The Bearings, Vol 8, No 19
Articles in this issue
- The Baltimore Club's Thanksgiving Day road race on the Pimlico road was thrown into chaos when riders charged through a Fourth Regiment military drill; Jack White, the state champion, collided with a cannon and was put out, while Carter ultimately won in 29:24 with a one-minute handicap.
- Milwaukee: A. Cressy Morrison, newly elected chief consul of the Wisconsin LAW division without opposition, will not serve because the Pabst Brewing Co. has selected him to represent the firm at the Antwerp exposition, likely placing H. M. Baldwin of Kenosha in the post.
- The Lake View Cycling Club defeated the Illinois Cycling Club 10-0 at a Thanksgiving morning football game at Fullerton and Racine avenues, Chicago, before some eight hundred spectators.
- London correspondent C. W. Hartung reports on the Stanley Show at the Agricultural Hall: the Whitworth company sold 5,000-6,000 machines, Palmer tires drew constant crowds, and N. E. Kaufmann won the international trick-riding championship with 788 points over Germans Doring and Brunner.
- Boston correspondent reports on Thanksgiving social events including a Press vs. Cambridgeport cycling-club football game, a Somerville Cycle Club minstrel show, and a humorous incident in which a restaurateur frantically searched under a tablecloth for the skirt of a Massachusetts Club lady riding in bloomers.
- Emil Ulbricht of Chicago competed at the Los Angeles Athletic Club's annual field day but was hampered by riding a roadster after damaging his racing wheel, finishing out of the prizes in the mile open while L. W. Fox dominated the open events.
- The Racing Board has accepted all of Johnson's cycle records from 100 yards up to the mile, and also validated records by Zimmerman, Windle, and Tyler, though it declined to hall-mark Johnson's mile on a technicality about permissible pacemaking.
- Nashville correspondent reports that Bliss and Dirnberger have been stalled for eight weeks by persistent bad weather on the Cumberland Park track; a rumour that Springfield rivals Tyler and Windle may head south prompts the Chicago men to vow to stay all winter and outdo them.
- Heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures have ended cycling in the Twin Cities for the season; B. B. Bird, A. D. Smith, and visiting Norwegian champion Adolph Norseng are prominent among cyclists switching to indoor skating rinks, with John S. Johnson and trainer Tom Eck based in Minneapolis.
- Editorial comparing the LAW's proposed Class B racing division to Dr. E. B. Turner's English National Cyclists' Union licensing scheme, arguing that both systems fail to prevent manufacturer payments to riders and that the racing board has wisely chosen to legalise what it could not suppress.
- Editor George K. Barrett ridicules a letter from a Texas wheelman known only as "Dock" who urged southern wheelmen to exclude Black riders from the LAW and threatened a breakaway southern league, mocking his inflammatory rhetoric and offering to send him anti-bilious pills.
- Miscellaneous editorial department covering: a Dakota wheelman who smashes a bicycle in the dark only to discover it was his own son on his own wheel; Charles D. White of San Bernardino's sail-equipped bicycle achieving 20-30 mph; and editorial asides on rival papers and the Class B debate.
- Obituary for H. H. Lambton of Australia, twice winner of the Austral Wheel race and a contributor to The Bearings, who died in Chicago of gastric fever; his father, chief of Australia's postal service, has not yet been notified of his death.
- The Missouri LAW division election is disputed after 102 duplicate ballots were found; the sealed ballots were improperly released to one candidate who conducted a private recount unseating two opposition winners, and the matter is headed to the national committee of rights and privileges.
- W. F. Murphy of the Kings County Wheelmen wins the Whymper trophy for the 1893 season, having accumulated the highest cumulative points in three road races including breaking the Irvington-Millburn 25-mile course record in 1:14:29½.
- A humorous first-person account (reprinted from Wheeling) by a young woman who secretly takes her brother Harry's racing safety out alone in knickerbockers, is assisted onto the machine by a winking policeman, panics when a boy shouts that she has dropped her skirt, falls, and breaks three spokes.
- Humorous editorial note prompted by Harvard's announced focus on cycling: The Bearings imagines champion riders Zimmerman, Sanger, Johnny Johnson, and Willie Windle taking up Greek and Latin for racing eligibility, and suggests trainer Tom Eck might enroll in belle lettres.
- Warm valedictory tribute to Bob Garden, a well-known Chicago cycle-trade figure celebrated for his hospitality, diplomacy, and good cigars, who has departed the city and left a conspicuous void in the trade.
- Editorial responding to a Chicago daily's complaint against cyclists on city streets by turning the argument around with parallel questions about speeding horse wagons, cable-car fatalities, Baron Yerkes' horse ambulances blocking boulevards, and the paper's own editorial incompetence.
- Comic fiction in which Mrs. McGlaggerty, urged by her father, asks racing cyclist Roland to quit the track; Roland silences her by itemising every prize he has won her — diamonds, a $250 solitaire ring, a silk dress, a piano, a house and lot, a horse and barouche — then lights a cigar and goes to his club.
- Illustrated round-up of eighteen novelties on display at the London Stanley Show, including an anti-slip tyre band, Stubbs' detachable tyre, the Crypto front-driver, a wood-rim fitted tyre, new spoke-fastening methods, a spring frame, toe-clip alternatives, a child's seat, and the Loco chainless wheel.
- Editorial disputing a prominent manufacturer's telegraphed announcement of a $125 list price for 1894 high-grade bicycles, arguing that quality machines fitted with wood rims, pneumatic saddles, and the best tyres cannot profitably be sold through the trade at less than $150.
- Report on the stalled Stearns vs. Lu-mi-num (aluminum frame) comparative-strength contest: judges W. A. Redding for E. C. Stearns & Co. and Edward Flad for the St. Louis aluminum concern cannot agree on whether the required fifth judge should be a practical cycling expert or a credentialed mechanical engineer.
- Philip Goetz, who has had virtual charge of the Charles F. Stokes Mfg. Co. for six years, is leaving after the new year to become treasurer of the Indiana Bicycle Co. of Indianapolis, drawn by a flattering offer despite owning real estate and a family home in Chicago.
- Comprehensive review from England's Cycle Trade Journal on British manufacturers' designs for the 1894 season: the long-base Humber-pattern rear-driving safety dominates, with trends toward narrower bottom brackets, larger-diameter thinner-gauge tubing, universal gear cases, and the Crypto company continuing to champion the front-driving safety.
- Extended promotional and editorial piece by the Bicycle Wood Rim Co. of Kingsland, N.J., arguing on scientific grounds that white ash wood rims outperform steel by distributing shock and returning to shape elastically, supported by analogies to baseball bats, racing oars, gun stocks, and buggy-wheel felloes.