The Bearings, Vol 7, No 3
Articles in this issue
- New Associated Cycling Clubs president R.D. Garden pledges to revive the classic Pullman road race on Decoration Day 1893 with police cooperation and a $2 entry fee; the clubs elect new officers and debate course options, entry limits, and use of the new Pullman Athletic Club facilities.
- F.E. Spooner of Morgan & Wright has obtained permission to enter England's Cuca Cup 24-hour race and will train under Stackpole, while Waller prepares under Leeming in Indianapolis.
- Rep. Allen J. Greer introduces a Minnesota house bill to appoint a three-member state highway commission including a civil engineer, to investigate road-building methods and costs and report to the next legislature with a $5,000 appropriation.
- Two bills—Senator Green's and Rep. Dearborn's—introduced in Springfield provide for Illinois townships to construct permanent hard roads funded by bonds at up to 6% interest, with property owners petitioning the town clerk to initiate the process.
- The Alhambra, California bicycle club has built a well-banked quarter-mile track, seventeen feet wide, on ten leased acres near the town center and will formally open it with field sports in about six weeks.
- Correspondent Albert G. Roux reports from Paris that all of France's best cyclists—holders of national and world records—are classified as professionals and cannot compete at the Chicago international championships, leaving only weaker amateurs, while professionals Stephane and Cassignard may attend.
- An Orlando, Florida race meet on February 9 drew over 500 spectators despite rain-damaged track; E.A. Nelson of St. Augustine won the mile open, C.H. Saunders took the Florida championship and five-mile handicap, and Jack Prince rode an exhibition five miles.
- Savannah's race meet on February 22-23 will include a novel half-mile egg race in which contestants carry eggs by spoon while repeatedly mounting and dismounting their bicycles, with no hand contact allowed.
- L.A.W. Racing Chairman Raymond tells The Bearings he will propose that the National Assembly totally ignore road racing in future—except competition with professionals—by inserting the word 'track' wherever necessary in the racing rules.
- Zimmerman will make his first track appearance of 1893 at Savannah on Wednesday, sailing from New York on the steamer Kansas City with C.A. Persons, S.G. Whittaker, W.J. Morgan, and George S. McDonald.
- C.M. Murphy protests that his L.A.W. suspension and prize confiscation from the September Maryland club class races were based on an erroneous time report; prizes will likely revert to the original finishers, as though no trouble had taken place.
- English cyclists plan a pear-shaped, four-laps-to-the-mile kite track at Leeds; A.C. Edwards' N.C.U. suspension is commuted from September 30 to May 31 giving him a chance at the championships, and R.L. Ede ('the pocket Hercules') leaves Ormonde to represent Humber.
- The L.A.W. Racing Board will drop cases against riders who violated the amateur rule at Nashville and Milwaukee, as each defendant filed a sworn denial and proof was insufficient, illustrating what the paper calls 'the beauty (?) of the present amateur rule.'
- J. Bloch of Charlottenburg extends a special invitation to the London A.C. party—with Zimmerman as the central figure—to compete at the Berlin Cycle Racing Society's international meet on June 11-12.
- W.H. ('Pop') De Graaf, forty-one-year-old secretary-treasurer of New York Division, dies of pneumonia after a sudden relapse; he was a beloved leader of the Harlem Wheelmen and Manhattan Athletic Club and a key organizer of Zimmerman's welcome home from England.
- The Bearings reports, via Illinois Cycle Co. president H.J. Winn, that Missouri and several southern L.A.W. divisions plan to demand at Philadelphia the right to exclude Black applicants from membership and will secede if the demand fails.
- The Bearings restates its editorial mission as a medium serving manufacturers, dealers, and riders alike, attributing its circulation—the largest of any independent cycling journal—to faithful adherence to this broader policy.
- The Bearings previews the upcoming L.A.W. national convention, arguing that Col. Burdett's proposal to redirect division funds to the national treasury is the most consequential amendment, and debating the racing class B question, Good Roads funding, and the proposed negro-exclusion measure.
- A lyrical editorial welcomes the approach of spring and argues, drawing on a recent discussion among cyclists, that the true secret charm of cycling is the bodily health it produces—the exhilaration felt after each ride that makes abandoning the wheel a perceptible loss.
- The Bearings notes that both J.S. Johnson and Tom Eck have publicly opposed the National Cycling Association's cash-prize league; the paper wryly observes that Eck's bread is not buttered on the N.C.A. side and his interest in keeping the L.A.W. in control of racing is self-evident.
- Extended editorial rebutting Bicycling World's attempt to paint The Bearings as a jealous business competitor; The Bearings insists its standpoint is simply that the L.A.W. should support Good Roads—a public movement of broad social benefit—rather than subsidizing a private weekly newspaper.
- An Indiana assembly bill would require cyclists to yield the beaten path to horses and dismount whenever animals show fright, with a fine of $1–$25; Indiana Chief Consul Hay has circulated the text with arguments for its unconstitutionality and urged members to contact their legislators.
- Nine Alabama division cyclists stranded overnight on a riverbank after a ferryman refused to cross each sued the ferry company and won $10 under state penalty law; Chief Consul Harris led the successful action and the paper praises it as an illustration of rights wheelmen too rarely exercise.
