The Bearings, Vol 9, No 9
Articles in this issue
- Boston correspondent reports on John C. Kerrison's appointment as official racing handicapper for the New England district, the passage and signing of the Teamoh resolution (deemed to have no legal force over the L.A.W.), Sterling Elliott's opening of the Good Roads magazine office alongside Secretary Bassett, the Waltham track's new metalithic surface, and plans for Taylor and Johnson to race there Decoration Day.
- Philadelphia correspondent covers the slow Holy Week start to the season, Taxis and a large Quaker City party preparing for the Charleston, S.C. meet, the upcoming club road-race calendar led by the Quaker City Wheelmen's April 7 five-mile race, and A.S. Meixell's formal acceptance of six-day champion Albert Schock's match-race challenge for up to $5,000 a side.
- Louisville correspondent interviews Fred J. Scott, president of the Union Bicycle Club, who explains why his club endorsed the Watts color-line amendment to the L.A.W. constitution, prints a condemnatory letter from Boston's Riverside Cycle Club, and quotes a supportive editorial from The Future State of Kansas City arguing that social integration cannot be forced.
- St. Paul correspondent notes near-zero Easter temperatures that kept cyclists indoors, reports the St. Paul Cycle Club's move to new quarters on Jackson Street and growing membership, and describes efforts to raise capital for a three-lap clay-and-board track in the city.
- New York correspondent reports on seventy-five club men paying $2 each to watch Fatima of Midway Plaisance fame in a private dance, covers E.C. Bald training in Jacksonville with Asa Windle, Albert Schock and George Van Emburgh's stage race act with 'The Vendetta' company, the Women's International Bicycle Club meeting in Brooklyn, the Metropolitan Association of Cycling Clubs annual election and June 30 race-meet vote, and President Luscomb's 75-mile club run to Freeport.
- London correspondent C.W. Hartung reports the Surrey spring meeting relocated to Herne Hill on April 21, previews the Catford Club's May racing carnival where a professional race is being contemplated, notes the Birmingham N.C.U. center's plan to deny licenses to trade-employed cyclists, and describes R.L. Jefferson's departure from Olympia on a bicycle journey to Constantinople equipped with a revolver.
- The Bearings announces a 1894 series of seven-color plates depicting L.A.W. officials and ideal cycling scenes, beginning with a solitary tourist on a country road in the April 13 issue, and notes that last year's colored-plate portfolio of leading American racers will be reprinted in portfolio form in response to demand.
- Editorial urges the L.A.W. to fund a representative team for the Saltonstall Trophy international races in Belgium, arguing the League's increased dues leave no excuse for failure, and pledging that The Bearings will help organise a private subscription fund if the Executive Committee does not act in time.
- Editorial mocks Michigan division chief consul Joseph Bressler for defying President Luscomb's suspension order and vowing to block the spring division election, predicting the L.A.W.'s committee on rights and privileges will override him and hold the election regardless.
- Miscellany column covering: H. Ranier's bicycle used in actual combat against dacoits in Upper Burma; lamentation over the Pullman road race moving from the rough South Side course to the tame North Side boulevards; a reader anecdote about a four-year-old who calls her cycling paper her 'cycle peedia'; 'Birdie' Munger appearing at an Indianapolis hard-times smoker dressed in a barrel; and a dig at The American Wheelman for implying President Cleveland appointed R. Philip Gormully Honorary Consul of Venezuela.
- Announcement that Charles Perez Murphy of North Parma, New York has won The Bearings' $25 prize for the best story, for 'The Scampertown Tragedy,' which appears in this issue.
- Profile of Sterling Elliott, new editor of Good Roads magazine, tracing his invention of the pneumatic sulky wheel that revolutionised horse-trotting, his ultralight wooden tricycle, and his celebrated exhibit of a self-propelling mechanical skeleton at a Massachusetts charity fair — painting him as a man of remarkable inventive genius who has worked mostly outside public prominence.
- Letter from R.C. Potter correcting reports of a rift with the L.A.W., stating that his business differences with the League are being discussed with President Luscomb in a friendly spirit and that any legal adjudication will not be pursued in a way that disrupts the organisation.
