The Bearings, Vol 5, No 17
Articles in this issue
- The front cover carries a series of short humorous items about cycling, including jokes about an English racer who never knows when he is beaten, a cyclist who insures against accidents but never has one, a molasses-filled lamp, the cycle thief as a homoeopathy practitioner, and a janitor driven to prostration by perfectly painted mud spots.
- A detailed history of the Pullman Road Race from R. D. Garden's founding on May 30, 1887 through 1891, with tables of the ten fastest riders and times each year, handicap starts, weather and entry statistics, the shortened 14¾-mile 1892 course, and a preview weighing Lumsden's sprightliness against ex-professional William Rhodes and long-distance man George Thorne.
- Complete roster of all 387-plus entrants in the 1892 Pullman Road Race, giving each rider's entry number, name, club abbreviation, and handicap start from scratch through twelve minutes under the subhead 'Some Agreeable and Disagreeable Surprises.'
- Editorial celebrating the completion of THE BEARINGS' Chicago-to-New York relay ride, crediting the enterprise with drawing more attention to cycling than ten years of ordinary growth, and saluting the riders who covered the thousand-mile journey by will-power and brawn.
- General O. O. Howard's pre-ride skepticism about bicycle courier service—citing the inability of bicycles to swim streams—is reprinted and refuted, with The Bearings citing Thomas Stevens' round-the-world ride and the relay's own record as proof that cyclists can surmount any obstacle short of seas and vertical mountains.
- Editorial scolding the Springfield (Mass.) Bicycle Club after younger members staged boxing matches in the clubhouse gymnasium, exposed by the Springfield Union of May 19, warning that even a strong club cannot withstand public opinion if it installs prize rings and hires professional fighters.
- Editorial on the friction between originator A. B. Barkman and the Metropolitan Association of Cycling Clubs over control of the New York road race, arguing that Barkman's reinstatement has cost the event trade support, prize money, and quality entries.
- Editorial jab at Bicycling World for using strong words to dodge the charge that L.A.W. members lack a proper official organ, receiving only a 'mere bulletin' rather than a journal that treats official announcements in an enlightening editorial manner.
- Le Veloce Sport's battle with anti-cycling critic William Reymond of Le Genie (The Engineer) is relayed with amusement; includes a translated vignette of a Paris policeman who rushed to a burst pneumatic tire near the Arc de Triomphe believing it a dynamite explosion.
- The lead feature: 1,000 miles in 108 hours 9 minutes by seventy-six relays through the worst deluge in twenty years, from Bode's Michigan Avenue mishap and Lumsden's lone scorch to Grand Crossing, through the Indiana quagmires past South Bend and Goshen, Root and Young's punishing slog to Perrysburg, Dorntge's record run out of Buffalo, and J. Lansing Quick landing General Miles' dispatch at the New York Recorder at 1:09 a.m., twelve hours behind fair-weather schedule.
- Brief news items: the Peoria-Chicago relay postponed for bad roads; Cincinnati Century Club's century run cancelled; North Side Cycling Club of Milwaukee at 44 members and seeking larger quarters; Rovers B.C. captain Cole first to climb the Manitou hill to the Midland depot; and J. W. Dodge of New Orleans on race admission policies.
- Pope Manufacturing Company offers a combined $500 reward—$250 each—for the arrest and conviction of persons who stretched barbed wire across the relay riders' path and who cut bicycle tires during the Chicago-to-New York relay ride on or about May 18-21.
- Letters from Albert A. Pope ('the Father of American Cycling'), the editor of Good Roads, L.A.W. president Chas. L. Burdett, Illinois Division chief consul F. W. Gerould, and Indiana Division chief consul Thos. Hay, all crediting the relay ride with dramatizing the bicycle's military utility and calling attention to the wretched condition of American highways.