- The Bearings defends Milwaukee's Walter Sanger against British Sport's contemptuous dismissal, arguing that the big, quietly determined young rider demonstrated genuine ability at Chicago's dedication meet and may surprise English critics as Zimmerman once surprised them.
- Essay arguing that the mechanical drudgery of newspaper-office routine stifles a writer's best work, using Bill Nye's insistence on distance from the New York World as evidence, and noting that one celebrated anonymous cycling writer flourishes precisely by staying apart from the office.
- A correspondent recounts how Philadelphia's miserably slow cable cars and snow-blocked streets drove him to walk twelve blocks while a horse car failed to overtake him, concluding that such wretched conditions actually drive live men to the wheel.
- Portrait of Coventry cycling illustrator George Moore: a small, blonde, convivial man who scorches to the post office in the dark with batches of finished drawings, works in solitary rural dens far from London, and turns out enormous quantities of catalogue and sketch work.
- Western regional notes: the Alameda Bicycle and Athletic Club restricts membership to riders aged 18–40; Oregon's anti-bicycle 100-yard road ordinance is repealed 49-9 in the state house; Denver Rambler Charles Pugh successfully tests a bicycle ice skate on a frozen lake; a clerical bicycle club forms in Pueblo, Colorado under Rev. E. Trumbull Lee.
- A.F. Dawson of Clinton, Iowa describes how severe winter conditions have crusted the flat western prairie with a smooth snow surface stretching for miles—fences buried and obstructions covered—allowing hundreds of cyclists, including many women, to spin freely in conditions he compares to riding on a summer lake.
- Department featuring the Boston Bicycle Club's 14th-anniversary banquet with old-timers C.E. Pratt, F.W. Weston, and A.W. Steadman; a bicycle improvised as an ambulance from fence rails and a sheep hurdle in England; and a warm review of Reuben Goldthwaite's 'Bicycling in Rural England,' praised for its first-class literary style.
- News department: Australian correspondent 'Dingo' reports the Austral Wheel Race will likely be abandoned after Melbourne B.C. lost $40,000 despite making $1,000 at their two-day meet; the Fitzroy and Southern District Clubs contest the inter-club road race championship; Rochester wheelmen hold a contest for most popular wheelman with a Columbia wheel prize.
- Club social notes from Chicago and beyond: Cook County Wheelmen and Lake View C.C. hold progressive euchre parties; the Oak Park C.C. Mother Goose entertainment draws 200 people; the Dayton Bicycle Club prepares its second annual minstrel show; the Buffalo Ramblers logged 153,004 miles among 93 members in 1892, with F.E. Klipfel leading at 4,600 miles.
- George S. Webb of the new Aurora Cycle Co. and C.F. Smith of Indiana Bicycle Co. both argue that forcing unpopular design 'hobbies' on the public is folly; Smith credits his commercial success to adopting the most popular frame design and using the best available materials and workmanship.
- Chicago cycle dealers met at the Wellington Hotel under Charles F. Stokes and debated second-hand wheel trade-ins; retail-only men favored acceptance while wholesale-retail dealers opposed it; J.O. Blake of Gormully & Jeffery is appointed to maintain a stolen-bicycle register, and a committee of three will recruit new dealer members.
- The Shelby Steel Tube Co. and Shelby Cycle Mfg. Co. merge in Shelby, Ohio, raising capital to $400,000; Capt. D.L. Cockley is re-elected president and B.J. Williams named secretary-treasurer of the combined company, which employs 225 men and expects output of 350,000–400,000 feet of tubing per month.
- English cycle manufacturers narrowly pass an amendment calling for joint negotiations with the Stanley Club to combine their two annual shows into one; manufacturers object that the Stanley Show lets foreign makers copy English patterns and that it is held too early in the season.
- The previous issue of The Bearings was held at the post office and had to be recalled because the Hill Cycle Mfg. Co. advertisement was construed as violating lottery laws; four pages were removed and reprinted before the paper could be re-mailed.
- Frank Douglas, president of Chicago's Kenwood Manufacturing Co., presents a detailed crank-position diagram analysis showing that the elliptical sprocket wheel loses 15–16% of foot-pound efficiency compared with a round gear through the effective stroke, and challenges anyone to refute this by correct figures or experiment.
- Profile of Phillip R. Gormully and Thomas B. Jeffery of the Chicago-based Gormully & Jeffery Mfg. Co., whose decade of success was built on sustained patent litigation and advocacy of the spring frame; Jeffery's office is described as a museum of cycle parts and embryo ideas, and he is a weekend rider on the north-shore Evanston roads.
- J.F. Palmer responds at length to 'Practical Mechanic' and Charles E. Duryea, arguing that diagonally-laid fabric threads diverging widely at the rim are the only scientific solution combining load-carrying capacity, resiliency, traction, durability, and prevention of side roll—qualities the other two tire theorists ignore entirely.
- The Cycle Trade Journal reviews 1892 as the worst year in English cycle trade history, blaming over-production, collapse of rotten company flotations, and false optimism in the cycling press; it predicts a better 1893 but urges agents and manufacturers to exercise extreme caution.
- Kenwood Mfg. Co. describes its improved 1893 pneumatic tire—with an extra center lock holding the casing without strings, wires, glue, or cement—and a new double-safety-seat valve whose bell-shaped inner thimble provides three separate effective seals to prevent air loss.