The Bearings, Vol 4, No 26
Articles in this issue
- Humorous anecdote column: narrator Racer recalls trainer Rubern's extreme conditioning methods—starvation, rubbing, sweating, and banning illustrated comic papers lest laughter cause weight gain while riding for the Graball Athletic Club—followed by several short cycling squibs.
- William Twinkle narrates his participation in the Chicago six-day race at Battery D, describing trainer Billy Bottles' circular dizziness after watching 850 laps on the seventeen-lap track, camaraderie with O'Flanagan that infected his speech with an Irish brogue, and Ashinger's ultimate first-place finish.
- International cycling notes covering Germany's new £2 tax on foreign cycles, open cash-prize betting at Australian race meets, Bob Cripps's steel strip pneumatic tire protector, the death of McCandlish of Wheeling magazine from heart disease, and Holbein's 362-mile twenty-four-hour wheel on exhibition at Coventry Machinists Co.'s Chicago agency.
- Two new Century Road Club members: C. L. Reierson of San Antonio, the first from Texas, and William H. Seader, captain of the Alameda County Wheelmen of Oakland, California, the latest centurion from the Pacific coast.
- Editor L. J. Berger exposes W. J. Morgan's conduct in San Francisco—crooked riding at the Pavilion, a $40 debt to trainer H. Leeming, and a warrant for stealing Helen Baldwin's wheel—and Thomas Eck's unpaid $163.25 note to the John Wilkinson Co., with constables attempting to seize wheels at Battery D during the six-day race.
- Editorial on retiring LAW President James R. Dunn: declining to pay compliments, noting his lack of communication with members through the official organ and ambiguous role in Good Roads, and cautioning that Major Burdett or any successor must have a record able to withstand criticism.
- Reprints a Reading, Pa., World editorial praising fifteen thousand Philadelphia cyclists who have organized to demand better street paving and plan to take an active part in the coming councilmanic elections.
- Reveals that the LAW Executive Committee secretly extended the Wheelman Company's contract to publish the official organ by two years, forfeiting an estimated $7,000 the League could have earned from a competing firm's offer of $25,000 in stock and nearly $10,000 cash for the Bicycling World contract.
- Satirizes a testimonial in the L.A.W. Bulletin claiming a lumber wagon and street car ran over a bicycle without hurting it; 'Don Quixote' of Fort Wayne offers the testifier an original epitaph dubbing him 'a most proficient liar.'
- Profile of Augustus B. Choate, chief consul of the Minnesota Division and prominent Minneapolis lawyer, who formed the Business Men's Bicycle Association and secured sidewalk riding privileges for Twin Cities wheelmen.
- Correspondent 'Bison' proposes kite-shaped cycling tracks modeled on those used by trotters, arguing they would eliminate disagreeable turns and raised corners while providing a quarter-mile straightaway stretch for record attempts.
- Reader 'Hydraulic' writes that he paid $145 for an English pneumatic bicycle with an uncomfortable American saddle and asks whether any saddle can be made to fit everyone.
- Correspondent G. R. B. reports on a small cash-prize meet by Warwick and Turner at the five-lap asphalt Exposition track—Warwick set a half-mile record of 1:13 2-5—noting shady and 'stiff' riding as a feature of cash meets, and the Melbourne B.C.'s roughly $800 profit from the Austral meeting.
- Lief Hansen surveys 1891 Danish cycling: Miss Jørgensen's six- and twelve-hour records, the Danish B.C.'s planned 475-mile international race on Leeland and a 360-mile Jutland round, a dispute between the Danish B.C. and cycle dealers over the Copenhagen exposition, and moonlight winter club runs drawing twenty riders including ladies.
- State-by-state club notes from Georgia (Savannah toll cut to five cents for bicycles on Thunderbolt shell road), Illinois (Chicago C.C. new officers, Lincoln C.C. dancing party, Illinois C.C. minstrel show, Washington Club dance with seventy-three couples, Cook County Wheelmen with 389 members), Iowa (Des Moines C.C. staging Pirates of Penzance, Sioux City Iowa Division), Michigan (Detroit Wheelmen annual meeting, new president A. G. Griffith), Missouri (St. Louis M.B. and A.C. indoor meet won by Will Cox and Herman Fath, Jordan & Sanders bicycle firm formed), New Jersey (proposed $100,000 state road fund, Plainfield, Westfield Wheelmen new officers), New York (Syracuse C.C. 133 members and Croasdale medal to Arthur Benjamin, Rome Cyclers banquet, Cohoes, Buffalo bid for N.Y. Division meet), Ohio (Toledo Wheel Club, Cleveland–Buffalo relay race planned for May 8), Pennsylvania (Park Avenue Wheelmen Blaub at Maloney Hall, Quaker City Wheelmen anniversary, Columbia Cyclers purchasing a club house), Texas (Marshall's nine riders and four L.A.W. applications), Tennessee (Nashville ice-road run to Gallatin in 3:27:50 by Combs, Anderson, and Farmer; Tennessee Ramblers formed with twenty-five members; Memphis M.C.C. expanding rooms), and Wisconsin (Milwaukee Wheelmen entertainment and constitutional change).
