The Bearings, Vol 8, No 23
Articles in this issue
- Ex-Chief Consul F. W. Gerould of Illinois speaks out against excluding Black riders from the League of American Wheelmen, saying he opposed the word 'white' in the LAW constitution and will continue fighting the issue at the coming Louisville National Assembly.
- Paul Von Boeckman of Austin, Texas, dominated the Austin Wheelmen's Christmas Day races at the driving park, winning the half-mile, quarter-mile, and one-mile handicap events and turning off a near-record quarter-mile of :30 2-5.
- Albert Schock wins the six-day bicycle race at Madison Square Garden, New York, with 1,600 miles and 1 lap, beating the previous world record by 143 miles; Waller was second with 1,484 miles and Martin third with 1,430, each rider receiving stated purse money.
- Paris correspondent A. G. Roux reports on the signing of the Stephane-Corre 1,000-kilometer match for January 6-7, the Barden father-and-son's arrival in Paris for next season's racing, and preparations for the First French Cycle Show at the Salle Wagram.
- Mrs. W. E. Newton of Portland, Oregon, describes wearing a bloomer cycling costume for two years on long road rides, detailing her percale shirt waists, leather belt, and blazer jacket, and plans to ride a twenty-three-pound diamond frame wheel the following year.
- London correspondent C. W. Hartung reports on a poorly attended Westminster Palace Hotel meeting called by H. H. Griffin to discuss a professional cycling union backed by an English syndicate with $25,000; only one professional (Jack Keen) attended, and the meeting adjourned without practical steps.
- The Illinois division of the League of American Wheelmen endorses Thomas F. Sheridan for the LAW presidency, with delegates F. W. Gerould, E. T. Porter, and C. E. Randall instructed to vote for Sheridan at the National Assembly; the division also votes to hold its next annual meeting at Quincy on July 4.
- NCA secretary Egan suspends all six-day race riders, but P. T. Powers, general manager, says the action will not stand and the NCA will be reorganized; gross receipts of $15,500 were offset by $11,000 in expenses, leaving no profits beyond the stated purse money.
- About twenty riders from Chicago's Two-fifty Club race to Pullman on New Year's Day, with J. P. Bliss winning the chief scorchership after Herbie Githens lost ground when a wire fouled his sprocket; the party dined at Hotel Florence and scorched back to Michigan Avenue in one hour.
- Five Chicago riders complete New Year's Day century rides starting at midnight from the Lincoln Clubhouse, including Kinkead logging his thirty-second century and Fairchild his twenty-ninth within a single year, with Fairchild, Gunther, and Adams completing the full round trip to Pullman in fourteen and a half hours.
- Annual officer elections reported for the Mercury Club of Milwaukee, electing president W. H. Kaiser, and the Shawmut Cycle Club of Boston, electing president F. W. Hayes and captain J. R. Brown.
- Editorial praises the Madison Square Garden six-day race for its honest management and the infusion of former amateurs into professional ranks, calling Schock's 1,600 miles the most meritorious long-distance performance ever made and Van Emberg's 1,401 miles at age nineteen equally remarkable.
- The Bearings argues the LAW must exclude Black members at its Louisville assembly to retain southern membership, and prints a letter from Louisiana wheelman William W. Crane describing the collapse of the 150-member Louisiana division over the negro question and expressing support for a proposed whites-only wheelmen's secret society.
- Miscellaneous column including an anecdote about a racing man confusing a Moses Schaumberg pawn ticket with his medal express claim, notes on French cement and wood-pavement cycling tracks in Paris and Bordeaux, Harvard's circular letters to colleges for unsanctioned races, a humorous garbled French tire translation, and a plan to sue members for unpaid club dues.
- Essay by S. W. Merrihew challenging 'President' Bates's assertion that Zimmerman the man-beater and Johnson the record-breaker could not excel at each other's specialty, arguing that a rested and properly prepared Zimmerman could break records and that Johnson's competition failures stem from fear of rivals rather than any inherent inability.
- A young Black man in Birmingham, Alabama, unable to buy or borrow a bicycle, built a chainless 102-pound machine from hand-whittled wooden spokes, baling wire, wood-block cogs filed to fit a sprocket, and bolts set through holes burned with hot irons; discovered by the Birmingham Arms Co. and put on exhibition.
