The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 23
Articles in this issue
- The Shelby Steel Tube Co. passes formally into the United States Steel Corporation, with W. S. Miller raised from the treasurership to the presidency on C. T. Boynton's retirement; the share-exchange terms filed with the New York Stock Exchange and the company's balance sheet to 1 April 1901, showing total assets of $13,973,247.35, are set out in full.
- Results of the Badger Brass Mfg. Co.'s Solar gas lamp selling contest: Mark Mitchell of Rocky River, Ohio, took the steam automobile first prize on 513 lamps sold, R. J. Hughes of Wahpeton, N.D., the motor tricycle on 596, and Elbert Toppen of Oyster Bay, N.Y., the motor bicycle; M. Rosenthal of Bound Brook, N.J., won the jobbers' $100 in merchandise.
- American bicycle exports for July 1901 rose nearly $40,000 on July 1900, with marked gains in the United Kingdom, France and Australia and a jump of almost $30,000 in shipments to China; a full table gives values by article and country for July and for the seven months ended July, 1899 to 1901.
- A Buenos Ayres correspondent urges American manufacturers to stamp their foreign mail properly, reporting that importers have been known to refuse short-paid matter and that he has spent dollars on fines for mail from the United States.
- Consul-General Stowe writes from Cape Town advising American makers not to print prices in catalogues sent to South Africa, since they do not cover selling expenses, and to name net prices distinguishing the regular dealer from the wholesaler.
- German bicycle imports fell from 546 tons in 1897 to 385 in 1900 while exports rose from 600 to 1,566 tons, chiefly to Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland; the German duty of 24 marks per 100 kilograms is compared with France's 220 francs and the United States' 45 per cent.
- Next season is expected to see the depot or branch store system extended in the British trade, with concerns that abolished it in past years now ready to return to it.
- London letter of 19 August: the United Motor Industries cut De Dion sparking plug prices, the Motor Mfg. Co.'s Werner motor bicycles sell out before reaching the depot, a friend covers 800 miles to the West of England on single-tube tires, and Dan Albone of Biggleswade brings out a low, centrally-motored bicycle ordered by Lord Alwynne Compton and the Lord Advocate of Scotland.
- Charles McCutchen, formerly of the American Saddle Co., and Thomas J. Wetzel, late of the Kirkpatrick Saddle Co., join forces as manufacturers' agents with offices in Chicago, addressed meanwhile care of the Kirkpatrick Saddle Co., Springfield, O.
- The Hendee Mfg. Co., Waltham Mfg. Co., E. R. Thomas Motor Co. and Stratton Motor Bicycle Co. have each entered a motor bicycle in the motocycle class of the Automobile Club's New York-Buffalo endurance test starting Monday.
- H. H. Fulton, president, and A. P. Morrow, superintendent, of the Eclipse Mfg. Co. are reported in London after a visit to Paris, describing themselves as holiday making though one paper calls it the nearest approach to determined business it has seen.
- The American Wood Rim Co. has completed arrangements for a plant in Paris, backed by French capital and to trade as the Cie des Jantes en Bois Franco-Americaine.
- The paper's exposure of the Manhattan Storage Co. of Philadelphia and its fraudulent advertisements and spurious wares has drawn wide commendation, including a letter from H. S. Brandt, a dealer of Norristown, Penn.; no abatement of the work is promised.
- Endorses the Morrow coaster-brake advertisement's argument that dealers should seek out the owner of every coaster-brakeless bicycle, and asks which maker will be first to fit a coaster-brake as standard equipment.
- The rise in bicycle exports to the Chinese Empire from $1,900 in July 1900 to $29,000 in July 1901 follows the pattern of Cuba and the Philippines, where the bicycle followed close after the bullet.
- The big cities caught the cycling fever soonest and recovered quickest, but while urban riding is in the doldrums bicycles remain thick in towns, villages, seaside and country resorts.
- Rebuts English cycling journals holding up a supposed American boom in motor bicycles, warning that a sudden demand would bring untried motors and incompetent users and repairers and blight a machine still little understood.
- McFarland beat Major Taylor in two straight heats at Madison Square Garden on 2 September; Kramer beat Lawson by inches in the four-cornered half-mile final and Henri Fournier rode an exhibition motor-bicycle mile in 1:34 2-5; the Associated Cycling Clubs' twenty-five-mile Cycle Path handicap on Long Island ended with riders running into spectators, C. Perden of Brooklyn placed first.
