The Bearings, Vol 5, No 24
Articles in this issue
- The Bearings' front-page column of comic paragraphs and verse on cycling life, with gags on a wheelman fined for kissing a girl, broken saddle springs, a pneumatic bursting on Broad street in Philadelphia, and barbs at professional racing men seeking reinstatement before the L. A. W. Racing Board.
- A humorous travel sketch signed 'William Twinkle' of the Early Rose Club's night high-wheel ride from Johnson's Corners, Indiana, to Springfield, Illinois, lodging at Col. Wiggins's Leland Hotel and watching the Fourth of July races where Munger and Lumsden were the prime favorites.
- Short national news items: F. J. Morawetz signed twenty-seven new League members at the Oshkosh meet; fourteen cyclists sailed for Glasgow to tour Britain; the Knights of Pythias of Syracuse formed a cycling division; and a Bearings man counted 107 cyclists in an hour in Lincoln Park, Chicago.
- A trade write-up of the Reform bicycle, handled by the T. D. Ganse Cycle Co. of Chicago, citing its showing in the Chicago-to-New York relay, Roy Keator's DeSoto road ride, the Pullman race, and Fourth of July wins at Springfield, Grand Forks, Winona, Denver and Leavenworth.
- A portrait page of League of American Wheelmen officials urging members to seek them out at the Washington meet, naming Col. Charles L. Burdett, W. M. Brewster and G. Carleton Brown, plus Clarence Hodson, Charles F. Cossum and George A. Perkins of the Legislative Committee and others.
- An editorial disclaiming a personal quarrel with the Boston Bicycling World, defending The Bearings' role as the vehicle for L. A. W. members' grievances over the official organ's handling of the addresses of membership applicants.
- An editorial prompted by F. E. Spooner's twenty-four-hour record at Parkside, conceding his endurance but deprecating such feats as a 'sorry method of reaching glory' and urging that would-be twenty-four-hour riders be discouraged.
- An editorial responding to H. Crowther's article in Sporting Life on cash prizes and amateurism, arguing cash prizes cannot remedy the sham amateur system unless the L. A. W. controls professional riders and excludes the reformed-professional frauds.
- An editorial defending the annual L. A. W. general meet against suggestions to abolish it or end local entertainment funds, anticipating the Washington gathering as the grandest yet.
- A short editorial quoting a Tennessee letter that applicants' addresses must be published in the Bulletin so Southern members can identify and exclude Black applicants, with a closing note that the English road-racing crusade panic is subsiding.
- Chief Consul Davis of the Kansas Division, at the Wichita Fourth of July meet, urged moving the L. A. W. Bulletin's publication to Chicago and reforming the secretaryship; The Bearings appends an editor's note defending Secretary Bassett and blaming Bi-World's lukewarm support.
- The Chicago First Regiment Cycle Corps under Sergeant F. B. Hart drew notice at the Springfield, Ill., state encampment, carrying mails and dispatches; Private McLachlan rode to Gov. Fifer's office and back in twenty-six minutes, and Sergt. Hart and Private Cutting carried an invitation to ex-Gov. Oglesby at Elkhart, twenty-five miles distant.
- Notice that M. E. Elliott's King of Scorchers Roadster (No. 21,718, with Dunlop tires and Garford Scorcher saddle) was stolen from the Detroit Y. M. C. A. on July 6; a reward is offered through F. G. Smith, Sons & Co.
- The Congressional Cycle Club has fitted a wheel room in the circular crypt of the U. S. Capitol, used by congressmen including Jerry Simpson, Tom L. Johnson of Ohio, Joseph E. Washington of Tennessee and T. B. Reed of Maine.
- A New York man advocates using bicycles to deliver mail in thinly settled rural districts, arguing that good roads and a bicycle postal service would at least double newspaper and magazine circulation among farmers.
- Nine Chicago boys aged twelve to twenty were arrested for stealing bicycles; thirty of fifty reported missing wheels were traced to the gang after two were caught trying to sell a stolen wheel.
