The Bearings, Vol 5, No 19
Articles in this issue
- Editorial squib challenging bicycle manufacturers to study the common black beetle's ability to carry ninety-six times its own weight, so that an eighteen-pound wheel might finally be made strong enough for a 150-pound rider.
- Humorous anecdote of a Chicago visitor arrested in Philadelphia for riding faster than three miles per hour while following a horse-car line to Fairmount Park, marched before a judge who sentenced him to life in Moyamensing prison.
- Humorous first-person piece by 'William Twinkle' lamenting the Early Rose Wheelers' crushing defeat at the Pullman road race after training only among themselves with no competition, while Illinois Cycling Club president T.L. Sloan was given a twelve-minute limit start.
- Short cycling news department: the Sheridan C.C. formed in Evanston; century runs by the Ramblers B.C. of Buffalo and the Ravenswood Club; Isaac B. Potter's Good Roads pamphlets reaching Europe; and the Washington Military Cycle Company's Decoration Day debut on Pennsylvania Avenue.
- Feature report on the June 5 Chicago-to-DeSoto road ride via flooded St. Louis roads, headlined by Chas. M. Croninger of Covington, Ky., who descended Frisco Hill brakeless on a 52-inch cushion-tired Victor ordinary, steering downhill with handkerchief reins after his saddle broke and riding the backbone of the machine.
- J.A. Weaver and Robt. H. Laing of St. Louis made the DeSoto round trip in 14 1/4 hours, the best performance over that road for many a day, Weaver on an Imperial climbing every hill but the last 100 feet of Kimmswick and Laing on a Premier Kitten.
- Letter from C.H. Larson describing being outpaced by the St. Louis riders down the hills, wading three big creeks, and wearing out his shoes using them as a brake to get through to DeSoto.
- Technical column signed 'Nibs' covering the superiority of drop-forging and lap-brazing combinations for bicycle heads, the problem of uncoppered saddles rusting on high-grade machines within three weeks, and inflation and valve tips for Victor Pneumatic inner tubes.
- Editorial applauding the Prohibition party convention in Milwaukee, May 28, for adopting the first road-reform plank ever put into a national platform, shaming the major parties whose whisky-guzzler influences have neglected the issue.
- Editorial thanking the Bicycling World for unexpectedly championing the Chicago-New York relay ride and expressing gratitude to all cycling contemporaries who responded to The Bearings' call for better coverage of competitive enterprise.
- Editorial condemning the growing practice of manufacturers attaching eligibility restrictions ('strings') to Pullman road race prizes as a pure advertising scheme, warning that if unchecked it will spread to track racing and eventually disqualify deserving winners through arbitrary conditions.
- Editorial endorsing the Century Road Club's mission to discourage highway law violations; includes a London dispatch reporting the Catford, Surrey, and Polytechnic clubs have all suspended road contests amid united daily-press opposition to furious riding.
- Editorial on the Inter-collegiate Association's defiant refusal to seek L.A.W. Racing Board sanction for May 28 Manhattan Field events, only to capitulate hours before the races when racing men refused to compete without it.
- Editorial weighing whether England's National Cyclists' Union—which refused a treaty with France over the Bordeaux-Paris road race—will allow its men to mingle with French semi-pros and Australian prize-racers at the proposed 1893 international meet in Chicago.
- Editorial noting that the relay ride manager will return to straighten out discrepancies in riders' cards and publicity, and that prizes will be awarded once every kink is resolved.
- Revised list of the top-50 finishers from the Pullman road race after twelve protests, headed by Fred Nessel and J.B. Woolas; Callan, Swanson, and Holmes entirely displaced and the original list scarcely changed above twenty-fifth position.
- Report on the June 4-5 tournament at the Milwaukee Exposition building managed by William Lachenmaier, where W.C. Sanger dominated every event including a dramatic ten-mile race over Phil Nickel—coming back from a cramp in the eighth mile—and was carried on the shoulders of the crowd.
- London dispatch: A.A. Zimmerman wins the half-mile invitation scratch race at the Polytechnic C.C. meeting at Paddington Track on May 28, beating A.W. Harris in 1:12 3-5 to immense applause, his first outright win on an English path; he left for Berlin on June 4.
- London dispatch reporting multiple British records broken in one week: Zimmerman's quarter-mile at :30 and Stroud's half-mile at 1:06 3-5 at Herne Hill; Ede's new 24-mile world hour record; and T.A. Edge's Liverpool-to-London road record of 14:33:33 on a New Howe safety geared to sixty-eight inches.