- Humor column featuring a tall tale of 'Johnny Longrun's' disastrous Chicago-to-Elgin New Year's Day century ride ending in death, a bicycle song by actor William Lackaye set to 'Daisy Bell', a scathing dismissal of Jerome K. Jerome's feud with the NCU over Shorland's permit, and a mock-interview with English actress Mrs. Kendal on the inferiority of American cyclists.
- Profile of Charles G. Kilpatrick, a one-legged professional trick rider who became famous riding down the eighty Capitol steps in Washington in three seconds, and who spent six weeks at Fairmount Park, Kansas City, riding a specially built 120-foot, 50-foot-high staircase twice daily before 142,000 spectators.
- Milwaukee correspondent reports on the Mercury Club's Sylvester ball to pay off the Telegram-Mercury race meet debt, the Bay View Wheelmen's rapid growth to sixty-three members, and the upcoming Wisconsin division officers' meeting at which Chief Consul Morrison's resignation and the next state meet location will be decided.
- Boston correspondent reports on a midwinter cycling fever with wheelmen riding firm frozen ground, plans for an intercollegiate bicycle tournament at Harvard prompted by the LAW Racing Board's college sanctions, and the Massachusetts Bicycle Club's Christmas tree event.
- Serialized cycling fiction set in Mexico: Isabel Welby, the bicycle-riding American daughter of a silver-mine manager, overhears bandits led by Perez planning a silver-wagon ambush, rides to warn a Mexican infantry lieutenant, and thwarts the robbery with a regiment; her treacherous servant Pepe is publicly 'thanked' and then flees into the mountains.
- Trade analysis predicting that 1894 will divide the bicycle market into clearly graded price levels matched to quality, collapse weak and price-cutting firms, restrict warranty terms alongside lower list prices, and see a trade revival as pent-up demand from buyers waiting on financial improvement finally enters the market.
- J. Elmer Pratt recounts selling surplus 1892 spring-frame bicycles at auction across the Northwest, including a Duluth sale netting $2,500 and legal battles with a hostile Oshkosh dealer-editor that ultimately sold 117 wheels in that town, concluding that auction sales created new converts rather than demoralizing local trade.
- E. C. Stearns & Co. assert in their 'Yellow Fellow' circular that John S. Johnson on his Stearns still holds all records up to the two-thirds mile, arguing that Bliss and Dirnberger's Birmingham performances used horse pacing, which the LAW Racing Board does not recognize.
- Gormully & Jeffery Mfg. Co. announce their 1894 Rambler line at $125 list, describing six models including No. 7 (thirty-pound all-around roadster with tapered top rail and new front fork), No. 8 (twenty-five-pound touring wheel with foot-brake), No. 9 (nineteen-pound racer), and a new hollow rubber rim option for coastal use.
- S. D. Childs & Co. of Chicago present tempered aluminum bicycle rims weighing three-quarters of a pound to the pair, which unlike earlier aluminum rims hold enamel and resist bending, expected to sell at prices comparable to wood rims, with six rim-joining methods under development for the New York show.
- The U.S. Court of Appeals reverses the circuit court decisions in the Overman Wheel Co. and Pope Mfg. Co. suit against Henry J. Curtis of Hartford over the revolving rubber pedal patent, ending protracted litigation carried up by A. Featherstone & Co.
- The firm succeeding the defunct Sercombe-Bolte company in Milwaukee, organized by J. S. George and W. H. Wolf with F. J. Pingree as manager, is moving machinery to a new four-story building at Erie and East Water streets and will be in operation by January 15 producing the 1894 Telegram wheel.
- Major preview of the National Cycle Show at Madison Square Garden, detailing exhibits from dozens of manufacturers including Pope Mfg. Co. (Columbias and a Giraffe high-frame novelty), Raleigh Cycle Co. (Models AA and A racers), Overman Wheel Co. (Victor Flyer and the Mahogany City display), E. C. Stearns & Co. (twelve-pound special racer and the quadruplet used to pace Johnson's records), Gormully & Jeffery (Ramblers), American Dunlop Tire Co. (Irish jaunting car at 750 lb per wheel), and numerous tire, rim, and component makers.
- Announcement of a cycling trade banquet at Madison Square Garden concert hall on January 11, with 1,500 plates contracted; tickets at $3 per plate available from chairman A. Edmund Hildick at 42 Exchange Place, New York City.