- Geo. W. Patterson of 270 Kinzie Street, Chicago, writes that he finished twenty-ninth in the Pullman Road Race but received only one reply in August saying two prizes remained ahead of his; the editors call the prize committee's conduct open to severe criticism.
- Full race report on the Battery D six-day event: Charles W. Ashinger (ex-Oklahoma boomer, ex-carpenter) won by about three feet from Wallace Stage the young Scotchman; Lamb finished seven laps down; O'Flanagan defeated Wood in a five-mile evening contest in fifteen minutes; George K. Barrett set a new indoor safety record of 2:43, beating Berlo's 2:53; Roy Keator attempted the indoor unicycle mile record but fell near the finish in 4:24.
- Financial report on the Chicago six-day race: total receipts $1,800, expenses about $600, net $1,200, with $500 divided among riders—Ashinger $91, Stage $76, Lamb $61, Robb $18—though other accounts put Saturday receipts alone at $1,200 and Ashinger's share at $300, with Eck reported not allowed to control the receipts.
- Several Chicago six-day riders have left for San Francisco for a race managed by Eck and Morgan; The Bearings warns that local wheelmen and the press should insist the event proceed without any borrowed influence from ex-mayor Carter Harrison.
- Quotes an 1882 article in The Wheelman by 'President Bates' of Michigan noting that the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Times simultaneously sneered at cyclists while publishing cyclists' own road-reform arguments, contrasting that era of hostility with cycling's present mainstream standing.
- Correspondent 'Kerlumbia' reports that trainer W. B. Troy visited Mrs. Windle, who made clear Willie will not travel to England with Zimmerman in 1892 because his business requires their combined attention; Zimmerman is quoted as frustrated that the press keeps calling to 'send Windle too.'
- Profiles Charles W. Price, 18, who won the mile handicap at Waukesha in July 1890 in 3:01 from the 165-yard mark with a best of near 2:30, and Wallace C. Sanger, 18, six feet and 182 pounds, who won four Milwaukee trotting-track races averaging 2:39 and plans to race in 1892.
- Chief Consul Gerould and 'future Vice' Sheridan are organizing a tri-state meet at Springfield, Ill., July 2–5, covering Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, with promises of a first-class track and ample hotel accommodations.
- Details the six-day twelve-hours-a-day race at Madison Square Garden beginning March 7, preceded by an amateur meet by the Harlem Wheelmen on March 5; first-place prize is $1,000, with $1,015 for short races, and competitors must cover at least 1,008 miles.
- Correspondent 'Damon' proposes that the Century Road Club grow as powerful as the L.A.W. by admitting members through state section committees that can vet applicants' characters, rather than allowing almost anyone to join as the League currently does.
- Reports that actress Marie Wainwright has arranged for T. W. Eck to manage professional races in European cities; W. J. Morgan and F. E. Spooner both claim to be advance agent, while Henry Sturmey, editor of The Cyclist in London, has been Eck's foreign representative to date.
- Feature on the Pennsylvania Company Bicycle Club, 21 members composed entirely of Pennsylvania Railroad employees in Chicago and Fort Wayne under superintendent C. D. Law, describing their 1891 runs including a forty-mile Fort Wayne–Maysville country ride and a Rogers Park luncheon on the bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan.
- Preview of the Philadelphia Cycle Show (Feb. 15–22 at Industrial Hall, Vine and Broad streets, booth 55 for The Bearings): all space sold with an additional adjoining hall hired, nightly home-trainer races for local men, and a fancy-rider competition for Canary, Maltby, and Kauffman with a handsome prize.
- Washington D.C. correspondent 'Damon' recounts that President Dunn dismissed a disqualification decision at the Columbia Cycle Club races—where a man lost second place because wind blew the tape under his foot—with 'That man must be a fool,' only to learn the official he criticized was the man he had just appointed to chair the LAW Racing Board.
