The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 11
Articles in this issue
- American Bicycle Co. directors — Coleman, Pope, Lozier, Featherstone, Spalding, Stearns and G. W. Young of the U. S. Mortgage and Trust Co. — meet in New York and decide to pay no dividends and close several plants; E. C. Stearns, whom the A. B. C. is suing for $200,000, retires thirty minutes into the session.
- The Ohio courts overrule Colonel F. J. Cheney's motion and authorise receiver T. B. Terry to distribute $7,823.85 among fifty or sixty creditors of the defunct Maumee Cycle Co. of Toledo.
- M. H. Schonstadt, seven or eight years in charge of Morgan & Wright's foreign department, sails on the 22d to set up in England as a manufacturers' agent, after a business tour covering Europe, Asia and Africa.
- Charles H. Carlisle, superintendent of the Crawford bicycle factory at Hagerstown, Md., dies at forty-three of convulsions attributed to acute indigestion brought on while eating strawberries.
- The Buffalo Specialty Mfg. Co. brings two more suits against G. W. Cole & Co. on the Duryea and Curlin tire-fluid patents, while at Buffalo Judge Knefink non-suits Buffalo Specialty in its libel action against Cole and J. N. H. Slee.
- W. A. Redding — once Pope Mfg. Co.'s attorney resisting Owen's Smith bottom-bracket patents, now the American Bicycle Co.'s counsel — testifies in the A. B. C. suit against H. P. Snyder Mfg. Co., naming Smith patent No. 392,973 the A. B. C.'s most valuable holding.
- W. H. Crosby of The Crosby Co., Buffalo, treasurer of the Cycle Trades Protective Association, urges independents to bank the $1-per-bicycle royalty and fight instead, and predicts the bicycle will settle down as an everyday economical conveyance.
- Since moving its headquarters to New York the Shelby Steel Tube Co. has formed a Vehicle and Specialty Department covering all bicycle and automobile work, with enamelling and nickelling plant installed and E. K. Orr in charge.
- The Stratton motor bicycle, introduced at the last New York Cycle Show at $150, is raised to $200.
- R. M. Keating's long-awaited Middletown, Conn. motor bicycle is illustrated and described: motor bolted behind the crank hanger, a combined clutch and coaster-brake with four pedal-worked positions, and a hollow rear mudguard doing duty as the muffler.
- The Dunlop Tire Co. leases a building in Melbourne and installs American-bought plant for a rubber mill, with an unnamed Indiana man already en route to superintend it and rubber specialties to be made besides tires.
- Creditors of Arthur Griggs, the failed New Haven, Conn. dealer, are expected to get about 25 per cent; attorney Samuel E. Hoyt is appointed trustee under a $5,000 bond, with assets near $7,000 against $9,000 of liabilities.
- The Treasury Department reports Russia raised its bicycle import duty 30 per cent from March 1, from 2.55 rubles (about $1.25) to about $1.62, just as American shipments there had been increasing.
- Argues that cycle fashions change slowly and for good reason: makers have refused to be hurried over weight reductions and small tubing, so no rage for small tubing developed, and 1902 will settle whether smaller tubes and reduced weights take hold.
- Uses the Marseilles correspondent's report to argue that American labour-saving refinements are damned abroad only because no effort is made to explain them, and promises the Bicycling World's export editions will supply the missing instruction.
- Alleges the Trust's sudden bottom-bracket suits are timed to frighten jobbers placing 1902 orders, and predicts the tactic will knit the independents closer together rather than intimidate them.
- Contrasts the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, when the cycle's great prosperity was still ahead, with the Pan-American at Buffalo, where foreign machines are absent and only three American concerns exhibit.
- Argues the neglected side of the weight question is the rider's: since buyers will not buy different weights, the maker must build one machine as light as it will stand, and is blamed by heavy and light riders alike.
- Traces the succession of the cycle dealer's rivals — first the hardware dealer, then the department store — and notes that although he can now buy and market as cheaply as either, he is not permitted to reap the advantage.
- The National Cycle Mfg. Co. of Bay City, Mich. covers 200 feet at the northwest corner of Section 8 in the Pan-American Transportation Building, showing thirteen models from $40 to $75 including the cushion-frame coaster-brake chainless Pan-American National; S. B. Jones and J. H. Johnson are in charge.
- The new Cycle Trade Association of Montreal, with L. D. Robertson as president, plans a July trade-only race meet with events for office boys, proprietors, travellers, salesmen, repairmen, apprentices and tandems, ten silver medals going as first prizes.
- The Messrs. Marsh of the Motor Cycle Mfg. Co., Brockton, Mass., issue a catalog and seek agents, condemning chain-driven motor bicycles as fit only to run a few miles and 'a blessing to the repair men and a curse to the rider.'
- In the Court of Common Pleas at Hartford the Indiana Bicycle Co. sues C. L. Tuttle for $232.48 on a surety bond covering goods sold to George N. Olmstead; the defense is that the bond was cancelled before the obligation was contracted.
- Argues tact is the retail salesman's essential quality, illustrated by a large store whose two crack salesmen were let go for cheaper men who were unpresentable and could not 'jolly' a customer, costing the branch its season and finally its existence.
- Riders waiting for a train mock a wheelman plodding by on an ancient spring-fork Victor with solid tires weighing sixty pounds or more, but the workingman rider plugs along quite untroubled by the attention.
