The Bearings, Vol 12, No 26
Articles in this issue
- At his own Melbourne carnival, Zimmerman loses two one-mile scratch races in a single day—to New Zealander H. J. Pither in the invitation mile and to Victorian D. Walker by six inches in the international mile—despite insisting he was in the best of form. The same correspondent's letter also covers young Australasian riders sweeping the season's big races (W. W. Harkins' $500 Sydney Wheel Race, A. B. Crisp's $1,000 Austral Wheel Race) and the Wellington Cycling Club's gale-battered twenty-mile road championship.
- L.A.W. Racing Board chairman Gideon tells a Bearings reporter that Class A men have given him more trouble than all professionals and B men combined, says he's lost thirty pounds since taking the chairmanship, and sketches a possible shorter 1896 national circuit route through California, Texas and the South. He then spends the rest of the New York cycle show fending off Cabanne, C. M. Murphy and Press Cycling Club president Fourdrinier in the aisles.
- A Coronado, California dispatch describes the Syracuse racing team's off-track social life while training for record attempts, including a bicycle parade led by four young women riding the team's $1,200 quad and an impromptu mile race among pacemakers Taylor, Wells, Swanbrough, Hewitt, Stone and Schmidt.
- A Baltimore dispatch on the new Maryland legislature's cycling agenda: a road-law overhaul modeled on Massachusetts, a bill to punish those who scatter glass to puncture pneumatic tires, and the Racing Board's controversial plan to let B-class men redeem gold medals for 90 percent cash after thirty days.
- Zimmerman's manager W. J. Walford, just arrived from Sydney on the steamship Mariposa, announces the champion will quit racing after his Australian tour and settle into managing a bicycle factory at Freehold, N.J., blaming lingering effects of malarial fever caught in Ceylon.
- An editorial compares the just-opened Madison Square Garden cycle show unfavorably in attendance (though not spectacle) to Chicago's, noting the five biggest exhibitors—Spalding, Pope, G. & J., Stearns and Western Wheel Works—were nicknamed "the Greek Cross" for the shape their forty combined spaces made on the floor.
- A. Kennedy-Child writes to correct an earlier Bearings item about him, stating he became secretary of the National Board of Trade of Cycle Manufacturers only at directors' request, draws no meaningful salary from the post, and has had no role in the board's management since A. G. Spalding became president.
- An editorial mourns Zimmerman's fall from invincibility after his Melbourne defeats, arguing the champion should have retired undefeated in 1894 and is most galled that his conquerors were "two mediocre riders" rather than an American rival like Bald or Cooper.
- An Omaha dispatch reports the Omaha-Council Bluffs cinder path scheme faltering after a $1,000 hotel-owner subsidy was withdrawn, while the Tourist Wheelmen debate building a clubhouse and the Y.M.C.A. plans to reorganize its cycling club as the "Triangle Club."
- The New York Central Railroad and the Fowler Cycle Mfg. Co. arrange a half-mile flying-start match between the Empire State Express locomotive and the Fowler sextuplet tandem, to be ridden by six of the fastest racing men alive over a specially laid three-mile asphalt course.
- A serialized fiction piece, its printed title illegible in the scan, follows cyclist Day Angell's courtship of Violet Weston by wheel, a jealous rage against rival "Rich" Murdock touched off by a false elopement rumor, and the melodramatic discovery that Murdock is Violet's long-lost, kidnapped brother Teddy.
- A Louisville dispatch on Governor William O. Bradley's legislative message urging a state road commission, a scandal in which a private turnpike company was found to have collected tolls on a state-owned road for twenty years without remitting a cent, and the $1,000 bequest left to the Kentucky Division L.A.W. by the late "Pap" Ruff.
- A Milwaukee dispatch explains the city's lukewarm bid for the 1896 meet was really about angling for the 1898 state semi-centennial and national meet instead, and lists the newly elected officers of the Milwaukee Wheelmen, including president W. C. Neilson.
- Chicago police, aided by informant John "Viper" Traver, break up an organized bicycle-theft ring run with repair-shop owner Bert Demmett, recovering a cache of stolen Ramblers, Thistles, Waverleys, Deckers and Victors from a storehouse in Lemont.
