The Bearings, Vol 9, No 15
Articles in this issue
- Nat Butler of Cambridgeport C.C. wins the 25-mile Linscott Road Race in Boston on May 5 before 40,000–60,000 spectators, breaking W. F. Murphy's previous road record of 1:11:59 with a time of 1:11:28, earning a horse and buggy, two diamonds, and the time prize.
- Harry Wheeler fails to qualify in his first professional race at Herne Hill, London, before a record crowd of 125,000 spectators; James of England wins the one-mile final with Farman of France second in a time of 3:04.
- Frank Waller runs third in the Rennes-to-Brest-and-back road race behind winner J. Allard; separately, Wheeler wins the 5,000-meter scratch race in Paris on April 22, defeating Dumond and Farman.
- Cycling is booming in Wichita, Kansas, where Frank Burt is managing a new half-mile track with weekly Thursday races; local riders M. H. Burt, H. Febleisen, R. Miller, and others are training under Harry Davis.
- A cablegram from Paris reports that Austin T. Crooks won a one-mile handicap race last Saturday.
- About 1,000 riders from Chicago's Associated Cycling Clubs complete a union run over the road race course on May 6 despite drizzly morning weather; Illinois C.C. brings 118 members for the largest contingent, South Side Cycling Club 73, and ladies in bloomers attract admiring comment from the crowds lining the course.
- Charles Lagan and Charles Measure of Philadelphia's Century Wheelmen become the first cyclists to follow a stagecoach the full 110-mile route from Philadelphia to New York, keeping pace with the four-in-hand coach Vivid and arriving at the Waldorf Hotel only minutes after it.
- Louisville, Kentucky LAW division reports strong membership growth statewide; Martin & Dressing transfers energy from a cancelled track event to a road race on June 13; Louisville Cycle Club holds a 45-man baseball run to Jeffersontown; and a profile is given of 286-pound former U.S. Consul-General to Japan Warren Green.
- Le Cycle features a front-cover illustration of a French army cyclist in dark-blue double-breasted coat, red bloomers, and blue-and-red zouave cap, with overcoat over the handlebars, a bag in front, a rolled map on the lower tube, and a lantern on the left front fork.
- Editor George K. Barrett responds combatively to the Associated Cycling Clubs' formal censure resolution against Chicago cycling press, posing pointed questions about the A.C.C.'s authority and noting that The Bearings alone spent more on race-course illustration than any delegate earned in a month.
- President McKinney of the National Brotherhood of Painters and Decorators rents 30 pneumatic bicycles for his walking delegates, who now use them to shadow strikebreakers and carry news; one enthusiast claims unions will win 50 percent more strikes with the bicycle as an ally.
- Editorial argues that the rational bloomer costume for women cyclists is permanently established, citing its endorsement by the conservative Harper's Bazaar and the diverse styles seen among ladies at the A.C.C. union run.
- Department of shorter items: the Pittsburgh Press promotes four road races including a 24-hour Buffalo-to-Pittsburgh event; Frank Shorland recounts a near-bonk after 70 miles on a light meal; and Bliss and Dirnberger are erroneously billed as 'the two champion amateur bicyclists of the world' in San Francisco papers.
- W. L. Darmer of Hudson County Wheelmen (Jersey City) wins a gold medal by following the New York-to-Philadelphia stagecoach Alert all day and arriving at Philadelphia City Hall at 7:35 p.m., ahead of the coach; Van Emburgh, Bratton, and Henshaw drop out due to rough roads, a broken wheel, and illness respectively.
- Denver correspondent reports Sanger and Tyler training at the Athletic Club's Capitol Hill track; McGuire and H. G. Kennedy ride the 25-mile course on a tandem in 1:12:00 and cover 56 miles to Greeley in 2:56:00; a three-lap track is planned at Broadway Park for the L.A.W. meet in August.
- Denver correspondent sketches Harry Tyler's extreme quietude (a local wheelman nearly spoke to him without realising who he was), Sanger's imposing physique and machine-like track action, and the pleasant, congenial modesty of friends Bliss and Dirnberger.
- President W. A. Skinkle of the Century Road Club of America reduces the initiation fee from $5 to $1 to remove a barrier to membership, with optional badge and century bar remaining available at their cost prices of $3.50 and 75 cents.
- Harry Wheeler wins the 25-kilometer race at the Paris Velodrome, beating several crack French riders easily; Terront arrives at the Velodrome after a 1,250-mile ride from Rome completed in six days, 13 hours, and 30 minutes.
- John Haywood, a 20-year-old Chicago Wheelman, is struck and instantly killed by a North-Western train near South Waukegan on May 3 while trying to cross the tracks ahead of it.
- New York cycling is quiet before the Irvington-Milburn road race; W. F. Murphy is favored over scratchmen Graves, McDuffie, and Linneman; the race committee appoints officials, plans to rope off the last 200 yards, and reports six high-grade bicycles already donated among 30 planned prizes.
