The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 10
Articles in this issue
- Judge Hazel, in the United States court at Buffalo, has continued the Eclipse Mfg. Co.'s injunction against jobber H. C. Colton until September, barring him from advertising or selling Morrow coaster-brakes below the restricted price of $3.92 net; Eclipse is gathering evidence against other price-cutters.
- The court has ordered the Sanger Handle Bar and Plating Co. of Milwaukee sold at public auction on the 10th inst.; the assets are unfinished handle bars, special machinery and tools, nickel and copper solutions, polishing stands, an electric light plant, boiler and engine.
- The receiver of the Whitman Saddle Co., a boom-period concern that failed years ago, has called a meeting of its creditors for June 10 at 45 Cedar street, New York.
- Three years after the Buffalo Wheel Co.'s general assignment the Indianapolis Drop Forging Co. is still owed $719.62, and Justice Childs has cited assignee Joseph P. Devine to appear in Special Term on June 10 to show cause why the accounts should not be settled.
- Referee Newton has called the first meeting of the creditors of Arthur Griggs, the New Haven (Conn.) dealer, for June 8 to appoint a trustee.
- The Smith & Egge Co. of Bridgeport, Conn., has filed a certificate increasing its capital stock from $60,000 to $100,000.
- Oscar Hedstrom launched the Hendee Mfg. Co.'s motor bicycle at Springfield, Mass., by riding up the 19 per cent Cross Street Hill at a 12-mile pace before 400 or 500 onlookers; the 1 3/4 H.P. gasolene machine scales 75 pounds, has a 5 1/2-inch tread, three levers and three chains.
- The American Bicycle Co.'s application to restrain the Stearns Bicycle Agency of Syracuse from selling Regal and Holland bicycles was not reached by Judge Cox at Utica and stands over to June 18.
- The Snowleaf Mfg. Co. of Dover, Del., incorporated with $100,000 capital by Baltimoreans to make and sell bicycles, automobiles and self-propelling vehicles.
- More than $1,000 damage was done to Cone's bicycle establishment at Pottsville, Pa., a fire supposed to have started by spontaneous combustion.
- Five coach horses burned to death at Syracuse, N. Y., in a Sunday-night fire that destroyed E. C. Stearns's stables, a loss of $6,000.
- April cycle exports beat April 1900 in France, "other Europe" and Japan and lost only about $20,000 overall, offsetting the halting home trade; a full table gives April and ten-month values by country, the ten-month total falling to $1,929,556.
- A Portland dealer reports a revival of wheeling in Maine this year, crediting the coaster-brake with lessening the labour of riding the hilly local roads.
- A large hardware house encloses a printed "Notice" slip in every outgoing package inviting foreign patrons to report anything wrong, which doubles as a check on its own packers.
- Ahead of the National Association of Credit Men's sixth annual convention at Cleveland, president John Field of Philadelphia describes its files on retail merchants' private characters and its fund for prosecuting dishonest debtors.
- At an extraordinary general meeting the Dunlop Pneumatic Tire Co. agreed to take over the Rubber Tire Co. and abandon hand-made tires for a vulcanized process, extend its twelve-month guarantee, claim a patent on the process running to 1910, and cut capital from $20,000,000 to $12,500,000.
- Editorial on the $3,000,000 export year: the passing cycle-frenzy, English and German "Yankeephobe" prejudice and the Trust are blamed, and the paper argues the coaster-brake, cushion frame and motor bicycle will revive foreign demand, to be pushed in its forthcoming English, French and Spanish export issues.
- Editorial on the long wet spring: stocks laid in for spring trade still encumber dealers' shelves, repeat orders have not come, and the turning point where deferred sales are lost for the season is almost reached.
- Editorial noting the coaster-brake no longer needs booming: it is forcing the fixed gear hard, dealers in hilly districts sell more coaster machines than fixed-gear ones, though the fixed gear will probably stay the regular equipment through 1902.
- Editorial urging dealers to advertise hard now the sun has shone three days, and to fill show windows with sundries, whose season never ends and which draw buyers into the store for bicycles.
- Editorial quoting Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s catalog claim that its $12.75 price rests on running the factory through the dull winter months at modest wages, and calling it a brazen lie since winter is when cycle factories are busiest.
- American consuls and correspondents at Liverpool, Leeds, Dresden, Berlin, Chemnitz, Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege, Limoges, Nice, Carthagena, Valencia, Bilbao, Milan, Genoa, Reichenberg, Quito, Ciudad Juarez, Valletta and San Jose explain the $2,300,000 fall in American cycle exports — home-made prejudice, cheap inferior shipments, unrepairable single-tube tires, cash-in-advance terms and hilly, roadless tropical countries.