- Cheyenne straightaway record-holders John Green and C. S. Erswell, in Chicago for the cycle show, rebut rumors that their December records were set on a downhill grade with a tailwind and that they hid their wheels to fake tire endorsements, backing their denial with affidavits from the weather bureau and a surveyor.
- Secretary C. M. Fairchild circulates the Century Road Club of America's new constitution and by-laws, which route century-bar applications through state chief centurions and cut the century time limit from sixteen to fourteen hours starting February 1.
- The Bearings' walkthrough of the second annual New York cycle show at Madison Square Garden covers 400 exhibitors under the National Cycle Board of Trade, tighter aisles and lower opening-night attendance than Chicago's Tattersall's, and booth-by-booth color notes on Pope, Spalding, Gormully & Jeffery, Stearns and Fowler's centrally clustered spaces.
- An alphabetical, booth-by-booth directory of the roughly 400 New York show exhibitors from Acme Mfg. Co. through Zenith Cycle Co.—models, prices, tires fitted and the company men staffing each stand—plus a coda on wheels shown off-site at the Fifth Avenue and St. James hotels.
- A miscellany from the New York show floor: ex-chairman H. E. Raymond on his European sales trip and views on the coming three-class racing system, Charley Murphy's plans for a paced mile-behind-a-locomotive record and reinstatement bid, Frank Waller plotting a transcontinental record ride, and George Banker's undecided racing future.
- At the National Cycle Board of Trade's Madison Square Garden meeting, chaired by A. G. Spalding, members pass Dickerson's resolution reapportioning stock at five shares per firm to admit associate members, elect thirteen new directors led by W. A. Redding and Spalding, and hear Henry Crowther's condemnation of costly national shows.
- The Fowler Cycle Mfg. Co. announces a cross-country and Mexico promotional tour by S. N. Fowler and advertising manager F. W. Van Sicklen, hauling the sextuplet through cities including Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City and Mexico City while publishing a bilingual "Daily Fowler Truth" en route.
- A Los Angeles trade dispatch surveys the region's bicycle agencies—the Overman Wheel Co.'s new Cycle Row store, the March Cycle Co.'s racing successes with Floyd McFarland, the Rambler branch house closing as Tom Varney shifts wholesale operations to San Francisco, and Tuft-Lyons Arms Co.'s band-and-truck parade for 227 new Crescents.
- A Cleveland dispatch reports the Euclid Bicycle Co. expanding into a new store, machinist Otto Konigslow running double shifts to fill a 2,000-wheel order for the McIntosh-Huntington Co. at $30 apiece, and staff changes at the Lozier company after the Chicago show.
- Humber & Co. circulates a letter to its agents rebutting rumors that the 1896 Humber's recessed lower rear stay makes it a "one-sided machine," inviting dealers to measure the cranks against the frame truss to prove the wheel is perfectly centered.
- German inventor R. Hofer of Nordhausen patents a detachable axle-holding device that lets an unskilled rider remove and replace a wheel in a minute without touching axle nuts or disturbing chain adjustment, plus a single-screw chain-tensioning mechanism, both offered for sale through an Erfurt patent agency.
- A trade profile of Chas. McCutchen of Goshen, Indiana, a veteran of the ordinary-bicycle era who rose from Ariel Cycle Mfg. Co. bookkeeper to Winton Bicycle Co. salesman known throughout the central and western states as "Mac."
- A roundup of dozens of small trade items on new bicycle stores, factory incorporations, dissolved partnerships and failures across the country, from the Iroquois Bicycle Mfg. Co.'s Buffalo incorporation to the Pacemaker Bicycle Co.'s Des Moines receivership, plus newly filed "Zenith," "Newport" and "Suburban" trademarks.
- A closing feature reproduces Chicago post-office weight receipts to show the paper mailed nearly nine tons of papers in a week—working out to just over 11,066 second-class copies, plus roughly 3,500 more via foreign circulation, news companies and office distribution, for about 14,566 total.