- Louisville correspondent O.W. Lawson reports a strong cycle-trade revival across Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia; covers the Louisville Cycle Club's search for a larger clubhouse, a planned river excursion to the Kentucky division meet in Owensboro, the Board of Public Safety's effort to ban sidewalk riding, and Martin & Dressing's June 13 road race meet tied to the division excursion.
- Milwaukee correspondent reports wheelmen secured their first political recognition when Democrats inserted a street-improvement plank in their city platform after Mercury Club pressure, describes pending resolutions for asphalt paving on east-side streets, and notes Irwin Strauss of Ripon organising a Wisconsin state racing circuit drawing interest from eight cities.
- Transportation committee chairman Albert Mott announces the L.A.W. annual meet at Denver is fixed for August 13–18 and publishes his circular to railroad passenger agents requesting round-trip rate proposals, with early reports of delegations of 100 from Boston and 400 from Philadelphia.
- After a Chicago conference, the Century Road Club of America voted prizes for greatest 1894 mileage, most centuries ridden, and breaking the 25-mile road record, plus a banner for the club whose members log the most centuries, and endorsed a relay ride from Chicago to Washington, with H.P. Walden of the Chicago Cycling Club appointed to oversee road records.
- Syracuse correspondent reports that financier Hendrich S. Holden, a member of the New York state racing board, is expected to be appointed to the national L.A.W. racing board by Chairman Raymond; the Syracuse Athletic Association also announces a $1,000 silver cup at its Labor Day meet for any wheelman breaking a world's record.
- Letter from T.D. Kyle describing cycling at 10,000-feet elevation in Leadville, Colorado — about 150 bicycles among 12,000 residents, Sunday runs to Twin Lakes 18 miles away, and Kyle's own pioneering ride from Leadville to Denver over Mosquito Pass at 13,250 feet, carrying his wheel through six feet of snow.
- Prize-winning mock-heroic poem by Charles Perez Murphy in which the scheming jack-of-all-trades Root sells $13.25 cheap bicycles to Scampertown's self-satisfied retired farmers Brown, Jones, and Smith, triggering nine broken limbs, four dislocated necks, and fifteen deaths in under two weeks, after which the townspeople ride Root out on a rail and hang him from a tree, resolving henceforth to buy only high-grade wheels.
- Humorous ghost story in which cycling reporter 'Sooner,' riding a moonless October night past a ruined mill, is confronted by a gaunt specter in racing tights who identifies himself as 'the ghost of the last pure amateur wheelman' — desperately lonely because all newly-dying wheelmen are professionals — causing Sooner to faint dead away and thereafter confine his riding to daylight.
- Comic sketch in which Tobias Toethemark, the moralistic scold of the Tearaway Cycling Club, takes revenge on his clubmates by drafting scrupulously honest resolutions on the death of the vile member Hinkey Dink — calling him 'an idle, good-for-nothing loafer' whose removal is 'a source of sincere thanksgiving' — gets them published in the cycling press, and is promptly expelled for truth-telling.
- The L.A.W. racing board publishes full text of its 1894 rule amendments covering class A violation clauses, state division meet sanction procedures, record recognition distances and private-trial witness requirements, rider color registration for race dress, team-race point scoring, the general pacemaker rule, and programme content obligations; the board also reinstates thirteen suspended riders from Schenectady, Ithaca, and Cambridge previously penalised by the Intercollegiate Association.
- Survey of Chicago's bicycle manufacturing industry estimates 110,000 wheels worth over $10 million will be produced in 1894 by roughly 3,500 workers, led by Western Wheel Works (40,000), A. Featherstone (25,000), St. Nicholas Mfg. Co. (10,000), and Gormully & Jeffery (10,000 high-grade), establishing Chicago as the undisputed centre of American bicycle production.
- New York trade correspondent profiles the season opening around St. Patrick's Day and covers dealers: Gormully & Jeffery's G.&J. tire prize promotion; Elliott Burris enlarging staff; McKee & Harrington running the Lyndhurst factory overtime; Peoples Cycle Co.; Strugnell's ladies' knickerbocker suits; 5,000 undeliverable letters piling up for vanished firm Clemens & Curtiss; Premier Cycle Co.'s new Centurion model and Orange, N.J. branch; and the Raleigh Cycle Co.'s crowded riding school with installment-purchase plan.