- George C. Smith of the Riverside Wheelmen sets a new American quarter-mile record of 31 3-5 seconds at the Century Wheelmen's meet at Tioga track, Philadelphia, only 1 3-5 seconds outside Zimmerman's world record, winning from Bilyeu and Mead before a crowd of over 2,000.
- Report on the Connecticut Division L.A.W. meet at New Haven: 800 wheelmen and 100 wheelwomen in the parade, L.D. Munger of Chicago wins the mile handicap and an upright piano on an Imperial Roadster in 2:24 1-5, P.J. Berlo wins the half-mile final in 1:08 2-5, and Col. Burdett referees.
- Specially translated report on the Bordeaux-Paris race of May 14 (c.355 miles), won by Stephane in 25:37:00, beating Mills' 1891 record by 57 minutes; Stephane arrived in Paris calm, his pulse at 76, having covered 312 miles in exactly twenty-four hours.
- Doubt is cast on F.C. Graves' 1:15:14 at the Martin twenty-five-mile road race at Buffalo, reported as four minutes faster than the Boston record; a Bearings correspondent says the course was short and the scoring defective, though the Warwick Ghost stood up perfectly.
- The non-riding associate members of Chicago's Columbia Wheelmen hold a handicap road race for a bicycle prize among contestants who own none and were barred from training, making it a genuine race with J.J. Carmody's complex handicaps and John Erickson as judge.
- The Lake View Cycling Club feted Pullman winner J.B. Woolas and third-placer C.A. Fox at a well-attended club house reception decorated with flags and Chinese lanterns; Woolas gave an amusing account of 'How I won the Pullman.'
- Casper M. Sanger of Milwaukee will stake $1,000 worth of merchandise that his son Walter can beat any amateur wheelman in Chicago over the Pullman course.
- Ten Chicago C.C. cracks rode the Poorman course from Hamilton to Cincinnati to select a team to meet New York's Riverside Wheelmen; Thorne, Winship, Githens, and Van Sicklen completed the 18 1/10 miles in 57:00 and will be joined by L.D. Munger.
- Description of the 18 lb. 3 oz. Halladay-Temple racer built for Ralph Temple, who intends to attack the mile record paced behind a sulky with a canvas wind-shield.
- Compiled department of short racing items: Boutell's new 23-pound Cincinnati racer; the Moffat diamond medal and a replacement Brown Bros. wheel for Woolas; Williamson of Quincy beating St. Louis men in 2:58; last Saturday's Illinois Club five-mile scratch won by C.T. Knisely.
- Post-race notes: Frank Schmitt knocked off his wheel by the winner Woolas on the Sand Hill path; Ariel and Quadrant representatives confirm their machines finished without injury; Roy Keator survived three bad falls on his 29-pound Reform; Spooner hampered by collisions after his eastern trip.
- Report on the June 5 meeting at the Grand Pacific Hotel, Chicago, where resolutions were adopted making the club a certified road-record repository; W.C. Thorne elected temporary president, L.J. Berger vice-president, Wm. Herrick secretary-treasurer; 490-500 members with net assets of $544.58.
- The Bearings announces a June 25 lantern parade from the Second Regiment Armory down Michigan Avenue to Drexel Boulevard, with merchandise prizes up to $25 for best lantern displays on tandems, singles, and tricycles, and free Japanese lanterns furnished to all non-competing riders; provision for 500-1,000 participants.
- Translated article from Veloce-Sport describing the French military's program training cyclists as topographical scouts, using coin-scaled paper bands as improvised compasses and pocket barometers to measure hill gradients while revising France's official road maps.
- Preview of the annual Missouri Division L.A.W. meet in Springfield ('Queen City of the Ozarks'), July 3-5, including an evening run to Percy's Cave by electric light, races at the half-mile track, and a forty-page illustrated programme; all state railroads offering one-fare round-trip rates.
- Description of M. Cornie's folding pocket instrument for measuring road gradients, developed for mapping French cycling routes and illustrated in Veloce-Sport; uses a spirit level and scale to determine hill grades without a full engineer's level.
- World cycling champion W.W. Windle wed Miss Nettie J. Woodard at Union Chapel, West Millbury, Mass., June 3, with W.W. Taxis and Harry B. Arnold as ushers; the couple's most prized gift was a dining room set from twelve ex-members of the disbanded Millbury B.C.
- Report on the 173 1/2-mile relay carrying a message from the Grand Rapids Democrat to the Detroit Free Press in 16:13:00; ex-chief consul Richmond and chief consul Bresler rode the first and last relays, roads were in horrible condition with riders mired and rolling down embankments, and the Free Press reply praised the bicycle as a surprisingly rapid vehicle.