- General Nelson A. Miles calls the ride a wonderful enterprise, stating that infantry could not have made ten miles a day and cavalry would have been mired and forced into camp under the same conditions, and comparing the feat to Burnside's notorious mud march of 1862-63, while predicting a properly built military bicycle would show far less wear than cavalry horses.
- Fifteen hundred Buffalo cyclists cheered 'Billy' Banker into the city with the relay message on Friday night; a prominent Buffalo official declares the test has established the bicycle's military utility; a Louisville gentleman reports a dozen non-riders stopping him to ask news of the ride.
- Congratulatory letters from cycle makers and dealers, including the Chas. F. Stokes Mfg. Co., Quadrant Cycle Co., Humber-Rover Cycle Co., Thorsen & Cassady, Chicago Bicycle Co., H. C. Martin & Co. of Buffalo, Hay & Willits of Indianapolis, the Stover Bicycle Mfg. Co., the Moffat Cycle Co., Henry P. Andrae of Milwaukee, Ames & Frost, Coventry Machinists' Co., Kirkwood Miller & Co., J. E. Poorman, and Pope Mfg. Co. per R. D. Garden.
- Editorial extracts on the relay ride with replies: the Chicago Times' satirical 'Ridicules the Bicycle' calling it manufacturers' advertising, the Milwaukee Journal ('Overwhelming Tide of Conviction') praising its exposure of road conditions, Chicago Evening Post and Tribune on the bicycle's military potential, Cincinnati Commercial Gazette on army use, and Chicago Evening News—each followed by The Bearings' commentary.
- A poem contrasting the mud-soaked relay rider battling night storms, ruts and barbed wire on the wretched country road with the Pullman vestibuled train gliding overhead on smooth steel rails, concluding that the ride will not have been in vain if it produces road reform for farmers and working people.
- Club and meet news: the L.A.W. National Meet at Analostan Island opposite Georgetown with President Harrison expected to review the parade July 19; the Century Road Club meeting called by William Herrick at the Grand Pacific Hotel June 3; the Burdett banquet at the Chicago Auditorium May 31; a planned Michigan Avenue lantern parade; the DeSoto road party June 5; the Illinois Division meet at Springfield July 2-5; Chicago C.C. new club-house subscription drive; a proposed Milwaukee-Chicago relay ride; and the Boston big club-house scheme.
- Calendar of upcoming race meets and runs for late May and June, including the Pullman road race, 100-mile races at Springfield (Ohio) and Kansas City, the Irvington-Milburn and Martin's Buffalo road races, the Massachusetts Division meet at Worcester, the Pennsylvania Division meet at Scranton June 20-22, and the Kings County Wheelmen's meet at Manhattan Field.
- A. A. Zimmerman lowered the world's quarter-mile record to 32 3/5 seconds at Herne Hill, London, on May 22, beating W. C. Thorne's Rockford mark by two seconds, then reduced it further to 30 seconds on May 24; on the same day Stroud lowered Zimmy's half-mile world record to 1:05 4/5 from 1:06.
- A cable from the American Ormonde Cycle Co. reports that Ede broke all world records from fifteen to twenty-four miles at Herne Hill on May 25, also breaking Osmond's hour record by riding twenty-four miles inside the hour on the Ormonde Model D.
- A New York correspondent reports that trade opposition to A. B. Barkman's effective control of the Irvington-Milburn Road Race—secured after pressure got him delegated to the Metropolitan Association of Cycling Clubs—has left the event with a weak prize list and a field more notable for mediocrity than victories.
- L.A.W. Racing Board member W. C. Thorne warns cyclists not to compete at the Marshalltown, Iowa tournament on May 30-31, as the managers had not complied with L.A.W. rules as of May 21 and no official sanction had been granted.
- Carl Ellers of the defunct M.B. & A.C. won the May 21 Forest Park road race at St. Louis on a 9:00 handicap in 1:16:15, while local champion Bert Harding set a course record of 1:00:40 on scratch, beating scratch man George Barrett—delayed by a railway wreck—by seventeen seconds and breaking the old record by 4:08; C. P. Root of Chicago retired, still feeling the relay ride.
