The Bearings, Vol 5, No 13
Articles in this issue
- Front-page collection of individually titled short humorous sketches—tandem-ride witticisms, a cycling critic's unreliability, the first 'roadster' Adam, Mr. Pembroke Coleman's uniquely accurate watch—forming the signature cover humor column of this issue.
- A.A. Zimmerman's comic letter from Herne Hill, London, to William Swinkle recounting his ocean crossing on the Aurania, a muddy collision near London with an express wagon on his new pneumatic, deadpan exchanges with English reporters, and a closing cable that he lost the Easter Monday race at Brighton to Fowler by riding too slow.
- Editorial legal column setting out the three conditions—no provocation, reasonable effort to escape, and genuine danger—under which a cyclist riding on the highway may lawfully kill or injure an attacking dog.
- Progress of the Chicago-to-New York bicycle relay ride planned for May 18–22, with the government message pouch signed by General Nelson Miles on exhibition in Cycle Row, Chicago; a route description from Toledo to Buffalo by Bearings man H.A. Surface; and confirmed relay riders including D.N. Lohman and E.H. Crosby of Utica for the Tarrytown-to-New-York scorch and Fred Brown of Elkhart.
- Brief note on an electric storage-cell dog-cart fitted out in 1888 for the Sultan of Turkey, reaching ten miles per hour, and a similar vehicle built in Boston illustrated by The Graphic, with steering, braking, and even heating and lighting powered by electricity.
- Editorial on the dispute between Dayton (given the Division meet) and Cincinnati (given the championships) over competing July 4 race dates, leaving Racing Board member Collister in the unenviable position of arbitrating between two cities each of which has a legitimate claim.
- Editorial arguing that the L.A.W. Racing Board's vote for official referees suits the tournament-dense Atlantic coast but not the West, where western members Watts of Kentucky, Collister of Ohio, and Thorne of Chicago are said to regret their ayes, given that one-horse county fair races would make the office absurd.
- Editorial distinguishing worthy straight-backed veteran riders from the large class of uninformed novices who spend months vacillating over wheel purchases, buy without instruction, and then crawl along in grotesque positions with mis-adjusted equipment, to the irritation of their brighter fellows and the mockery of the public.
- Editorial mocking McDougall's farmer's-club proposal to replace wagon roads with narrow-gauge man-motor railways at $3,000 a mile, arguing that near populous centres such tracks would produce chaos, and insisting that macadam roads—whatever the future paving material—are necessary, inevitable, and far preferable.
- Major weekly news department covering chief consul Gerould's plan to take 150 Illinois cyclists to the Washington L.A.W. meet by special B&O vestibule train for $43 all-in; Dick Howell's libel letter against 'Senator' Morgan naming race-fixing at Madison Square, Chicago, and San Francisco by Ashinger, Lumsden, and Eck; the slashing of fifteen tires at the Lake View Cycling Club; the Elwell European tour leaving June 11 on the Bologne at $350 per head; R.M. Tidd's brake-less wreck on the Kimmswick hill; the lively Zig Zag Club of Indianapolis; the dissolution of Louisville's Independent Cyclers; Windle's coming marriage to Miss Nettie Woodward of Millbury; the Davenport cyclists' petition against Colonel Buffington's Arsenal bridge ban; and Baltimore cyclists' pioneering use of circular letters to aldermanic candidates to secure paving pledges.
- Personal notes on cyclists including E.R. Inman of Janesville riding a full-nickeled chainless Telegram, new L.A.W. recruits Tom L. Johnson, Jerry Simpson, and Henry George Jr., Amy Leslie of the Chicago Daily News taking up cycling on an Ormonde safety, Charles E. Randall's marriage to Miss Harriet S. Booth, and chief consul Gerould taking his first two-wheeler lesson at Gormully & Jeffery's riding school.
- Club news including the Que Wheelmen and Plzen C.C. moving to new Chicago quarters, the Montauk Wheelmen opening a two-story brick club house in Brooklyn on May 1, the Lake View C.C.'s 1892 road book, the Cook County Wheelmen's lantern parade, the Press Cycling Club of Buffalo raising its black-ball threshold to seven spheres, the formation of the Cincinnati Century Club at the Palace Hotel on April 16, and the organisation of the North Side Cycling Club of Milwaukee with a road race planned for May.
- Poem reprinted from the British journal Cycling enumerating the many 'ifs'—honest agents, asphalt streets, law-abiding racers, venues free of betting—that would finally end cyclists' woes, addressed to 'loiterers and scorchers' alike.
- Profile of A.H. Schumacher, Hartford bank man and member of both the Hartford Wheel Club and the Columbia Cycle Club, unanimously elected secretary-treasurer of the Connecticut Division L.A.W. in succession to E.A. DeBlois and now chairing the entertainment committee for the Columbia-Colt joint tournament in Hartford on July 4–5.
- Editorial debate sparked by the Memphis Cycle Club barring St. Louis riders from its May 14 hundred-mile road race on the ground that St. Louis is not a southern city; letters from St. Louis riders Bert Harding, R.M. Mulford, and R.M. Tidd cite Percy Stone's 1885 Memphis mile title and Tidd's Galveston ten-mile win as qualifying precedents, while Memphis correspondent 'Crypto' concedes the controversy and notes that Sullivan, Whitmore, and Deupree recently covered a century in 8:57 on rough roads.
