The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 1
Articles in this issue
- Western hardware jobbers, with St. Louis as the pivot, are quietly organising to refuse to buy from makers who supply the cut-price Chicago "mail-order" houses, one of which has contracted for 100,000 bicycles and pairs of tires and turned over $17,000,000 in 1900.
- Morgan & Wright have discontinued their New England branch in Boston; the "down East" territory passes to the New York store, now the M. & W. Eastern depot, with W. C. Marion remaining in charge.
- Foreign testimony in the A. B. C. vs. Snyder suit over the Smith bottom-bracket patent has closed after hearings at Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Liverpool, London and Glasgow, with the Starleys, Dan Albone and old racer John Keen among the defence witnesses.
- The Reading (Pa.) Automobile and Gear Co. has sued Edward E. Ziegler of Philadelphia in the U. S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania over the coaster-brake he later licensed to the Reed & Curtis Machine Screw Co. as the "E-Z."
- The Eclipse Mfg. Co. cancelled Buffalo jobber H. C. Colton's contract and obtained an injunction from Judge Hazel restraining him from selling Morrow coaster-brakes below the agreed $4 trade price.
- Judge Hazel's default judgment for the Buffalo Specialty Mfg. Co. upholds the Seth Curlin tire-fluid patent, perpetually enjoins Buffalo dealer W. G. Schack and names Harry L. Taylor master to assess the profits of his infringement.
- The Schmitz spring hub of Frank Schmitz & Sons, Chicago, places the spring below the axle inside the hub, giving about two inches of play in a three-inch hub and dispensing with springs above the axle on motocycles and automobiles.
- W. H. Johnson & Co. of Halifax, N. S., recovered $47.50 and costs from a 285-pound customer who broke the bicycle guaranteed to carry him while learning to ride alone at 10:30 at night; the full bench dismissed his appeal.
- Judge Hodge of the Circuit Court at Newport, Ky., has ordered the winding up of bicycle-lamp makers Brown & Smith after absconding bank cashier Frank Brown's $10,000 interest in the firm was attached.
- A workman of the failed Dodge Cycle Co. of Syracuse sues for $27.02, Francis W. Gridley having settled most merchandise claims since the Court of Appeals held him a partner, but not the men's wages.
- The eight or ten Los Angeles jobbers invited the city's dealers and repair men to a banquet at which committees were appointed toward forming a local trade organisation.
- England's Dunlop Tire Co. is reported about to move lock, stock and barrel from Coventry to Birmingham, taking new machinery and processes meant to cut costs and defeat fraudulent imitation.
- February cycle exports totalled $240,892 against $342,840 a year earlier, France, England and Germany taking most of the loss, but British North America, Mexico, the Central American States and the West Indies bought more heavily; the full country-by-country table is printed.
- Fire in the six-story building at 284-288 Erie street, Cleveland, caused a $60,000 loss, nearly $30,000 of it at the Gormully & Jeffery sales store on the ground floor.
- The Bridgeport Gun Implement Co. has acquired at least two much-litigated pedal patents and is said to be planning a coup, though the company declines to discuss the matter.
- Fierce competition has forced M. G. Oppenheim's jobbing trade at 17 Warren street, New York, out of business, most of his stock being bought up by other New York jobbers.
- The Roumanian Minister of Finance has asked the Chamber to raise the import duty on "velocipedes" from 8 lei to 20 lei each, or $1.81 to $4.
- The Willis Park Row Cycle Co. of New York has opened a Philadelphia branch at 913 Arch street, where Charles S. Smith remains in charge, running the bicycle department on his own account.
- Shippers to Brazil who fail to comply with the regulations on invoicing freight and expenses will hereafter be fined by the Brazilian authorities.
- Under San Salvador's new tariff, velocipedes, bicycles and accessories will be taxed 50 centimes (10 cents) per kilogramme, plus surcharges and additional duties.