- Dr. H. W. Hendricks of Louisville was arrested for fast driving after running into and injuring W. C. Furnass and damaging his wheel; the Kentucky Division has taken up the case to test cyclists' road rights, with a hearing set for September 9.
- Supervisors of Woodbury County, Iowa, will drain the townships of Woodbury, Floyd, Liberty, Lakeport, Grange and Sloan with deep ditches and use the earth thrown up to build good roads.
- About seventy-five people, including ladies and children, leave Chicago for the L. A. W. Washington meet, uniformed in white steamer caps and coats and traveling by special Pullman sleepers on the scenic B. & O.
- The Century Road Club is in statu quo pending the League meet, with a records committee (including W. C. Thorne, secretary of Montgomery Ward & Co., Chicago) receiving road-record claims while its constitution is completed.
- A reprint from the Springfield, Ill., Journal praising the gentlemanly conduct of the wheelmen at the Illinois Division meet and the first strong appearance of lady members.
- Praise for the tourists' agency of W. A. Fletcher & Co., 43 East Van Buren street, Chicago, as a leading source of American and English cycling papers; last week each copy of The Bearings it sold contained a $10 Confederate bill, $500 being disposed of in that way.
- English authority R. C. Nesbitt judges the geared ordinary superior to the safety except up severe gradients, and prefers the Marriott & Cooper to the Crypto for fast work, though he considers it too early to give a definitive speed opinion.
- The Buffalo Exposition Cycling Association will award $2,000 in prizes over twelve races at Buffalo, N. Y., on August 20, including a special prize for breaking the American competition mile track record; entries close August 15 with F. L. Hartmeyer.
- Tables of world's and American safety, competitive safety, ordinary and tandem records, listing riders such as P. J. Berlo, G. F. Taylor, W. W. Windle, A. A. Zimmerman, Hoyland Smith, F. J. Osmond and R. L. Ede.
- The full programme of quarter-, half-, one- and two-mile ordinary and safety events, including the mile tandem national championship, to be run at the national L. A. W. meet at Washington.
- A comparison of Hoyland Smith's new American records from six to twenty miles, wrested from Charley Dorntge at Springfield July 5, against the previous American and world's figures held by Windle, Taylor and Osmond.
- At Concord, N. H., P. J. Berlo of the Manhattan Athletic Club rode a mile in 2:16 to equal Osmond's record; the same day at Springfield, Mass., W. F. Murphy of the New York Athletic Club broke Windle's world ordinary mile record with 2:22 1-5, paced by Graves, Olmstead and Landry.
- A. A. Zimmerman won the fifty-mile N. C. U. championship of England from twenty starters by twenty yards in 2:37:32 3-5 after a slow race and late sprint; Mr. Atty of the Raleigh Company says Zimmerman now knows as much about English-style distance racing as any man in England.
- A reprint from The Cyclist celebrating Zimmerman's one- and five-mile safety championship wins in England and chiding Osmond for not preparing himself to meet the American crack, calling it unprecedented in English athletic history.
- A second reprint from The Cyclist lamenting that Osmond, the fastest cyclist England has produced, failed to start against Zimmerman, leaving nothing but to congratulate the American on his two clever wins.
- Racing Board chairman H. E. Raymond's refusal to let the suspended J. P., E. J. and J. Clark and G. E. Quinn ride the Linscott road race at Boston, printed with the exchange of letters between Press Cycling Club president J. C. Kerrison and Raymond over the League's jurisdiction over suspended men in road events.
- The Chicago Cycling Club announces a two-days meet at Parkside track on August 26-27, listing the day-by-day programme of novice, handicap, scratch and team events on a track considered fit for a 2:20 mile.
- The Pennsylvania Bicycle Club will follow the Washington national championships with a star meet at Philadelphia on July 23, drawing prominent racers and Canadian riders to compete for valuable prizes.
- P. J. Berlo beat Munger, Hoyland Smith, Murphy, Barrett and Hess to win the ten-mile championship of America (first prize a piano) in 30:40 2-5 at the Riverside Wheelmen's second annual meet on Manhattan field before twelve thousand people; G. C. Smith of the Riverside Wheelmen won a wildly celebrated half-mile Division championship over Carl Hess and G. A. Banker.
