicap over Cooper and Campbell.
- In New Orleans, F. G. Barnett rides a Fowler fitted with Morgan & Wright tires to break American unpaced standing-start records for three, four, and five miles, finishing the five in 12:22 and tying the best two-mile time.
- Salt Lake City's S. T. Durrant claims a lowered century record of 7:32:00 that the Century Road Club will not ratify for lack of witnesses, while the Zion Wheel Club fields a football team and former Chicago Cycling Club member Ralph Buckley turns up running gold mines near the Nevada line.
- The Ohio Division's board of officers votes 18 to 7 to award the 1896 L.A.W. state meet to Dayton over Cleveland, blindsiding the Cleveland delegation, which had believed it had Dayton's support.
- Springfield Bicycle Club president D. Edward Miller declines to serve another term after six years' service for business reasons, with L. H. Adams tipped as his likely successor.
- Elliott Burris of the Hunter company puts Charley Murphy's case for reinstatement in the hands of ex-L.A.W. president Charles H. Luscomb, who will bring it before the National Assembly and, failing redress there, take it to the courts.
- New York coroner Hoeber is assailed in the press, with Chief Consul Potter's help, for exonerating a brewery-wagon driver who ran down and killed a woman cyclist on Fifth Avenue, after using the driver's own employer as courtroom interpreter.
- Chicago alderman Kahler drafts an ordinance to tax bicycles at $1 a year, prompting the argument that bicycles damage streets far less than narrow-tired drays and iron-tired carriages and so should not be singled out for taxation.
- At the Texas Coast Fair meet in Dickinson, Charles French, B. B. Bird, W. J. Tremaine, and Frank Nichols headline three days of racing on the fairground's unfinished new bicycle track, with Tackaberry and Tremaine trading professional match wins.
- At the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris, 'Little' Michael wins a fifty-kilometer match against Bouhours and Fournier (each riding twenty-five kilometers), testing W. S. Simpson's new lever chain on a lowered 74-inch gear and covering 46.30 kilometers in the hour.
- Judges award the Times-Herald motocycle contest prizes to the Duryea Motor Wagon Co. and the H. Mueller Co. for best road-race performance, with the Morris & Salmon electrobat of Philadelphia taking the gold medal for best overall design and safety.
- Washington, D.C. Judge Miller dismisses an assault complaint by road-race medalist Bayard T. Wrenn against driver Louis Wood over a wheel-and-horse collision, ruling that police, not drivers, are responsible for clearing obstructed roads.
- Victoria rider G. W. Crisp wins Australia's Austral Wheel Race at Melbourne after champion Arthur Zimmerman withdraws in a dispute over his appearance fee, souring Australian opinion of Zimmerman's sportsmanship.
- Minneapolis prepares its first cycle show, to be held at the Exposition Building around January 17 under organizers Hoopes & Breslauer, alongside a planned six-day men's race and a nightly three-hour women's race.
- The Pittsburg Commercial Gazette reports a ragged, long-haired 'wild man' sighted on Chestnut Ridge near Bolivar, Pennsylvania, whom searchers led by James Shirley suspect is Brookmire, a fugitive who killed his father-in-law in Indiana County two years earlier.
- Toronto's newly organized Canadian Cycle Board of Trade votes to cut its warranty period to six months to match the American term and to curb syndicate price-cutting, over the objection of Brantford Bicycle Co.'s Mr. Knowles.
- Colonel N. P. Hartmann of Brooklyn, riding a Columbia, defeats mounted swordsmen Saroni and Alvarado at Jacksonville and English champion Lieut. H. R. Jones at Atlanta in broadsword contests staged to demonstrate the bicycle's military potential.
- Cycling Trade Publishing Co. president James Artman secures National Cycle Board of Trade sanction for a Philadelphia cycle show in February, after the local Board of Trade had voted against holding one.
- Waif's Mission superintendent T. E. Daniels, organizing a cycle concert and carnival at Battery D and the Second Regiment Armory to benefit the mission, is told by Cycle Board of Trade president A. G. Spalding that there is no time to sanction a planned miniature cycle show, forcing the idea to be dropped.
- A roundup of bicycle-trade notices from dozens of towns records new factories, incorporations, and dealer changes, including the Adams & Westlake Co.'s new Chicago factory, the Butler Company's capital increase to $30,000, and a strike by tool makers at Toledo's Yost Mfg. Co.
- The E. Howard Watch & Clock Co., incorporated since 1842, opens a Roxbury factory to manufacture at least 5,000 bicycles for 1896, applying the same exacting methods that built its watchmaking reputation.
- Rouse, Hazard & Co. builds a Sylph bicycle fitted with an eight-hatbox carrier for E. J. Graves, a Peoria milliner who uses the machine to deliver goods to customers.
- Short trade items report D. A. Kreamer breaking three indoor distance records on a Stearns at the Nashville six-day race, the Sieg & Walpole Mfg. Co. running its Kenosha Windsor-bicycle factory sixteen hours a day, and the Welch-Hutchinson Co. of Kansas City taking over the defunct Central Cycle Co.'s business.