- A large party departed Chicago on the Michigan Central for the New York show including C. W. Dickerson and wife, J. S. Driver, E. C. Bode, and J. Elmer Pratt and wife joining at Detroit, with M. F. Dirnberger and E. C. Bald picked up at Buffalo.
- The St. Louis Refrigerator & Wooden Gutter Co. will not exhibit at the New York or Philadelphia shows because their agency arrangements and output for next season are already largely committed; L. W. Conkling will attend as a visitor at the Everett House.
- Ralph Temple rebrands from Ralph Temple's Cycle Exchange to Ralph Temple Cycle Works after four years, manufacturing Temple Special road bicycles weighing seventeen to twenty-five pounds with dust-proof oil-tempered bearings from his Chicago store at 158 Twenty-second Street.
- L. W. Conkling of the St. Louis Wooden Gutter Co. rejects the charge that Lu-mi-num is delaying the strength test against Stearns, stating his company is waiting for Stearns to accept Professor Eddy of Cincinnati—a mechanical engineer, practical cyclist, and man of known integrity—as the fifth judge.
- Profile of the Milwaukee firm founded in 1860 by Julius Andrae and now manufacturing the 1894 Andrae bicycle with dust-proof bearings, tangent piano-wire spokes cold-swaged in the center, and a detachable hardened rear sprocket; models range from the $110 light roadster to the $150 path racer, with plans to double factory capacity.
- Profile of George S. MacDonald, twenty-eight-year-old manager of the Raleigh Cycle Co. in America, who built the brand from near-obscurity into the leading British bicycle importing house in the country within a year, having previously managed the American Ormonde Cycle Co.
- R. P. Scott challenges the tire-fabric theories of Palmer and Duryea published in The Bearings' Christmas number, arguing that the claim of nineteen-times greater longitudinal thread strain is mechanically unsound, and that the ideal tire minimizes bending of the cover and maximizes compression of the air, favoring diagonal fabric.
- Analysis (drawn from the British Cyclist) of manufacturers' conflicting claims about 'narrow tread' for 1894, explaining that reducing crank-bracket length forces a narrower rear hub which fatally weakens lateral wheel stability, and that the only safe tread reduction comes from trimming pedal nuts rather than the bracket itself.
- Profile of W. G. Schack of Buffalo, who has operated a bicycle business for eight years and will now build and sell the Emblem bicycle—twenty-eight pounds on wood rims, tool steel bearings, listing at $100—alongside imported lines including the Smalley, New Mail, Yale, and juvenile wheels.
- Technical critique of bicycle wood rims for 1894, pointing out that oversized half-inch valve holes weaken the rim at a critical point, that tangent-spoke nipples require countersinking (direct spokes do not), and that manufacturers' contradictory advertising circulars about each other's rims create unnecessary public distrust.
- E. C. Stearns & Co. test light road machines by having a 180-pound rider race over a corduroy road of rough saw-log slabs in their Syracuse factory; the same twenty-one-pound test machine had already been ridden 2,000 miles the previous season without breaking.
- The Pope Mfg. Co. of Chicago receives registered package No. 65,061—a Model 32 Columbia exhibited at the World's Fair and returned from the Washington registry division—said to be the largest package ever sent through the U.S. mail.
- The 1894 Columbias feature the new Hartford tire, a detachable sprocket rim enabling quick gear changes without removing pedals, and new case-and-cone designs with company-manufactured balls tested for quality and size to minimize bearing friction.
- Anglo-American Iron & Metal Co., through receiver J. Friedenstein, denies circulating rumors that the firm cannot fill orders, explaining that the receivership was taken to conserve all interests during rapid business growth and that the company remains the leading cycle-material specialist in the country.
- Charles Parkes returns from the Pacific Coast having sold about thirty Fowler wheels; Los Angeles crack L. W. Fox rode a loaned Fowler to an official unpaced mile of 2:15, and the coast quarter-mile record was also lowered on a Fowler, prompting negotiations for a coast agency.
- Technical explanation of how the Palmer tire's spiral threads contract when inflated and expand when deflated, enabling a plug repair demonstrated at the Stanley show: deflating lets threads separate and a cord plug is inserted, then inflation pulls the threads tight around it, gripping it firmly without vulcanization.