- Trainer Tom Eck recounts two anecdotes from his team's Southern training: a Black revival meeting where Charley Murphy's white duck trousers were muddied by a suddenly 'saved' churchgoer, and a ten-man serenade party that spent the night arguing over how to divide Eck's 25-cent tip.
- New York club runs reported including Long Island Wheelmen to Rockville Center, Lexington Wheelmen to Orange, N.J., and Lenox Wheelmen to Coney Island; English racer Warwick arrives to train at Manhattan Field and praises America's two-class racing system.
- Long Island Wheelmen announce planned tours to the Catskill Mountains (June 28–July 4, returning by boat) and from Providence to Boston (May 25–31 by boat), with the club's comfortable majority of members being men of means and common sense.
- Milwaukee Wheelmen plan a Waukesha-Milwaukee road race for July 4 with 200+ entries expected; North Side Club organizes an 18-mile Cedarburg-Milwaukee race for June 16; Wisconsin LAW membership surges under Chief Consul Morrison; good-roads advocate E. D. Hoyt wins a contested village board election in Wauwatosa by one vote.
- London correspondent C. W. Hartung reports on the Herne Hill spring meeting where L. Stroud wins the 10-mile Surrey Cup from 19 starters in 25:22; Parliament's budget spares cyclists a feared tax or licence; anti-betting measures are planned; and an England vs. France professional team race is set for Catford on May 5.
- Illustrated humorous essay identifying eight cyclist types: the thrifty utilitarian commuter on a solid-tire antique, the stiff family man with mudguards and a baby carrier, the sallow valetudinarian riding for health, the overdressed boulevard scorcher, the noisy club novice, the single-season enthusiast who sells his wheel the following year, the true conscientious club man, and the selfish solitary dilettante who tours Europe without caring for clubs or records.
- A melodramatic parody has Harold Strawlegs proposing marriage to Imogen Casey in overwrought prose, only for a servant to interrupt announcing his bicycle has just been stolen, ending the engagement on the spot.
- New York and Chicago athletic clubs bar Class B men from their cycling contests this season, satirically leaving the racers to subsist on whatever cake and pastry the manufacturers care to give them instead of their usual bread and butter.
- World-tour cyclist Tommy Stevens is reported to have used a camera to uncover the methods behind the Indian Mahatmas' theosophist phenomena, a find said to eclipse even the unpuncturable pneumatic tire.
- First-person touring narrative: a cyclist battles rocky Ozark roads and a pack of hounds before being welcomed by a mountain family for supper and a 'leg-shakin'' country dance at the Wilkens place, where he dances with Martha Davidson, nearly provokes a fight with her beau Dave Smith, rescues companion Dan'l from bully Bob Simpson, and escapes early the next morning toward Illinois.
- Bearings trade correspondent surveys Detroit's Woodward Avenue cycle dealers: Huber & Metzger have doubled their store for the Pope/Columbia/Hartford/Stearns line; Clarence Smith of Overman/Victor reports brisk demand and organises annual tours to Niagara Falls; Schulemberg Cycle Co. carries Tribune and Vigilant; George Hilsendegen sells 20 wheels a day at No. 310 and operates a factory making the Acme.
- Buffalo's 20-odd cycle dealers are all rushing with orders; featherweight machines and wood rims dominate demand; Bison, Globe, and Stearns racing teams are being assembled; Globe wheel maker Penseyers & Haberer is enlarging its plant after a second successful year.
- List of cycle trade business changes across North America, including Palmer Pneumatic Tire Co.'s incorporation in Toronto, the Hollander-Bradshaw-Folsom Co. assignment in Boston (liabilities $141,000), the new Meteor Bicycle Co. in Battle Creek, and various failures, fire losses, and dissolutions.
- The Bailey Mfg. Co. of Chicago has patented an automatic brake for their Arab bicycle that is engaged by reverse pedal pressure tightening the lower chain reach, applying the brake without any hand lever; the device weighs seven ounces and retails at $7.50.
- Editorial notes that Maxim's 7,000-pound steam flying machine is built from cycle tubing and that the proportional strain on John S. Johnson's 15¾-pound racing bicycle during a sprint rivals that on the flying machine, illustrating the extraordinary engineering demands of lightweight bicycle construction.
- Central Cycle Mfg. Co. of Indianapolis publicly withdraws a letter of recommendation previously given to H. A. Canfield, now of Sachtleben & Canfield of St. Louis, after repeated requests for its return went unheeded.
- W. B. White & Son of Boston offers a waterproof, lockable rear-mudguard luggage carrier weighing 18 ounces ($3) and a side-opening bicycle grip ($2.50), both suited to touring women cyclists.
- The A. F. Shapleigh Hardware Co. of St. Louis, one of the country's largest hardware jobbers, is meeting with excellent success concentrating its energies on placing Syracuse bicycles in California.
- The S. F. Heath Cycle Co. of Minneapolis has already shipped five times its entire 1893 output of ball-valve pumps, which feature a patented universal coupling, with agents spanning Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Montreal, and London.
