The Bearings, Vol 6, No 17
Articles in this issue
- Front-page editorial column of short satirical squibs by 'Phoenix' covering cycling topics including the prevalence of bloomers in Chicago versus eastern cities, controversies over the Racing Board's treatment of western riders and its letter that amounted to a premium on dishonesty, road improvement prospects, and Windle's training prospects for the coming season.
- A humorous fictional Thanksgiving dispatch from 'Johnson's Corners' narrating a chaotic feast attended by cycling luminaries including Windle, Zimmerman, Tyler, Munger, Bliss, and others, ending with the grocer-host's entire store stripped bare by his uninvited guests.
- Impressionistic account of a Sunday cycling excursion south of St. Louis through rock-road countryside to a riverside farmhouse, praising the picturesque Mississippi scenery and the rural hospitality of Missouri, including a sixteen-mile return leg ridden in 1:05 before a gale.
- Editorial arguing that the L.A.W. official membership list should include all applicants' street addresses as required by the constitution, using John S. Beeler's correctly published address in the Illinois Division list as evidence that selective publication violates members' rights.
- Editorial defending a cycling publication's proposed southern tour for leading riders against critics who called the promoters blackguards, arguing the shamateur system is hypocritical farce and that the L.A.W. should establish a professional class or abandon nominal control of racing.
- Editorial noting that The Bearings has offered its columns to publish Century Road Club official matter without being an apologist for the club, while reporting that election ballots are promised for mailing that week after delays caused by difficulty finding willing officers.
- Editorial supporting Colonel Pope's campaign to collect one million signatures on a petition to Congress requesting a national roads department and roads exhibits at Washington and the World's Fair, urging each wheelman to gather 100–500 signatures and return completed petitions to The Bearings office.
- Weekly notes department covering road improvement progress including National League meetings, the Memphis convention's merger with the National League, L.A.W. division election results across multiple states, a St. Louis Cycling Club barbecue at Barrett Station, the delayed Century Road Club election ballots, and Rev. Caspar Wistar Hiatt's sermon on bicycles delivered from a platform flanked by two wheels at his Kalamazoo church.
- Detailed interview with the Pullman Company's agent Mr. Appleyard, announcing that the Hotel Florence will never again serve as the finish of Chicago's annual road race after cyclists left it in a wrecked condition following the previous May's event, with proposals to relocate the finish to a new bicycle track and clubhouse on the company's island grounds.
- Brief profile of young Huzelstein, who recently broke Shoreland's twelve-hour road record including thirty miles without pacemakers, noting that his near-deafness caused him to miss his food depots in the Bordeaux-Paris race and that he is confident of breaking the record again.
- Regular miscellany department leading with a profile—and photograph—of road rider Gratton E. Hancock of the Century C.C., Syracuse, who overcame severe rheumatism to win the Syracuse championship in 1:31:00, plus an anecdote about W. H. Arthur's boxing demonstration at the Illinois C.C., and brief items covering bicycle theft in Reno, Norwegian postal cyclists, a fatal Indianapolis riding accident, and the Manhattan Athletic Club's financial collapse.
- Short items clipped from rural newspapers in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota reporting on new wheel purchases and inter-town cycling trips by local residents, illustrating the spread of cycling into smaller communities.
- Detailed listing of domestic cycle manufacturers and accessory makers—including Pope Mfg. Co., Overman Wheel Co., Gormully & Jeffery, Western Wheel Works, Monarch Cycle Co., and dozens more across Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and other states—who have applied for space at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
- Report on Judge Townsend's Circuit Court ruling granting Featherstone an injunction against Ormonde Cycle Co., McDonald, and Willis for infringing the Dunlop reissued pneumatic tire patent No. 11,153, holding that a British license cannot authorise importation and sale in the United States in violation of the American patent.
- Editorial arguing that suitable press quarters should be provided gratis at the January Philadelphia Cycle Show given the expense publications incur for travel and telegraphs to cover it, and announcing that The Bearings will provide readers an analytical description of exhibits rather than the standard formulaic report.
- Trade note observing that scorchers in 1892 chose very light racing wheels for everyday road use—one Chicago rider covered 160 miles in a day on a 26-pound wheel—and predicting that demand for wheels of about thirty pounds will increase in 1893.
- Comprehensive London preview by C. W. Hartung of the upcoming Stanley Show, forecasting that rear-driving safeties will overwhelm front drivers, wheel weights will fall two to three pounds from 1892 patterns with skeleton barrel hubs and weldless-steel racers down to eighteen pounds, and reviewing tire exhibitors including Dunlop's 1893 pattern, the Clincher, and two new entrants—Stretton & Nethercott's Ridge pneumatic and Fearnhead's Climax—alongside lamp and machinery exhibits.
- Humorous first-person narrative by Hill Wylie recounting his cross-country 'Dead Broke' tour as a penniless cycling vagrant, quoting the increasingly pointed remarks about his audacity and appetite entered in his autograph book by hosts from Hagerstown, Maryland to Pullman, Illinois, including entries by the Dayton Bicycle Club, the Chicago Cycling Club, and Carl Fisher of the Zig Zag Club.