- Illustrated report of the motocycle race at the Vanderbilt automobile meeting at Aquidneck Park, Newport, with Mrs. John R. Drexel and W. K. Vanderbilt jr. as patroness and patron: Kenneth Skinner of Boston on an eight-horsepower tricycle romped away from G. M. Holley of Bradford, Pa., and U. G. Scott of Newport over three miles.
- General Manager Sanborn of the National Association of Manufacturers contrasts American price quoting abroad, often catalogues without figures or best prices given to unknown buyers, with the German practice of a private net-price letter or discount sheet and detailed assumed-condition estimates, citing a starch-machinery quotation to South America.
- A hardwareman argues that the newspaper brings people to the windows, the window show brings them into the store and the merchant's affability keeps them there, and that a poor display undoes a clever advertisement.
- The Zimmerman coaster-brake, invented by John Zimmerman of Syracuse, N.Y., and made and marketed by the Industrial Machine Co. with works at Phoenix, N.Y., has only nine parts and is fitted to any standard rear hub by replacing the sprocket gear with a pocketed collar, wedges and a friction plate.
- Trade changes and openings: Miller Bros. succeed the Empire Cycle and Auto Co. at Glens Falls, N.Y., Boncourt succeeds Simpson & Boncourt at Lawrence, Kan., and W. D. Parlin's Natick, Mass., business becomes the $40,000 W. D. Parlin Hardware Co.; new stores at Miami, Alexandria, Greenville, Coffeyville, Paw Paw and Portsmouth.
- The E. R. Thomas Motor Co.'s Auto-Bi cut the world's one and five mile records to 1:22 1-5 and 7:05 4-5 at the Pan-American racing, on a regular road machine with the muffler removed and a larger driving pulley, beating a motor of nearly three times the weight.
- The factory man, tenacious of his own ideas and rarely travelling, needs the dealer, who is in constant contact with users calling first for simplicity and cheapness; the two are necessary complements of each other.
- Thousands of riders still spread the jaws of even a good wrench such as a Billings & Spencer by using it as a hammer, on nuts needing a ten or twelve inch tool, or upside down so the strain falls on the open unsupported part of the jaws.
- A salesman who simply says he hasn't got the article implies that being out of standard goods is nothing unusual; the good salesman conveys surprise that the last of the lot has gone and that another order is already on the way.
- A mathematician calculates that riding on the level is six times as easy as walking, 25 pounds of pedal pressure against a 150-pound walker's lift, but that on a one-in-ten gradient a constant 90 pounds is needed and the cyclist does 900 foot pounds of work to the pedestrian's 150.
- Uncle Sam forwards an under-stamped sealed letter and takes his chances of payment, but for a penny-short newspaper sends a blue card to the addressee and, failing a stamp, routes it to the Dead Letter Office and back to the sender, taking three weeks instead of one.
- A speaker before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, blames the want of a cheap, easily worked and permanent solder, which mushes and leaves a rough seam, and predicts that by the middle of the twentieth century steel and aluminum will stand side by side as the most useful metals.
- Salesmen who inveigh against a competitor's machines instead of extolling their own leave the customer no wiser, whet his appetite for the rival wheel and send him down the street to a better salesman who closes the sale.
- Good tire tape carries a generous application of rubber solution and unrolls only with difficulty, while the cheap kind is almost innocent of solution and little better than ordinary canvas; a difference of a few cents in price means much.
- Grants include Erving D. Clark of Syracuse on a method of uniting tubular metallic frames and on a tubular metallic frame, William F. Cooper of Meriden on an acetylene gas lamp, Charles Glover of New Britain on a pedal, John Hullt of Hood River, Ore., on a spring handle bar, William L. Corson of San Francisco on exhaust mechanism, and a Bicycle Fan by McCune and Mull of Iola, Kan.
- C. W. Jarvis of Toronto has taken out Canadian and American patents on a long-framed machine after the old boneshaker pattern, with forward pedals and a backed carriage seat for leverage, claiming a 150 gear can be driven uphill as easily as an ordinary 72.
- Spoke tying has died out so completely that riders forget it existed; the old wrapped and soldered wire tie, and the patent spoke clasp pressed on with dies that superseded it, are no longer thought necessary by makers.
- British possessions lead the week's shipments, New Zealand taking 138 cases of bicycles and parts worth $4,737 and the British West Indies 38 cases worth $1,044, with Hamburg, Havre, Liverpool and Southampton also taking substantial quantities.