The Bearings, Vol 7, No 15
Articles in this issue
- The Chicago L.A.W. General Committee plans a night excursion on Lake Michigan steamers for August meet visitors, levies a first 20% assessment on $20,000 in guarantees to pay for track construction, and places Vice President Sheridan under a $5,000 bond.
- The Chicago race track at 35th Street and Wentworth Avenue will be expanded from a one-third to a half-mile course at no extra cost to the L.A.W., with Chief Consul Gerould expecting completion by May 25.
- Arrangements for the Decoration Day road race finishing at Pullman include a 720-seat grand stand split between the Associated Clubs and the Pullman Bicycle Club, with entries closing the following day and side-number requirements for entrants.
- A Bearings reporter finds the Pullman road race course badly cut up by new electric railway construction along Stony Island Avenue and a demolished Sand Hill, predicting the race will degenerate into an indiscriminate scramble with serious accidents likely.
- President Randall and Secretary Gregory issue a blunt circular to delinquent members, warning the club owes $1,300 with less than $200 in hand and threatening expulsions; the club has appropriated $250 for its racing men and plans a July 1 meet on the new track.
- Colonel Albert A. Pope publishes an open letter protesting proposed bicycle taxes in Lowell, Massachusetts and Paris, arguing that bicycles are a necessity for working-class commuters who ride to factories and that cyclists deserve a road-improvement bounty rather than a tax.
- Governor Russell's relay message arrived in Chicago 22 hours and 46 minutes late; L.D. Munger was badly injured by a beer wagon at Hammond while Frank Waller completed his leg despite a fall, and several other couriers suffered sprains and injuries along the route.
- The editors note that the L.A.W. Racing Board has no authentic records between 1889 and 1892, as incoming chairman Howard E. Raymond found only those reported at the Philadelphia assembly, suggesting some records were made but never properly submitted.
- An informant reports that a California cycling club enrolled non-existent and disreputable members to secure a division meet, and that the League hushed up the investigation to avoid losing membership fees.
- The Bearings defends relay rides against a rival paper's criticism, arguing they serve the cause of better roads regardless of season, and recommends the Century Road Club adopt a 90-hour schedule for its upcoming relay so as not to invite the press headline that riders are behind time.
- Several insurance companies have refused to insure cyclists' lives on grounds that the hunched riding position causes Bright's disease of the kidneys, and three Louisville physicians are now investigating the claim.
- Editorial overview of the contentious Massachusetts division race sanction dispute between Worcester and Boston, predicting it will result in broader L.A.W. sanction rules and the eventual election of a calmer chief consul to replace the energetic but divisive incumbent.
- X. C. C. (American Cyclist) responds to The Bearings' earlier editorial, clarifying that the Hartford letter attacking L.A.W. President Burdett was genuine but ghost-written by a disgruntled Hartford wheelman who had been passed over for offices, with a younger man used as a cat's-paw to send it.
- The weekly miscellany column covers German fancy rider August Marschner's upcoming American tour managed by Paul H. Jacoby; amateurism irregularities at the Worcester and Springfield meets; a crowd rushing the track at the Surrey meet; John S. Prince's controversial reception in Houston; and the Sarnia, Ontario, salt-and-cinders track that retains its binding from year to year.
- Detailed account of the resolution of the Worcester-Boston race sanction dispute: after a turbulent Massachusetts division board meeting on May 5 with heated exchanges between Abbot Bassett and Worcester's Schervee, Chairman Raymond accompanied Worcester's President Knight and secured formal consent for Boston's Waltham meet sanction.
- New York correspondent reports that since Zimmerman's departure the city is cycling-quiet; the Metropolitan Association has built a greatly enhanced prize list for the Irvington-Milburn road race (entries close May 16 with H.L. Saltonstall, 96 Broadway); and the Brooklyn Bicycle Club has leased a furnished six-bowling-alley club house at Bath Beach for $600 per year.
- San Francisco correspondent praises the daily press's growing cycling coverage, reports that hired-wheel riders are violating Golden Gate Park rules because rental establishments never inform them of the rules, and notes the Bay City Wheelmen's new Central Park cement track is under contractor consideration.
- Around 120 cyclists from St. Louis, Springfield, Jacksonville, Quincy, Hannibal, and other cities rode the famous Pike County gravel pike to Clarksville on May 8; Bert Harding, George Tivy, and Will Laing also completed a century around the Clarksville Belt, Harding finishing in 6:30 actual riding time on a 70-gear wheel.
- Humboldt, Kansas correspondent reports almost continual spring rain and muddy roads, growing but price-conscious bicycle sales with buyers still afraid of pneumatic tires, and urges local officials to advertise the Fort Scott state meet early.
- Mrs. Moffat and Miss Mattie Moffat completed the longest ladies' ride in Utah territory history—51 miles from Salt Lake City to Provo against heavy wind and over storm-damaged roads; the newly formed Union Club already has several century riders, and Harry Emise plans to wheel to Chicago in about 15 days.
