The Bearings, Vol 7, No 9
Articles in this issue
- Feature investigation into the dispute between the L.A.W. and the Wheelman Company (publishers of Bicycling World and the L.A.W. Bulletin), interviewing Vice President Sheridan, President Burdett, Secretary Bassett, and editor Fourdrinier; the crisis traced to a postal-authority technicality and Wheelman Company demands for 12½ cents per member.
- The French government simplified requirements for army cyclists; the 'Cycle A, 1893' safety model is assigned to infantry and cavalry regiments for orderly and quartermaster duties in field trials and garrison maneuvers.
- C. C. Palmer bought a stolen Century Columbia for $45, had it seized by the Pope Company, then spent $100 building a theft case, but a grand jury reportedly influenced by a prominent businessman refused to indict, leaving Palmer out wheel, money, and justice.
- The Boston Post and New York Recorder will sponsor a relay ride leaving Boston April 30 at 5 p.m., estimated at 90 hours, timed to arrive in Chicago during the World's Fair opening ceremonies; E. A. McDuffie and Warner Doane are expected to take the first relay.
- The Illinois division rented office space in the Hartford Building and established a branch near the World's Fair to serve League members with hotel lists, a forwarding post office, and information services free of charge.
- Dai Lewis of Buffalo and C. P. Root, captain of the Chicago Cycling Club, discussed a 25-mile inter-city road race, possibly on the Crawfordsville, Ind., course; Lewis names Bald, Dontze, Fuhrman, and others among Buffalo's contenders.
- George K. Barrett and L. D. Munger have been officially expelled from the L.A.W. by vote of the membership committee, barring them from L.A.W. championships but not affecting their general amateur status; time-winner H. R. Winship says he will not race this year.
- London Center of the NCU unanimously backs Dr. Turner's cyclist licensing proposals; Donald Lacaille, formerly of the New Howe Co. in Glasgow, joins Crypto Cycle Co. as F. W. Shorland's successor; 969 cyclists counted passing the Angel, Ditton, in two hours on the Ripley Road on one Sunday. (Correspondent: C. W. Hartung.)
- The Metropolitan Association of Cycling Clubs held its first-anniversary banquet at the Columbia banquet hall with I. B. Potter, H. E. Raymond, and R. G. Betts speaking; plans include the Milburn road race, a century to Princeton, and an international race meet on September 16.
- Kansas City reports unprecedented cycling enthusiasm across all ages; Jackson County Wheelmen rode muddy roads to Raytown while Kansas City Cyclists took the macadam to Waldo Park for a smoother spring run.
- St. Louis aldermanic candidates are courting cyclists ahead of a close election in which wheelmen may hold the balance of power; Chief Consul Holm announces the Missouri division's schedule including a Clarksville 50-mile road race and the annual Sedalia meet.
- Waco's July 4 division meet is expected to be the largest race meet in Texas history; a new four-lap track will be ready within 30 days, and Texas champion W. A. Parker has sold his carriage business to open an electrically operated cycle store.
- Denver disputes Chicago's claim to have introduced arm-numbering in road races, asserting the Denver Ramblers used the system at their 1892 annual road race; the Colorado division's first annual meet is set for Greeley, July 3–4.
- French cycling champion Fredde de Civry, who won 299 prizes in 331 races—including the 50-mile championship at Leicester in 1883—died March 15 after years of pulmonary illness that forced him to attend race meets on crutches.
- Editorial analysis of the L.A.W. Bulletin postal crisis: The Bearings guesses the Wheelman Company leveraged a postal technicality into a demand for 12½ cents per League member, a claim Vice President Sheridan says is unsupported by the contract.
- Satirical editorial attacking Chicago Racing Board member 'Jerked Meat' Erwin for simultaneously holding official L.A.W. racing-board authority and serving as a paid correspondent for the N.C.A. organ, while making unauthorized pronouncements about the Barrett and Munger expulsions.
- Editorial mocking a Cincinnati Times-Star writer who compared a proposed federal road-improvement bureau to a government biscuit-making department, suggesting the writer's opposition to road reform reflects a disordered stomach.
- Editorial praising the Chicago plan to capitalize a Cyclists' Lunch Club at $7,500 for World's Fair visitors, with table d'hôte dinners at 50 cents; commends the model as worthy of imitation by cycling centers in other cities.
- Editorial weighing Chicago mayoral candidates Carter H. Harrison and 'Uncle Sam' Allerton on road-improvement merits, finding Harrison coquettish and unreliable and Allerton a 'goose,' and declining to endorse either.
- Colonel Pope is delaying his road-department petition to Congress until December to avoid conflicting with a $10,000 Agriculture Department appropriation for road inquiries; road-system exhibits—from muddy country roads to macadam—are planned for the World's Fair.
- Racing Board Chairman Raymond traveled to Baltimore and sat for six hours of flatly contradictory sworn testimony at Halsted's house on the old Pimlico road regarding the disputed race-meet date assigned to the Maryland Club, returning to Brooklyn at midnight without a decision.