- Chief centurion Herrick of the Century Road Club plans to issue a circular and take a mail vote on temporary officers and on the question of controlling road racing under the scheme proposed by the L.A.W. Racing Board, ahead of the Washington meet.
- The Pastime A.C. of St. Louis is seeking co-operation from the St. Louis C.C. and the Missouri B. & A.C. to secure a cycle race track, with capitalists promising to fund grounds if a bona-fide paid membership of 1,000 can be assembled, though the conditions seem stiff.
- Notice of the May 21 Forest Park road race in St. Louis, identifying the seven-man organising committee including A.J. Emery and Ed. N. Sanders, with the handicap limit raised from eight to ten minutes and efforts to attract outside as well as local riders.
- The Peoria Bicycle Club plans a 171½-mile relay ride from their club house to the Illinois Cycling Club house in Chicago on May 28, aiming to cover the distance in 13:05 starting at 4 a.m.
- Brief note that a Brighton-born Englishman now in Chicago, wearing forty medals, has repeatedly defeated Fowler—the rider who humbled Zimmerman—his name withheld because of the coming Pullman race.
- The N.Y.A.C. has dropped trainer W.H. Corcoran and cut its cycling team to the Murphy brothers and Zimmerman within a total $15,000 athletics budget, limiting entries to the most prominent autumn circuit meetings.
- Racing and riding notes including the Press Cycling Club of Buffalo's preparation of a fast half-mile track for the New York Division meet with record-breaking as a feature; eight Buffalo riders completing a century over the Erie route in 8:15; Charley Dorntge's new 25½-pound Niagara by Penseyres; the Wheelmen's Racing League's June 4 fifteen-mile handicap team race of four-man teams; and Seeds, Merrihew, and McDaniel of Wilmington planning both the Business Men's Cycle League 100-mile race and The Bearings relay finish.
- Profile of the western Iowa distance rider who covered 208 miles and four laps in twelve hours at John S. Prince's Des Moines indoor tournament, making 38 miles in his best two-hour stretch and riding his last mile in 2:58, aged twenty-one and wholly untrained.
- Instructional formula for computing riding speed in miles per hour from gear size multiplied by pedal revolutions per minute, with a worked example showing that a 56-inch gear at 100 revolutions per minute yields approximately 16 miles per hour.
- Editorial and interview with Charles F. Stokes of the Union Cycle Mfg. Co. making the case for a formal national manufacturers' and dealers' association to curb retail price-cutting, stagger product launches away from the spring rush, and resolve trade disputes amicably; George R. Bidwell and H.A. Lozier are reported to favour the plan, which may be advanced at the Washington meet.
- Editorial reprinting a New York Evening Post piece on John Jarrett's finding that English bicycle exports to the United States nearly doubled to $621,644 in 1891 despite the McKinley tariff raising import duty from 35 to 45 per cent, ironically exposing the limits of protectionist logic.
- Report on a suit filed by attorney Percy L. Shuman on behalf of the John Wilkinson Company in the U.S. Circuit Court to recover $2,000 paid as excess duty on bicycles imported in 1891, the Chicago appraiser having over-valued the goods by some $5,000 above their actual English purchase price.
- Chicago trade notes covering Lake View C.C. member Joe Stillwell building his own wheel at Radell's Cycle Exchange, T.D. Ganse's large new stock of Mayflower safeties, the Spooner-Peterson Co. securing the entire output of a new 32-pound unnamed scorcher's cycle built by two expert local mechanics, Joe D. Guinea joining the Spooner-Peterson Co., and the new Stokes & Leeming repair firm at 253 Dearborn Street.
- Editorial on the strong western sales of the Warwick cycle, particularly the improved Warwick Pilgrim, noting its distinction as the first safety bicycle built entirely of wrought steel and adopted by the U.S. Government for postal service, with the Taylor Cycle Co. of Chicago holding a standing order for one-quarter of the factory's output.
- Brief editorial noting that Marshall Field & Co. of State Street, Chicago, has opened a bicycle clothing department under George A. Moncur featuring the Anglo Cycle Suit and cap, described as a marvel of cheapness in only the best qualities.
- Feature survey of Indianapolis as a major cycle manufacturing centre, profiling the Indiana Bicycle Mfg. Co. under C.F. Smith (30,000 wheels per season), the Central Cycle Co. building the Ben Hur (3,000 per season), the Excelsior Cycle Co., Eclipse Bicycle Works, the National Bicycle Co. building the Axtell, the Cycle Fitting Co. supplying assembled parts to agents, the Standard Mfg. Co. building the Planet, and dealers H.T. Hearsey & Co. and Hay & Willits.
- Calendar of upcoming cycling races, tours, and club runs from May through September 1892, including the Pike County tour of Missouri Division on May 8, the Memphis 100-mile road race on May 14, the start of The Bearings Chicago-to-New-York relay ride on May 18, the Forest Park road race on May 21, the Pullman road race on May 30, and the national L.A.W. meet in Washington, D.C. on July 18–20.