- Notes that Brooklyn wheelmen are distributing Manila envelopes combining half-tone illustrated road-improvement circulars with L.A.W. membership application blanks, praising the plan as aligned with The Bearings' suggestion about combining road improvement with League recruiting.
- Notice that friends of G. L. G. Ross of Dublin—who died after only fourteen months of marriage, leaving a widow and infant—are raffling his new Whitworth light roadster safety (by Osmond) with pneumatics; books of eleven tickets for $2.55 through R. J. Mecredy of the Irish Cyclist, Dublin.
- Profile of Nick Kauffman, born November 22, 1862, weighing 155 pounds, who began cycling in 1882, turned professional after seven years, toured America and then England where he is regarded as a marvel, and is challenging Canary and Maltby to a $500-a-side trick-riding contest at Philadelphia.
- Event calendar for February through September 1892, listing the National Assembly in Columbus (Feb. 15), the Philadelphia Cycle Show (Feb. 15–22), Thomas Stevens's lectures in Fort Wayne and Dayton, the Madison Square Garden six-day race (March 7–12), the Cleveland–Buffalo relay (March 8), the Memphis 100-mile road race (March 14), the Pullman road race (May 30), and the Springfield Bicycle Club tournament (Sept. 14–15).
- Trade news: Union Cycle Mfg. Co.'s new Boston office under J. McDowell with 'Jack' Fecit as head salesman and an on-site riding school; Overman Wheel Co.'s entertainment for fifty-five office employees; A Digest of Cycles patent reference by J. H. Allen at $50 for two volumes; and J. B. Thorsen of Thorsen & Cassady, Chicago, mourning the death of his wife.
- The Philadelphia Wheelmen's Street Improvement Association organizes permanently at the Century Wheelmen's gymnasium, addressed by Isaac B. Potter of New York, Rudolph Blankenberg, and Kirk Brown, aiming to influence the coming councilmanic election in conjunction with the reform Committee of Fifty.
- Letter from Geo. C. Bartlett Jr., secretary of the Y.M.C.A. athletic department in Philadelphia, states The Bearings is always on the central branch reading table seen by hundreds of the 500 daily visitors, and that he most enjoys the advertisements over all else—a backhanded compliment to the editors.
- Reports that the Keating Wheel Co. has moved into a new four-story 230x60-foot granite-faced brick factory on Dwight Street, Holyoke, Mass., producing three models—Model A roadster (37 lbs, $135–$150), Model B road flier (32 lbs), and a Ladies' Model A (33 lbs)—fitted with the company's own detachable Keating pneumatic tires.
- An unnamed Chicago tradesman has devised a valveless inner-tube covering that survived fifty-six punctures without significant deflation, demonstrated in The Bearings office using a G. & J. rim; five knife stabs within a five-cent-piece area caused only slow deflation, and the inventor has been offered $25,000 for a half-interest.
- The Speedy Cycle Co. of Chicago filed a $5,000 slander suit against discharged foreman R. W. Lonie after he told creditor J. B. Olsen, a plumber owed $300, that the firm was trying to sell its plant; Olsen attached the company's bank account, while president H. J. Winn appeared at The Bearings office with cash to assure immediate payment to creditors.
- Geo. R. Bidwell Cycle Co. has placed a large order with St. Nicholas Mfg. Co. of Chicago for wholesale distribution nationwide, including the new diamond-frame Oxford at $135 cushion, the improved Record at $90, the Peerless Ladies' Safety at $75, and a new unnamed 30-inch diamond frame at $80.
- A. Featherstone has opened a factory at 545–549 West Twenty-second Street, New York, to manufacture Dunlop pneumatic tires for the eastern trade, where demand is exceeding expectations; the Chicago factory continues to serve the western market.
- Milwaukee trade notes: Fred W. Schmitz will exhibit Sercombe-Bolte's ladies' Telegram, chainless Telegram, and racing Telegrams with Bolte Indestructible pneumatics at Philadelphia's booths 10 and 11; Andrae's new wheel is ready; and Bednell of Taylor, Cooper & Bednell of Coventry placed the Raglan cycle agency with P. H. Sercombe as before.
- Trade survey of Toledo for 1892: asphalt streets have boosted cycling; three factories now operate (Gendron, H. A. Lozier & Co., Toledo Bicycle Co.); C. W. Munson handles Humber, Moffat, Rudge, Kenwood, Lovell, Featherstone, and Rochester wheels; and Colton & Hickox handle Union, Warwick, Rover, Temple Scorcher, and Stokes medium grades.