- Argues riders now weigh every outlay on repairs, sundries and new machines; one 'stable' of three machines borrowed tires round until all were gone, and it is now the fashion to boast of an old machine's years of service.
- A repairer shows a Bicycling World man how tire fluid dries to a sticky mass that must be dug out before a plug will hold, spends fifteen or twenty minutes at it, then charges double rates and gives no guarantee.
- The I. A. Weston Co. of Syracuse, N. Y. adds a Champion hub weighing but 14 1/2 ounces per pair, its bearing surfaces geometrically determined so the balls roll without twisting, with two points of cone contact and a dust cap filtering oil through a felt washer.
- The English Cycle Components Co. announces it will stop stamping its name on parts and fittings, ostensibly so local makers can build their own reputations; the article reads the move as a bid for business as weaker concerns are weeded out.
- London letter of May 29: the Motor Mfg. Co. is overrun with orders for the Werner and buyers pay $25 premiums, while Charles Manning & Son show a complete Geneva-built 1 1/2-horsepower motor with carburetter and accumulators at $120 to the trade, made in Swiss watch factories.
- After more than three years the House of Lords decides for Humber & Co. against the Griffiths Cycle Corporation, saving Humber nearly $200,000 in damages, the determining cause being the absence of a binding agreement transferred to the reorganized Griffiths concern.
- Notes H. G. Wells's prophecy of special highways built for 'soft-tired' vehicles, on which the weight problem would be much simplified because perfect surfaces would cause no breakages.
- Liquid or dip brazing, so generally used in the United States, is almost unknown to British cycle manufacturers; a trade journal comments on one maker's use of it almost as if it were something entirely new.
- Quoting a London Times authority on international machinists' topics, argues that English youth are held back by age-based pay and slow advancement while America promotes on ability, so trained mechanics and engineering graduates emigrate.
- C. B. Barker & Co. of New York push the Hilton capless valve, whose rubber washer is closed automatically by air pressure and which is plated inside and out against rust; manager Harris Parker notes Barker sells as many valve springs as valves.
- Contrasts American indifference to weight — machines kept under thirty pounds by carrying little equipment — with British riders who load to forty; a Wheeling writer prophesies riders will demand twenty-four-pound free-wheel machines with two brakes by the next Stanley Show.
- Taylore beats Burns Pierce over 20 motor-paced miles at Baltimore in 36.16 4-5; McFarland wins the 10-mile open at Vailsburg before nearly 10,000; and Champion, McEachern, Michael, Moran, Nelson and Linton figure in matches at Providence, Philadelphia, Charles River Park, Worcester and Revere Beach.
- Trade changes of the week: a $900 safe burglary at Himes & Rosenwinkel, Fort Wayne; William J. Bishop's involuntary bankruptcy at Philadelphia; fires at Quincy, Columbus, Ogden, Rocky Ford and Rock Island; and new stores and successions from Amsden, Vt. to Ann Arbor, Mich.
- The Eclipse Mfg. Co. takes orders for 12,000 Morrow coaster-brakes in the first three days of a recent week, among them orders from England and Australia.
- The Marseilles correspondent reports French buyers find American machines too dear at 280-400 francs against a 200-franc demand and too complicated, with local dealers unable to service the fittings, and blames the absence of travelling salesmen and of mechanical instruction.
- The Lancet of London extols John Cassels's cycle and motor car lamp, whose obliquely set glass prism on each side throws a beam backward and downward, recommending it to medical men who ride on night calls.
- Howard O. Smith, president of the G. & J. Tire Co., Indianapolis, visits New York and reports a gradual increase in demand for G. & J. tires in both bicycle and automobile business despite the rainy season.
- Charles Cunningham, a Youngstown (Pa.) dealer, writes endorsing the Bicycling World's exposure of the mail-order houses, citing a 'high-grade' bicycle in his shop fitted with 'Clipper' double-tube tires made from ripped cheap single tubes that never held air.
- The week's grants include five Robert M. Keating motor bicycle, frame and pedal-brake patents assigned to the R. M. Keating Motor Co., Portland, Me.; Hiram M. Quick's engine muffler; George E. Bartholomew's velocipede and roller bearings; Russell and Brown's bicycle lock; and William F. Williams's elastic tire.
- A Detroit dealer quotes a buyer whose 1899 wheel is out of date and who wants a chainless with cushion frame and coaster-brake, refusing to omit anything: 'Wheels are too cheap, anyhow. If they cost more they would be better appreciated.'
- The manager of Single Tubes, Ltd., London, says the careless fitter and repairer is the single-tube tire's worst enemy abroad, and notes two ladies make good money collecting single-tube repairs that apathetic cycle agents send outside.
- W. E. Brock of Plainfield, N. J. invents and manufactures a hand-propelled machine he calls the 'Manumotor,' using oscillating levers and fulcrums in a rowing-like motion and claimed to reach twelve to fifteen miles an hour.
- The Rubber Tire Association votes that tires cut on rims, from whatever cause, shall not be replaced unless materially defective; Goodrich urges riders to see that their tires are securely cemented all the way round.
- An English writer charges his countrymen with 'crass ignorance' in single-tube repair — plugging one hole while leaving another untouched, then blaming 'porosity' and scrapping the tire — and tells them to learn from their American cousins.
- The British War Office adopts the American method of pedal fastening after trials of various methods, screwing left- and right-hand threaded pins into the crank ends with no locking nut, its simplicity called a distinct gain to manufacturers.