- At the Kentucky Division meet at Lexington, July 12-13, Max Wilson won the one-mile state championship and Chas. Croninger won the ordinary championship for the fifth consecutive year; the new division constitution barred Black riders, with full race summaries included.
- The Milwaukee Wheelmen captured nearly all the prizes at the Wisconsin Division meet at Oshkosh, July 7-8, with W. C. Sanger, F. T. Andrae, C. W. Price and newcomer Louie Reed of Ripon starring across two days; Reed, only seventeen, won the 2:50 class mile and the mile handicap.
- The eighth annual Indiana Division meet at Vincennes, July 11-12, where W. C. Marmon of Indianapolis won the half-mile state championship and F. Ellis Hunter took several events including the two-mile state championship; Carl Fischer won the novice mile in 2:45.
- The New Hampshire meet at Concord, July 12, where Berlo rode a mile in 2:16 against time but was beaten in the racing events twice by H. C. Tyler and once by G. F. Taylor; Harry Hall of Concord won the one-mile state championship in 2:36 1-5.
- The Ramblers club of Buffalo's well-attended meet at Tonawanda, where Charley Dorntge starred, making a mile from scratch in 2:27 against a strong wind and the five miles in 13:40 1-4, narrowly failing to break G. F. Taylor's five-mile competition record.
- The Nebraska Division meet at Hastings on the Fourth, with over two hundred wheelmen in the parade and J. H. Kastman of Omaha winning the morning six-mile race; Mockett won both the one-mile and two-mile state championships before an afternoon crowd of 12,000.
- Sixty Boston riders contested the first annual twelve-mile Linscott road race; F. H. Pratt finished first in 37:55 and E. A. McDuffie won the time medal in 34:58, after the suspended J. P. and J. Clark of the Press Club and George E. Quinn were barred.
- The second annual Texas Division meet at Houston's Magnolia Park on the Fourth, where W. A. Parker of Waco won both the half- and one-mile Division championships and Todd of St. Louis took the five-mile Southern championship.
- At Riverside, Cal., on the Fourth, D. L. Burke of Los Angeles broke the one-mile coast record in 2:40 2-5, improving on Grant Bell's 2:42, and also won the three-mile race in 8:33 4-5, shattering the coast record of 9:58.
- The Los Angeles Wheelmen's second annual road race to Santa Monica (18¼ miles) was won by H. B. Cromwell, with Frank Waller taking the time medal in 1:02:28 and Mattison setting the fastest ordinary time on the coast for that distance.
- The Columbia Wheelmen's Fourth of July meet at Columbia, Pa., where W. C. Clark won the ten-mile road race, D. Fornswalt the ten-mile championship of five counties, and W. B. Pollock, the scratch man, the mile handicap.
- The Red Band Cyclers' twenty-five-mile relay race over the Shrewsbury and Middletown turnpikes at Red Bank, N. J., on the Fourth, was won by the first squad under captain Miller.
- Six members of the Montclair Bicycle Club relayed thirty-five miles from Greenwood Lake, New York, to Montclair in two hours and twenty-eight minutes the previous Monday.
- S. W. Merrihew of Wilmington, brought in by H. Crowther to revise Geo. D. Gideon's handicaps at the Scranton races, has been made official handicapper of Delaware, curtailing Gideon's territory.
- Chicago Cycling Club races at Parkside, open to other clubs, where Bliss (55 yards) beat Lumsden scratch in the mile handicap in 2:30 2-5, Lumsden took the half-mile from Van Sicklen in 1:12 1-5, and Githens won the mile scratch from Bliss and George Thorne in 2:45.
- Wheelmen of Alamance County, N. C., raced at the fair grounds on the Fourth for three gold medals; the championship was won by W. I. Holt of Burlington, with James Pomeroy, Jr., second and LeRoy King third in 3:26.