- A dealer explains to the Bicycling World man why he is rigging a new power pump to give free air: riders would not pay for it and would simply go to another store, though he may charge when his own men do the pumping.
- N. L. Blever of Derby, Conn., reports one of his best seasons despite the rain — three bicycles sold in a Monday morning, thirty-five wheels to repair and fifty-one coaster-brakes sold since the beginning of the year.
- The Irish Cyclist describes a clutch giving a free wheel that also permits back-pedalling, working automatically with no levers, which would answer the British rider's long-standing objection to the combined coaster-brake.
- Frank T. Fowler of Chicago is retiring from the bicycle business to manufacture acetylene lighting and heating plants.
- London letter of May 22: F. J. Osmond and Lewis Stroud are seen on Werner motor bicycles; the writer objects to $60 asked for a simple two-speed gear, reports a rider's leg injured by a split exhaust box and a frame tube cracked by bolting a motor to an ordinary safety, and tries Hudd's new $1 compression tap.
- The Irish Court of Appeal has dismissed Williamson's appeal in his guarantee case against the Rover Cycle Co. over a second-hand bicycle whose fork broke, confirming the King's Bench verdict for the manufacturers.
- A rider who has once given the coaster-brake a good trial acquires the coasting habit and finds the fixed gear absurd, continually trying to coast and reflecting on the pointless rotary motion of the pedals.
- Reprints the Crest Mfg. Co.'s pamphlet listing eighteen causes of motocycle misfiring and stopping — imperfect mixture, gasolene below 76, plug terminals, corroded contact breaker, broken wire, carbonation, battery failure, wrong spark timing, overheating, defective lubrication and valves — each with its remedy.
- A dealer keeps two machines from the same factory under different nameplates at $17 and $30, sells the bargain-hunting customer the "$30" one at $27 as a secret favour, and clears $10 more than a straight sale would have brought.
- The Bicycling World resumes its racing column: David Turner of Paterson wins the twelfth Irvington-Millburn 25-mile handicap on a Yale in 1:15:20 before 10,000 in the mud; Kramer beats McFarland at Vailsburg and takes the "bumping handicap" meet; Moran wins a 25-mile motor-paced race at the new Revere Beach track after Elkes is thrown; Michael beats Coleman and Babcock at Baltimore; Yale takes the intercollegiate championship.
- New stores at Tilton, N. H., Lake Mills, Ia., Brockton, Mass., Bay City, Mich. and elsewhere; changes including Temple Bros. succeeding W. S. Young at McPherson, Kan., the Elk Cycle Co. of Anderson, Ind., going out of business, and J. M. Erichson of Slater, Ia., filing in bankruptcy.
- A rider's cranks repeatedly locked after he cleaned his chain in kerosene and he blamed the coaster-brake; a repairer found the real cause was a chain bolt sticking out and catching the closely fitting crank.
- An American writing from Rio Janeiro says firms must send their own Portuguese- or Spanish-speaking representatives at $3,500 to $4,000 a year, since the English and German houses that hold the competing American agencies never hustle for the business.
- Arthur Griggs of New Haven owes mortgages of $662.50, $496.76 and $2,573, a $263.75 insurance loan, the National Cycle Co. of Bay City $2,310, the Gendron Wheel Co. $343.78, C. B. Barker & Co. $347.13 and the Wagner Typewriter Co. $847.
- Claims allowed to Blom and Nordquist (ice velocipede), Nichols (changeable-speed gear), Palmer and Berrodin of the Pennsylvania Rubber Co. (pneumatic tire and method), Barton (hub brake), Nash of Toronto (back-pedalling brake), Bryant (charge mixer), McCollum (bicycle support) and Bergmann (engine), plus designs to Rosenbluth for a lamp body and Green for a cycle rear triangle.
- Rollin Abell of Boston is the first of the later steam-bicycle men to show a drawing of his machine, built in Brooklyn with a 2 horsepower three-cylinder rotary-valve engine weighing fifteen pounds and a water-tube boiler fitted inside the frame.
- The Bicycling World man spots an early-nineties cushion-tired machine with an absurdly short head, a tube curved to the rear wheel and a roller chain of Brobdingnagian proportions, and asks where all the old bicycles have gone.
- The export manifest for the week ending May 28 shows 683 cases of bicycles worth $19,093 to Hamburg alone, with Havre ($8,095), London, Rotterdam, Gothenburg and Southampton also large; the full port-by-port record is given.
- Summer dust settles thickly on a chain and grinds into the working parts like emery powder, so lubrication is needed most in this season rather than least.
- A London tradesman is marketing Anti-Rustine, a metal preservative of undisclosed composition; a customer reports coated iron left in salt water and out in storms came away clean while every uncoated portion was red with rust.