- The St. Louis Refrigerator & Wooden Gutter Co. (makers of the Lu-mi-num bicycle) sends The Bearings a letter denying the Carbo-Alumina Metal Co.'s lawsuit claims, asserting they lawfully cancelled a failed castings contract after advancing the supplier $1,000, promptly built their own foundry, and regard both suits as harassment with no effect on their ongoing operations.
- A.H. Overman, president of the Overman Wheel Co., publishes the August 1893 correspondence with A.G. Spalding & Bros. over 600 Victor bicycles to refute Spalding's public account, arguing the wheels came from the Spaldings' own Chicopee Falls storehouse, the notes served a clear commercial purpose, and quoting a Spalding letter secretly offering rebates to Victor agents 'in violation of our contract with Overman.'
- Hardware dealer E.C. Cole, writing in the Hardware Bulletin, draws on seven years' experience to advise hardware merchants on stocking bicycles alongside other goods, covering seasonality, assortment selection across price points, installment-sale risks, repair shop setup, how to stimulate demand through influential community riders, and the importance of clearing all stock each year to avoid depreciation losses.
- A Chicago daily alleged W.C. Smith, former manager of the Ariel Cycle Mfg. Co., had fled to Canada after making unrecorded wheel shipments during his tenure; The Bearings wired Smith directly and received a reply confirming he is in Battle Creek, Michigan, opening a new bicycle factory in partnership with W.C. Sanford.
- Describes the Heywood tire puncture repair tool invented by A. & A.T. Heywood of Chicago — a nickeled tube and plunger that inserts an umbrella-shaped rubber plug cemented into the puncture in ten seconds without removing the inner tube — retailing at $1 through the company's office at 904 Isabella Building, Chicago.
- Brief editorial notices on 1894 trade catalogues from more than a dozen manufacturers and suppliers, including E.C. Stearns & Co. (praised for its cover), Munger Cycle Mfg. Co., Marion Cycle Co., Syracuse Cycle Co., New York Belting & Packing Co. (New York Key and Gee-Whiz tires), Louis Rosenfeld & Co. (Hy-Lo gear), Garford Mfg. Co. (saddles), Singer & Co., and Powell & Clement Co.
- Notes C.H. Lamson of Portland, Maine as the originator of bicycle luggage carriers; his No. 6 model with straps for both a camera and a clothing roll has been used by Elwell European touring cyclists for three years and retails at $2.
- The Consolidated Rubber Co. of Trenton, New Jersey has begun large-scale manufacture of bicycle tires, specialising in the Pease detachable tire used exclusively by the Derby Cycle Co. of Chicago, alongside a full line of cemented tires.
- Philadelphia trade correspondent reports the Globe Steam Heater Co. averaging a dozen wheel sales a day, with manager Frank N. Dampman eyeing John Stevenson of Thurlow — who reportedly rode an unpaced mile in 2:06 — as Sylph track representative; covers strong business at Chas. S. Smith Co. (Ramblers and Stormers), the new bicycle department at Frank Donlevy Hardware Co. under Abe Powell emphasising ladies' and juvenile wheels, and the Union Cycle Co.'s Easter Monday reception at South Penn Square.
- Rouse, Hazard & Co. of Peoria publish a letter through The Bearings emphatically denying a Washington, D.C. dealer's complaint that they are auctioning Flyer and Capitol bicycles in the capital, stating they have never conducted auction-house bicycle sales anywhere except one clearance of old debt stock in a western city about a year prior.
- Department column listing bicycle and hardware trade business changes across the United States and Canada, including firms sold out, dissolved partnerships, chattel mortgages, new incorporations, and ownership transfers in more than twenty cities from Massachusetts and Ohio to Montana, Washington state, and Ontario.
- Fire destroys the Indianapolis plant of the Century Cycle Mfg. Co., makers of the Arrow bicycle, with losses estimated between $50,000 and $75,000; M.F. Smither is named as the principal owner.