- Brief editorial notes: the Illinois Cycling Club deploys a member's sister as an effective dues-collector; President Burdett reportedly refused to reappoint George Collister to the Racing Board due to anti-trade sentiment; the Michigan division incorporation bill sets a $25,000 maximum capital.
- Regular department of brief international news: Zimmerman sails for Bordeaux April 22; Sanger and Zimmerman apply to the N.C.U. for amateur credentials; one-legged Frank Beedleson plans a San Francisco–New York ride; Allen and Sachtleben receive ovations across Missouri; Maiden B.C. signs racer Peter Berlo.
- Illustrated fiction: Martly Cycling Club captain Vernon Bentley, fined for Sunday riding by the bigoted Rev. Binks and lawyer Muggins, takes revenge with an elaborate April Fools' Day hoax—staging his own disappearance, a fake murder scene in the woods, and a buried box containing only a note reading 'This is the first of April.' (Signed 'Sandy Hook.')
- The NCA governing board met at the Astor House in New York to revise racing rules; it declined to assume control of road racing (deferring to the Century Road Club of America) and fixed Secretary-Treasurer Egan's compensation at $2,500.
- Frank H. Chapman reports that Toledo will get a one-third-mile cycling track with brick-dust surface inside the Tri-state Fair Grounds horse track, with electric car access, following the Ohio state meet at Sandusky in July; over 100 season tickets already sold.
- Musing Portland, Oregon correspondent ('Shay Kespeer') describes a cigar-smoke vision of a Chicago cycling editor writing a carping 'roast' about western racer E. W. Ballard; the editor appends a candid footnote admitting the piece's exact meaning is unclear.
- President Burdett, George H. Day, and George Pope testified before the Connecticut judiciary committee in favor of a bill making bicycle theft a felony equivalent to stealing a mule, with a minimum two-year prison sentence.
- 'Rugby' in Sporting Life observes that many wheelmen never read their cycling papers—even quality ones like The Bearings—and argues that regular reading is what separates informed cyclists from prey for unscrupulous manufacturers.
- Aphorisms and witticisms translated from the French cycling paper Veloce-Sport: the cycle as 'wings' Shakespeare never knew; the cycle as the poor man's horse; New Year's Day hotel champagne races for the first cyclist to arrive in costume.
- Detroit horse dealer Edgar P. Ashley complains the bicycle craze has 'knocked the bottom clear out of the horse trading industry,' with sales possible only in May and June; livery stable proprietors are equally hurt, their rigs idle as cyclists speed past at 10 miles per hour.
- Technical article by 'A Practical Mechanic' comparing spoon, band, roller, and rim brakes for safety bicycles, concluding that a front-wheel spoon brake applied by a hand-pull wire connection is the lightest, simplest, and most powerful design; Fred D. Owen of Washington uses dual brakes on both wheels.
- Rochester dealers report no discounting; C. J. Conolly sold all available Humbers at $190 each, while F. H. Hughes, Robert Thomson, and Bettys & Smith are selling wheels at $150.
- The Midland Cycle Co. has secured the Sterling agency; Kingman & Co. cannot fill current orders, with 300 wheels in transit; Rebenscheid & Sons handle the King of Scorchers, Kingman, and Road King lines uptown.
- A week of rain and mud hurt Chicago retail cycle sales while manufacturers maintained production; Ashland Cycle Co. secured the helical tube Premier agency (100 machines ordered), Ames & Frost placed an Imperial agency in Mexico City, and Horace Bell secured the Stearns agency.
- London correspondent argues that straight-cut canvas (not bias-cut) makes faster pneumatic tires, giving an estimated half-mile-per-hour speed advantage; recommends the Yaeger 'Cush' saddle cover and Bradley's ventilated cycle handles as innovations overlooked by American riders.
- Hartford engineer Felton Parker refutes Mr. Douglas's February article by proving mathematically and through a controlled spring-scale test that the elliptical sprocket distributes pedal force more uniformly across the stroke—concentrating effort at the dead centers where it is most needed—than a round gear.
- Profile with portrait of Thomas Hay, 24, co-founder of Indianapolis's Zig Zag Cycling Club and now serving his second term as chief consul of the Indiana division; he is traveling for cycle dealership Hay & Willits, having entered the trade four years ago with the Indiana Bicycle Company.
- Profile of New York wholesale importers A. M. Scheffey & Co., tracing A. M. Scheffey's nine years in the trade from Pope agency to Gormully & Jeffery to Coleman & Co.; the firm specializes in medium-price Wynnewood and Queen City bicycles and is now shipping by the car load.
- Second installment of La Nature extracts on French cycle manufacturing: milling machines for shaping crank heads, scabbard machines for elliptically forming fork tubes, and cold-bent handle bars; La Nature criticizes chain-on-one-side placement and integrated rear sprocket hubs as design flaws.