- Two minors lost forefingers in punch presses in the same week: John Myttelstadt asks $7,000 of the American Bicycle Company at Syracuse, while William O'Dea asks only $300 of the Admiral Bicycle Lamp Company at Columbus, Ohio.
- The Pacific Pump Co. of Pasadena, Cal., incorporates with $50,000 capital to acquire patents for inflating pneumatic tires; stockholders include George F. Kernaghan, E. R. Bradley and James McLachlan.
- With April, Easter and the first sunshine the cycling impulse revives and riders come in a mood to repair or replace, so the dealer who is prepared can often turn a repair job into a sale.
- The health argument for cycling is returning, dealers reporting renewed interest from men and women past middle age who will need modern machines — an opening for the three C's, the cushion frame, the coaster-brake and the chainless.
- The E. R. Thomas Motor Co.'s motor-fitted combination or drop-front tandem is offered as the cure for the tandem's "one-sidedness," relieving the man of more than his share of the work when riding with a woman.
- The vogue of the suspension saddle is credited to the coaster-brake: now that riders coast habitually, the long saddle designed for pedalling has given way to a short, broad-based, springy shape.
- Dealers waste their store windows; a Chambers street, New York, house dresses its window two or three times a week and posts a card and typewritten bulletin of second-hand machines that regularly brings buyers inside.
- Praise for the agent who changes his window display and show-cards, offers tempting values and turns dulness into activity instead of waiting for something to turn up.
- Nothing in many years has drawn crowds to bicycle stores like the exhibition of motor bicycles, news of whose presence spreads spontaneously through a town.
- The Eclipse Mfg. Co.'s effort to maintain the price of the Morrow coaster-brake shows that price-cutting can be stopped where there is a will, and deserves imitation.
- The judge's charge in the Worcester (Mass.) suits that brought $700 verdicts against tradesmen Havener and Adams is printed at length, affirming the motocycle's right to the public roads; the Associated American Motocyclists will again fund the appeal.
- Charles T. Dugro, Princeton student and son of Tammany's Justice Dugro, holds the only permit for a gasolene motor vehicle in Central Park; Park Commissioner Clausen explains why a motocycle passed where gasolene automobiles have not.
- The Indiana Chain Co. of Indianapolis introduces a chain rivet with uniform milled ends; with swaged centre blocks its chains are tested to 1,300-1,500 pounds where three-sixteenths chains formerly broke at 700 to 800.
- "Major" Taylor, in Paris, left his Iver Johnson at a cycle store to have a tire cemented and returned to find placards in the window announcing that "Major Taylor rides a chainless."
- The case for keeping a stock book recording every new and second-hand machine through the shop, with a recommended twelve-column ruling running from consecutive stock number and gear and frame height to buyer, date and journal folio.
- London letter of March 20: mud, snow and the threatened numbering of machines by the county councils have stalled the motor trade; Smith's compressed rubber tire bands are praised, surface carburetters attacked, and the C. T. C.'s vote restoring the word "cyclist" to its membership form dismissed as bunkum.
- August Nowak of Jeffersonville, Ind., is said to be forming a company for a three-sprocket bicycle in which one turn of the first sprocket is claimed to give nine revolutions of the rear wheel.
- A well-known bicycle's advertisement in the illustrated weeklies pushes coaster-brakes in heavy black type while picturing the coasting wheelman with his feet perched on the front forks.
- Chicago's Grand Jury has begun investigating the Mead Cycle Co.'s blackmail charges against two South Chicago tax collectors, and indictments are expected.
- Syracuse, N. Y., repairers and the dealers and jobbers have met several times, the last on March 27, without reaching an understanding on the matters in dispute.
- The Chicago Automobile Show struck cycling visitors as a diluted cycle show, nearly every exhibit and exhibitor bearing a name long identified with the cycle trade.
- A chain lubricant recipe: two or three pounds of mutton suet with a quarter pound of yellow beeswax and flake graphite, the kerosene-cleaned chain immersed, cooled and remelted to leave sleeves of lubricant between rollers and pins.