- The National Cycle Mfg. Co. of Bay City, Michigan issues a modest catalogue making no bombastic claims, accompanied by a poem promising to prove their excellence 'by the stern tests of time.'
- Western Wheel Works ships 350 Crescent bicycles to its New York branch via 15 large express wagons in what is claimed to be the largest single express shipment of bicycles on record.
- A chartered train via the Fitchburg, West Shore, Nickel Plate, and Rock Island routes—with sleeping, dining, and bicycle baggage cars—is being arranged for eastern members attending the L.A.W. meet in Denver, with stops in Kansas City and Omaha.
- New York trade report covers the fast-growing Herald Cycle Co. at 114 Nassau St. with its own-brand wheels at $75–$125; brisk demand for Simplicity 47 tires whose inventor Elliott Burris cannot keep up with orders; Pope Mfg. Co. drumming new accounts in Milwaukee and Nashville; Brooklyn cycle stores; and a long roll-call of prominent New Yorkers who cycle including judges, clergy, police officials, and theatrical performers.
- List of recently issued U.S. bicycle patents including designs for frames, pneumatic tires, spoke attachments, pedals, bicycle supports, and wheel construction from inventors in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Erie, and Wheeling, West Virginia.
- Editorial argues that American cycling's steady growth—unlike France's fashionable craze or the roller-skating fad—stems from the bicycle's practical value as a commuting substitute for street cars; notes that even under the current business depression, interest is growing and further price reductions will bring waves of new riders.
- A bicycle repairman recounts how he spent hours correcting a badly out-of-true wheel, only for the customer to return furious when the wood rim continued splitting along its nipple holes until the spokes punctured the tire; the customer blamed the repairman and threatened to demand payment for a new rim.
- A. M. Vanderpoel, assistant superintendent of the Hartford Rubber Works and formerly connected with Pope Mfg. Co.'s World's Fair exhibit, is killed instantly in Hartford when a collision with W. A. Pattison throws him under a horse-car.
- H. G. Wootten of Honolulu reports that the Hawaiian cycle trade is depressed due to political disturbances following the constitutional crisis, though splendid year-round roads exist; the Pacific Wheelmen club is financially sound but has held no racing since losing its track.
- Black Mfg. Co. is fitting Tribune bicycles with a cycloidal sprocket whose specially shaped teeth almost entirely eliminate friction, claimed to be as great an improvement over ordinary sprockets as ball bearings are over plain parallel bearings.
- H. S. Robinson of Meadville, Pa. has built a 200-pound cast-iron stationary trainer with a 100-pound fly wheel for smooth, momentum-like pedaling; resistance is adjustable by thumb screw, a bell rings every quarter mile at a 63-inch gear, and the price is $35.
- Brief trade notes: serial number of C. K. Anderson's stolen Ariel racer corrected to 5590; D. B. Mcllwaine of Mannesmann Tube Co. visiting Chicago; W. C. Paine retiring from Evansville cycle trade to travel for Pope; Marion Cycle Co. reports 20,000 wood rims sold; Winter's restaurant for Chicago wheelmen moving to 269 State St.
- Several Ohio inventors are testing changeable-gear systems: a Springfield, Ohio group offers a triple sprocket (86/72/56-inch) operated by the brake lever, adding 2½ lbs. for about $20; J. Ebersold of Dayton adapts a Crypto gear to change from 72 to 58 inches using a simple lever.
- Translated from L'Veloce (Paris): novelist Émile Zola reveals he is a devoted cyclist who took up riding for his health, plans a cycling novel featuring scenes of all kinds, and intends to study the amateur-professional divide by going undercover—first as an amateur, then working with a small manufacturer to learn the trade's methods from the inside.
- John S. Johnson's famous Elliptic bicycle, on which he set the first sub-two-minute mile record (1:56⅖) at Independence two years ago, is now on exhibition at Pierce & Drew's in Elgin, Illinois; Kohl & Middleton of New York offered $10,000 for the wheel, which Johnson refused.
- Buffalo's 1894 season opens May 30 with the third annual Martin 25-mile road race (Jake Linneman on scratch; 30+ prizes with $45 for first place; colored handicap numbers introduced) and a separate Hazard 25-mile event on May 26; the Press C.C. and Pastime Wheelmen plan a July 4 tournament at Lockport fair grounds aiming to match Bliss, Dirnberger, Bild, and Johnson.
- Buffalo Ramblers plan a June 23 century run to Dunkirk with 250+ riders in two divisions—a leisure pace and a fast brigade under Frank Klipfel at 16 mph—and a June 16 double century to Erie and back, expected to be completed in 20 hours.
- Buffalo Ramblers' recently closed social season featured inventive club entertainments including the Kernel Nuttingham Nitz party and a mock Ku Klux Klan ceremony in which members found guilty of club misdeeds were led before a black-draped court, read charges in thunderous tones, and subjected to theatrical mock punishments.