- Local consul A. G. Woodbury of Danville, Illinois, rebuts a Springfield correspondent's charge of disloyalty to the Illinois Division, explaining the Danville Trotting Association holds horse races July 4-6 and that cycling Danville—new to the sport—intends to do the right thing and hopes to hold an autumn cycling meet on its now-improved 2:19 trotting track.
- Pre-race items for the upcoming Pullman Road Race: muddy conditions on lower Stony Island avenue, Walter Sanger's plan to debut Dunn's Eclipse pneumatic tires (the first pair used in America), only six Milwaukee entries for 85 miles away, training advice to stop riding after Friday, and additional prizes from De Lacy Mfg. Co., Morgan & Wright, W. D. Allen & Co., Riley Curtis & Co., the James Cycle Importing Co. (gold scarf-pin for first finisher on a wheel under thirty pounds), and Marshall Field's for riders under twenty-one.
- The Springfield Bicycle Club launches a racing team led by world two-mile record holder Harry Tyler, with Fred C. Graves (Warwick), English rider Thomas Relph (Keating Wheel Co.) and Edward A. Nelson (Victor Co.), trained and captained by Charles R. Culver, aiming to compete from Worcester on Decoration Day through Hartford in July.
- Illustrated feature with portrait sketches of past Pullman Road Race champions: H. R. Winship (1887 winner and 1888 fastest time, Owls/Ft. Dearborn club), A. E. Lumsden (1888 winner and 1889-1890 time medalist for Chicago C.C.), F. Bodach of the Eolus Club (1889), Chas. T. Knisely of the Illinois Cycling Club (1890), and Richard M. Barwise of the Chicago Cycling Club (1891).
- Brief items: Zimmerman's first American race of 1892 set for Asbury Park in August; the Milwaukee Tournament on June 4 with $1,200 in prizes and Phil Nickel expected to challenge Sanger; the Le Mars-Sioux City road race postponed to July 4 after Floyd Valley floods; a June team race brewing between Chicago Cycling Club and Riverside Wheelmen of New York; and the Kansas Division sixth annual meet at Wichita, July 4-6, with a $1,500 prize list and concluding banquet.
- The supplement opens by acknowledging the Chicago Times was right that the cycle trade will receive tremendous benefit from the relay ride publicity, but insists the Times deliberately misconstrued the ride's purpose, directing advertisers to compare The Bearings' reach with its contemporary's.
- The Bearings reports that The Referee declined its circulation-comparison challenge, restating its figures of nearly 8,000 copies weekly against The Referee's not-over-2,200, and accusing The Referee's representative of falsely claiming 7,500 weekly copies.
- Report on the U.S. Circuit Court equity hearing before Judge Townsend in which Featherstone (Duncan and Page) charged Bidwell's Thomas tire with infringing the Dunlop patent's wing-sewing method; Francis T. Chambers defended, arguing prior art and an irregularly procured patent; a decision is expected within weeks, with appeal to the new three-judge Circuit Court of Appeals ensuring a final settlement by autumn.
- Brief supplement items: J. A. Hunt & Co.'s pneumatic saddles shipping nationwide; Victors leading Springfield (Mass.) with 316 registered riders to Columbia's 297; the Quadrant Road Scorcher selling out before arrival; Humber-Rover shipping 150 wheels weekly since March 15 with 600 Humbers and nearly 1,000 Rovers on the water; the Remington safety on view at Thorsen & Cassady; and Coventry Machinists' secretary Grener in Chicago scouting American factory sites.
- Milwaukee notes: A. J. Street of the Taylor Cycle Co. visited May 20; F. H. Bolte and other riders will make a practical durability test of the 'Bolte' tire by riding to Chicago over the Chicago & North Western railroad tracks; Wm. C. Wegner expected to travel for P. H. Sercombe after June 1.