- Frank G. Lenz departs City Hall Park, New York, June 4, watched by 2,000 persons, for a globe-girdling bicycle trip via Niagara Falls, Chicago, the Pacific coast, Japan, China, India, Afghanistan, Persia, Turkey, and Europe; he carries a camera outfit and aims to cover 22,000 miles and return by June 4, 1894.
- During the Irvington-Milburn road race, Abe Mitchell of Irvington drove a light wagon through the crowd slashing his whip; seized by the cyclists, he was thrown to the ground and his buggy broken to pieces, barely saved from worse by cooler heads.
- A 265-mile cycle relay carrying a New York postmaster's message on the bicycle's usefulness for rural mail will start for Boston at 3 a.m. June 15, managed in stages by the Recorder, Henry Goodman of Hartford, and Lon Peck of Boston.
- Cycling flourishes in Saigon, where riders include the commandant of the troops and civil officers; the hard red-earth roads are grand, flat, and smooth, and moonlight runs through tropical vegetation are the chief attraction.
- The Bearings' misspelled-word competition: Arthur D. Ferris of South Norwalk found 'avenue' misspelled in a Rockaway Manufacturing Company ad; this week the word 'push' is hidden in another advertisement, with a framed pen-and-ink drawing drawn for the first correct postal received by June 25.
- General Howard's curt two-sentence reply to the bicycle-courier message from General Miles, sent via ordinary mail, prompts the Chicago Herald to note that the ride's main practical result was exposing the horrible condition of country roads between Chicago and New York.
- L.A.W. Secretary Abbot Bassett of Boston congratulates The Bearings on the relay race as one of the best object-lessons cycling has given to the world, noting that the inclement weather actually strengthened the good-roads argument.
- L.A.W. Second Vice President G. Carlton Brown of Elizabeth, N.J., praises the relay ride's plucky riders and calls the result more beneficial and far-reaching than even fair weather would have allowed for the good-roads cause.
- Notes from the relay ride: Charlie Dorntge finishing ten miles with bent forks after an accident; riders greasing sprockets with wagon grease for mud; George C. Smith spending days in bed after walking from Sing Sing to Tarrytown; Campbell and Rich forced to abandon racing wheels geared to sixty-eight for the heavy roads.
- Calendar of upcoming cycling fixtures from June through September 1892, covering division meets, road and track races, the national L.A.W. meet in Washington July 18-20, Illinois Division meet at Springfield, and Chicago club events including the Cook County Wheelmen's road race and the Washington Club handicap.
- A World's Columbian Exposition finance committee representative publicly criticises cycle manufacturers—citing Colonel Pope's refusal to subscribe despite personal appeals—for taking exhibition space at the 1893 Chicago Fair without contributing to its stock; Ames & Frost, Gormully & Jeffery, and Spalding's Chicago manager Gerould each offer defences or explanations.
- Notice that applications for World's Fair exhibit space in the Transportation building close July 1, listing cycling firms that had applied by March 22 (Gormully & Jeffery, Overman, Pope, Spalding, Stover and others) and asking manufacturers who have not yet applied to come forward.
- A.J. Nicolet of the Pope Company chased a bicycle thief across the South Side for nearly five hours, assisted by Danziger and Bliss; the thief crashed into a wheel-barrow and a wagon, eventually escaping from a surgeon's office through a rear door while a policeman refused to arrest him on the spot.
- Numerous Chicago cycle firms—Pope, Stokes, Gormully & Jeffery, Taylor Cycle Co., Spooner-Peterson, Spalding and others—agree to close retail stores at 1 p.m. on Saturdays through June, July, August, and September.
- The Taylor Cycle Co. of Chicago shows a Crypto geared ordinary with a 44-inch driver that Lumsden, Barrett, and Charlie Root admire for its smoothness; Root rode it home thirteen miles after a rain and found it a magnificent mud-wheel.
- Department of local trade news: Spooner-Peterson Co. to handle Buckingham & Adams safeties; Stokes Mfg. Co.'s English suits cutting prices at $10 against a dry-goods competitor; A. Featherstone beginning an $80,000 factory addition; Featherstone's branch stores paying; forty-nine repair jobs at Pope's shop by six o'clock Monday.
- Trade write-up of the Sterling bicycle built at the Union Mfg. & Plating Co.'s Chicago factory under vice-president Chas. F. Stokes, praising the extraordinary care in materials and finish from forge to assembling room.
- The Bearings prints and editorializes on a protest letter from Monarch Cycle Co. (per C.S. Merrill) objecting to a competitor's 'only high grade $135 pneumatic' advertisement and boasting that no ounce of cast metal is in the Monarch, calling the letter's pompous tone self-defeating and urging the firm to muzzle the writer.