- David Nasmith, Canada's long-distance road champion, lowered the Canadian Century Road Club's 100-mile record from 8:08:00 to 6:45:00 on the road from Kingston to Belleville and return.
- A twelve-relay ride from Kalamazoo to Detroit, 155 miles, carried a letter from Col. E. M. Irish of the Michigan National Guard to Brigadier General Robinson an hour and twenty-seven minutes inside schedule time; the roads were in good shape.
- Zimmerman will make his first American track appearance of the season at the Asbury Park Wheelmen's international tournament, August 5-6; the Asbury Park Wheelmen lost several hundred dollars on their last tournament.
- The Humber-Rover Cycle Co. announces a twenty-pound Humber racer built especially for Arthur E. Lumsden, who will manage the company's retail business after July 20.
- The Westfield Athletic Club won the second trial heat for the Union County, N. J., championship, defeating the Union County Roadsters after the Mercury Wheelmen withdrew with a disabled team.
- George Thorne of the Chicago C. C. will attempt to lower the 100-mile track record of 5:30:12 2-5 held by Leslie Newland of England at Parkside track a week from the issue date.
- Bidlake broke the 197-mile London-to-York tricycle record on June 22 by 2:41:00, finishing in 15:28:00, and S. F. Edge placed the bicycle record for the same distance at 12:49:00 on June 29.
- Osmond was on the Leeds track when Zimmerman won the one- and five-mile N. C. U. championships but refused to mount; The Cyclist reported Zimmerman rode in magnificent form.
- The twenty-five-mile American road record was not actually lowered at Kingston, Ont., on July 1, because the Kingston course falls short of twenty-five miles; a re-survey is proposed to establish a genuine Canadian record.
- The Buffalo board of aldermen appropriated money for bicycle races for the first time in the city's history on July 4, with $1,000 promised for next year.
- Doubt is cast on F. C. Graves's twenty-five-mile road record of 1:15:14 on a Warwick Ghost made Decoration Day, the course having been measured by cyclometer rather than surveyed.
- An editorial jab at a rival journal for apologizing that its ten pages could not hold all the July 4 reports, noting The Bearings ran seventeen pages with special telegraphic reports from California and other distant sources.
- Short racing items: George K. Barrett withdrew his $100 forfeit for match races with Milwaukee's Wallace Sanger; a typewriter was offered as first prize in a Marshalltown, Ia., handicap—the first such prize in American racing; and the class system of racing is gaining favor in Buffalo.
- A calendar of forthcoming July, August, September and October race meets and Chicago club fixtures, headed by the national L. A. W. meet at Washington, July 18-20, and including the Chicago C. C. meet at Parkside August 26-27.
- The issue's main feature: F. E. Spooner of Chicago broke the world twenty-four-hour track record at Parkside, riding 374 miles 1,605 yards on a 29-pound March wheel geared to 64 inches, with fifteen pace-makers including A. E. Lumsden, J. P. Bliss and H. A. Githens; the three-part account covers mile-by-mile and hour-by-hour record tables, the dramatic narrative of rain, saddle-soreness and late-night fatigue, and the wild finish as trainer Stackpole collapsed and Herrick played a hose on Spooner to keep him awake.
- A New York racing column on Jack Hazelton of the R. A. C. winning second prizes at Irvington-Milburn on the 'Bogie man'; on W. F. Murphy's poor 1892 track form against his record-breaking 1891 season; and on P. J. Berlo and the M. A. C. team's plans to push the one-mile record toward 2:12.
- W. C. Belknap of Mobile, Ala., found 'whell' in the Horton, Gilmore, McWilliams & Co. advertisement of June 17; Howard Soule of Passaic, N. J., wins the June 24 prize for finding 'wou' in the Warwick Cycle Mfg. Co. ad; the contest is temporarily discontinued while the racing season depletes the supply of illustrations.
- New York athletic clubs are notifying the Metropolitan Association of the A. A. U. that they will drop scheduled athletic games and substitute cycling events, recognizing that cycling is gradually superseding all other sports in public opinion.