- Watch a much-frequented hill and coaster-brake machines can be spotted coasting from the start of the descent, with many fixed-gear riders now doing likewise; only the scorchers pedal all the way down.
- A German movement urges enamel in place of electroplated and nickelled parts as longer-lasting; the 1900 Leipzig show already had many nickelless machines with enamelled bars, though no price reduction is expected.
- The J. Stevens Arms and Tool Company of Chicopee Falls, Mass., report their Climax coaster brake selling beyond expectation on its five parts, 12-ounce weight and fitting to any hub without spreading the frame.
- Britain's scramble for cross frames is dismissed as mere novelty; one English designer's frame keeps the diamond lines and adds a tube from the bottom head lug to the rear-fork bridge, stiffening the weak rear triangle instead of only the front.
- A veteran dealer welcomes the G. & J. Tire Co.'s decision to make its 1 1/2, 1 5/8 and 1 3/4-inch outer covers all fit one rim size, recalling the mismatched rims and tires and huge stocks that a lack of standardisation forced on dealers.
- The House of Lords has upheld the judgment against Gormully & Jeffery in the North British Rubber Co.'s Clincher tire suit, damages of GBP 8,941 10s. being awarded uncontested.
- The New Zealand Wheelman complains that English and American second and third grade machines are frequently sold as first grade in that colony.
- Frank W. Wood of the Indiana Chain Co. reads the increased call for short chains for ladies' bicycles as a straw pointing to a marked revival of cycling interest this year.
- Weekly list of trade changes and new stores, from J. J. Kropff succeeding Frank James at Abilene, Kan., and Finn & Cretian succeeding Finn & Sullivan at Buffalo, to shoe dealers McElaney & Tonry of Brockton, Mass., adding bicycles.
- A dealer displays a sickly yellow machine with a vivid blue head and red spokes that he would not ride himself; a hotel porter ordered one on the spot and promised to send a friend.
- Harry T. Dunn of the Fisk Rubber Co., back from California, told of whole orchards of fruit wasting for want of railroad cars, prompting the retort that dealers claim they cannot find the right side line.
- A paper circulated among Bridgeport, Conn., dealers calling for 6 o'clock closing except Mondays and Saturdays has been signed by all but three of them, with a meeting to follow.
- Fred W. Peabody of 10 Main street, Amesbury, Mass., drew a large attendance to an opening with an orchestra and a display of nearly 50 of the 1901 patterns.
- The Alabama Bicycle Co. of 127 S. Twentieth street, Birmingham, Ala., reports so good an outlook that five men can barely get the repair-shop work out in reasonable time.
- The Cycle Board of Trade of Portland, Ore., has revised its uniform repair schedule for 1901, printed in full from crank axles and brazing to enamelling, respoking and tire vulcanising, and signed by 30 firms including Fred T. Merrill Cycle Co. and the American Bicycle Co.
- Claims of the week's grants, among them Theophilus Coad's pneumatic hub, Laverux N. Dyhrberg's back-pedalling brake, George M. Holley's motocycle frame, John G. Ziegler's coaster and brake and Pardon W. Tillinghast's pneumatic tire, with design patents for four Sangster bicycle frames.
- Another good export week, Great Britain again the largest buyer, with single shipments over $10,000 to Rotterdam (439 cases, $10,272) and Havre (376 cases, $10,378); the full port-by-port record is printed.
- A Chicago mail-order house advertises an $11.75 bicycle sent free on ten days' trial, of which the writer doubts enough would survive the trial to be worth paying for.
- Paul Mensch & Co. of 92-94 La Salle St., Chicago, have published a directory of bicycle dealers, repairers, manufacturers and parts makers, with automobile manufacturers, clubs and owners, at $5 cloth-bound in the U. S. and Canada.
- Worcester (Mass.) dealers, quoting the local Gazette, predict a banner season, with more wheels sold and ordered so far this year than in any previous year to the same date.