- The Springfield Bicycle Club directors have made a definite appropriation for racing team expenses: Van Wagoner will specialize in road races, while Tyler, Nelson, and Williamson target Decoration Day tournaments; the team will debut new black cheviot braided uniforms with red silk club emblems.
- Writer "Bolav" profiles English champion F.J. Osmond after dining with him, comparing his loose-jointed, stoop-shouldered six-foot-two physique to Zimmerman and the greyhound, and praising him as an intelligent, unassuming entertainer who is not in the least afraid of Zimmerman.
- Chicago Cycling Club members escort Osmond to Pullman over Illinois Central railroad tracks, where he dismounts repeatedly on the rough path; he condemns the Pullman road course as more suitable for swimming than cycling, and declares he will confine future road riding to Chicago's boulevards.
- London correspondent C.W. Hartung reports Zimmerman is expected at the Catford meeting at Herne Hill on May 6 and received a hearty Southampton reception; H. Sturmey urges the Union to create a cash-prize professional class; and P.W. Brown tied the mile handicap record at 2:18 4-5 on the new Herne Hill surface.
- Description from La Nature of Lt. Thebault's "wind-cutter" or Butterfly—a celluloid wing shield on a wire frame clamped to the front fork—claimed to reduce air resistance by one-fifth to one-quarter, weighing less than a pound and settable in two minutes.
- Weekly column of short news briefs: Rome has a cement track; Lincoln, Nebraska counts 3,000 cyclists; Sanger reportedly rode a standing quarter-mile in 29 seconds at Springfield without pacemakers; D.L. Burke of California fell training and will miss the racing season; and Cycling of Toronto issued a 110-page illustrated supplement of 21 Canadian racing men.
- Reprinted from the English paper Cycling under the byline Juggins K. Juggins, the piece argues that aspiring racers need far more than strength—they require a sound heart, cool nerves under thousands of watching eyes, and tactical judgment acquired by experience rather than by answering the editor's query form.
- Regular column reprinting humorous items from small-town American newspapers: a Wausau rider declares he will soon challenge champion J.S. Johnson; a bicycle planted in a Nebraska cornfield by a thief is recovered by a section hand; and San Francisco dealers trade wheels on ridiculously small installments.
- Feature by Hugh Lindsay on the Juniata Wheelmen of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania—organized in 1881 from twenty non-riders pooling $5 each for a single Columbia ordinary—reorganized in 1885 to span the Juniata River valley across six counties from Altoona to Harrisburg, with nearly 200 members and club quarters in the purpose-built Drake Building.
- Editorial arguing that the English custom of building bicycles to individual customer specifications—faddists demanding their own frames, tires, cranks, and handle bars—has become a nuisance delaying factory output, and recommending American manufacturers resist the trend while offering only a small stock of alternative handle bar styles.
- President George E. Curtis writes that after the U.S. Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania refused to enjoin Bretz & Curtis's manufacture of Solid Comfort saddles (Judge Dallas filing April 5, 1893), the Garford Company's subsequent personal attack may be met with legal action in the proper channels.
- London correspondent teases imminent news of a new tire called the "Black" tire from Dundee, fastened by its own inflation and a wire that twice encircles the rim, but withholds details pending permission to publish.
- World's Columbian Exposition report from Cycle Row in the Transportation Building: the Overman pavilion displays a gold-plated Victor Flyer in a glass case with an inflated transparent inner tube stretched its full length; the Pope exhibit features a Columbia Model 30 and a photograph of a 1643 stained-glass cherub on a velocipede; and Gormully & Jeffery will hang a dismembered Rambler showing its construction.
- Ernest A. Le Sueur of Ottawa responds to a Bicycling World writer, arguing that the round sprocket produces enormously uneven chain pull—not even distribution as claimed—and that the elliptical sprocket reduces extreme tension variation, lessening the maximum pull that tends to twist sprockets out of line.
- London correspondent reports on A.W. Gamage's thirteenth annual trade dinner, attended by 87 persons including Major Knox Holmes and Lewis Stroud, where Gamage noted his staff had grown from 12 at the first dinner to over 100, with several toasts and a musical programme.
- Essay by "A Practical Mechanic" tracing crank development from rectangular to round section, arguing for adjustable or custom crank lengths proportioned to each rider's leg, and defending cycling "hobbies"—innovations like Col. Pope's bicycle, Overman's spring fork, and Dunlop's pneumatic tire—as more profitable long-term than competing on standard articles.
- Technical article by J.F. Palmer explaining that his tire's puncture-closing device handles ordinary tread punctures automatically; larger tread cuts are fixed roadside with a rubber-solution syringe and tape in minutes; and through-to-rim punctures require unlatching the tire, patching the inner tube, and relacing.
- Weekly Chicago trade column: business on Cycle Row is quiet; a lawsuit reveals fraud in the sale of the American Cycle Co.'s Jackson Street plant whose mortgages exceeded the disclosed value by $44,000; Parker Sercombe demonstrates a new narrow hollow rim for his Telegram tire; and Pope Mfg. shows a rigid 19-pound '93 Columbia track racer.