The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 9
Articles in this issue
- Syracuse trade circles are unruffled by the American Bicycle Co.'s $200,000 suit against E. C. Stearns and his associates; Herbert E. Maslin of the Stearns Bicycle Agency says only "we're too busy selling bicycles to talk about it," while the Bretz Cycle Mfg. Co. is overwhelmed with orders and the 1902 Wolff-American is already being built.
- Arthur Griggs, one of the best known dealers in New Haven, Conn., filed a petition in bankruptcy with liabilities of $9,629.88 against assets of $10,522.85.
- The United States Supreme Court, per Justice Peckham, ruled in Carson, Scott, Pirie & Co. vs. the Chicago Trust Co. that a creditor must surrender money received within four months before bankruptcy before his claim can rank equally with those of other creditors.
- The Diamond Rubber Co. opened another branch, in Detroit at 310 Woodward avenue, with W. M. Perrett in charge and H. M. Snyder travelling the Michigan territory.
- The American Bicycle Co. filed two more Smith bottom bracket patent suits, against the Crosby Co. and John R. Keim of Buffalo, N. Y., before Judge Hazel; attorney A. M. Austin, of Redding, Kiddle & Greely, declined to say whether further suits were contemplated.
- London letter on the Motor Car Show, where the Werner and Singer led the motor bicycle exhibits; the writer argues that inducing well-known lady cyclists to ride motor bicycles would advance the pastime more than anything else.
- The combination of tire fluid manufacturers banded together against the Duryea (Neverleak) patent, property of the Buffalo Specialty Mfg. Co., has been dissolved by mutual consent, each former associate now to defend itself.
- Following its $200,000 suit against the Stearns Bicycle Agency, the American Bicycle Co. will move before Judge Coxe at Utica, N. Y., on June 4 to restrain the defendants from marketing the Regal bicycle, presenting affidavits by Colonel George Pope, C. V. Tuttle of New York, Edward J. Day of Chicago and twenty-eight others.
- Congress adjourned with a bill in hand enabling advertisers to send out return envelopes without stamps, the postage to be paid by the advertiser only on envelopes actually returned.
- England's cycle exports for April attained £40,595, against £44,834 in March and £42,742 in April 1900.
- The Truman Hay Co., of 268 Tremont street, Boston, advertised silver plated spoons, perfume, a $35 talking machine and $50 bicycles for a few dollars; Inspector Snow found it never filled an order, and the members of the firm have made their escape.
- George E. Shaw, cycle material agent at 35 Warren street turned auctioneer at 237 Fifth avenue under the name Metropolitan Auction Rooms, assigned to Isaac H. Dreyfuss with liabilities of $4,000 to $5,000 against about $3,000 of assets.
- Negotiations are on foot for the acquirement of the old Royal bicycle plant at Marshall, Mich., by a concern that will manufacture novelties and possibly bicycles.
- A Bicycling World man visits O'Neill's and Siegel-Cooper's to find the department stores' bicycle trade reduced to job-lot Fowlers at $15.50 and $23.98 machines passed off as Hartford-built Columbias, while regular Nassau street cycle stores now undersell them on lamps and sundries.
- Before Justice Kekewich in the Chancery Division, the British Motor Traction Co. (representing the De Dion-Bouton interests), led by Fletcher Moulton, K. C., won on all three of its patents against John Vaughan Sherrin, covering the Maybach float-feed carburetter, the cam system of contact breaking and a style of induction coil.
- The store and repair shop of Howes & Premo, School street, Webster, Mass., is closed and Warren F. Howes has disappeared, leaving two protested checks for $60 and $25 in the hands of a hotelkeeper and a tailor.
- Edmund L. Wheeler of Hartford, Conn., formerly in the bicycle repair business, filed a petition in bankruptcy with liabilities of $3,640.58 and assets of $3,040.
- Rebuts the old tale that Japanese-made bicycles would flood America at $13 each: no such invasion ever came, yet the rumour was used to justify forming the "bicycle combination," which then foisted machines of American make on the public.
- An English paper argues that British quality combined with American design and workmanship would yield an ideal moulded tire, produced from cheaper material than the old-fashioned hand methods allowed.
- A dealer's recommended repair outfit proved useless — its rubber perished and its solution hardened — and the buyer bought his wife's bicycle elsewhere, so the outfit cost its vendor the profit on a whole machine.
- An English concern's self-sealing inner tube, which the Dunlop Tire Co. has arranged to fit to some of its tires, is understood to have stood up well under several years of actual use after the tire monopoly had long prevented anything being done with it.
- One of the Government's paid weather forecasters promises that June will be as wet and nasty as the two months preceding it.
- With its last competitor transforming itself into a monthly this week, the Bicycling World, founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, is left the only cycling publication in America devoted solely to the cycle and allied industries.
- Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s claim to sell 80,000 to 100,000 "high grade" bicycles at cutthroat prices because they were built during the cheap-labour winter is branded a plain lie, and the rival mail-order houses' "warnings" against each other are said to expose the rottenness of the game.
- The customer who comes in for a piece of tire tape and is met with indifference or neglect is not apt to form a favourable impression of the store.
- Wheelmen questioned at random still dismiss the chainless as an experiment, complaining of purring and grinding gears on the strength of a few minutes' trial of an early machine or of mere hearsay; the prejudice is worth removing.
- The American Bicycle Co.'s press agent duped several New York dailies into printing that the Paris Exposition display had raised European demand for Yankee wheels — exports actually fell nearly two millions in 1900 — and into repeating that the trust "guards" its agents while it sells tens of thousands of bicycles to the mail-order houses.
- A long investigation of Sears, Roebuck & Co. and the Mead Cycle Co.: second-hand wheels cleaned, re-enamelled and sold as new, "free catalog" and "send no money" baits, the resurrected Kenwood and Elgin King nameplates, "celebrated Clipper" tires, undated testimonials from unheard-of towns, and the two houses' circulars calling each other frauds and swindlers.
- A dealer tells the Bicycling World man he is working off second-hands more easily than usual — one taken in trade at $5 sold next day for $12 after $1 of work — and that dealers are giving second-hands far greater prominence in their windows this season.
- The machinists' strike has shut the Columbia factory at Hartford indefinitely: 500 men struck after their demands were refused and Manager Pope locked out the remainder, while the Typographical Union now threatens action over the company's "rat" printing office.
- The Sectional Pneumatic Tire Co. of Binghamton, N. Y., incorporated through the efforts of W. L. Bundy, will manufacture Charles Miller's patented tire of separate inflated sections, each with its own cock, so that a puncture in one leaves the wheel usable.
- How a large cycle factory should run its toolroom: a check system so each workman leaves a numbered check for the tool he draws, special tools entered on the job ticket and charged against the work, numbered racks and a stock book of every tool, and careful attention to gauges and twist-drill grinding.
- H. A. Matthews & Co. of Seymour, Conn., is making a number of improvements to its plant, including additional machinery and a new ten-ton punch press, after a very good season.
- Extremely high frames, all the rage a few years ago, are seldom seen nowadays; even the claims made for their greater rigidity did not keep them popular.
- Treasurer William C. Redfield of J. H. Williams & Co., the Brooklyn drop-forge makers, told the Congressional Industrial Commission's New York hearing that the firm's success rests on high continuous wages, that the American fiscal system antagonised European dealers and limited exports, and that the company declined to join the steel combine.
- Why motocycle ignition batteries disappoint: a hundred-mile run demands sparks for six or eight hours without interruption, dry cells need rest as an electric door bell gets it, and most failures trace to short circuits and faulty wiring rather than to the cells themselves.
- Major Taylor finally compelled Jacquelin to inspect the Iver Johnson forged rear fork ends after beating him in two straight heats at Paris; Harry Elkes had shown the same forks to Watson Coleman at Washington, D. C., while covering twenty miles in record time of 31.23.
- The Motor Cycle Mfg. Co. of Brockton, Mass., is ready to consider agency applications for its finished Marsh motor bicycle, ridden from Boston to New York and back last August, and will also sell the 1¾ horsepower motor separately, a compact unit only 4¾ inches wide.
- How tire repair changed from the solid-tire days of cement kettle, gasolene heater and rim clamps to liquid cements and vulcanizing; most riders now patch their own punctures and the repairer is left the vulcanizing and the serious cuts.
- S. B. Call of Springfield, Mass., carries a complete stock of shoes, sweaters, tights and trunks for racing men and other athletes, and dealers or racing men needing such wares are advised not to overlook the Springfield veteran.
- Oil hardening is safer than water for tools of irregular shape but demands energetic movement of the work through the oil; the higher the carbon in the steel the higher the water temperature should be, and a tool hardened only in part must be worked up and down at the water line to avoid cracking.
- Near Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, the Bicycling World man met a trailer resembling a miniature dog cart attached behind an ordinary bicycle, carrying two little girls and bowling along at a fair pace over an unusually level surface.
- A Connecticut cyclist who had substituted rope for rubber on his tires was arrested at Deep River for riding after sundown without a lantern; as the State law requires only rubber-tired vehicles to carry lights he was released, but may be re-arrested as a test case.
- Weekly trade register of new stores (Elwin Young at Randolph, Vt.; W. D. Addie at Columbia, S. C.; Seavey Bros. at Haverhill, Mass.), changes (El Paso Cycle Co. dissolved; W. H. Olds succeeds the North Side Bicycle Co. at Grand Forks, N. D.), fires (Sidenbender & Bennett of Delphi, Ind., $1,500) and an embarrassment at Somerville, Mass.
- The Union Tire and Rubber Co. of Chicago, $50,000 capital, incorporated by John W. D. Carsland, Charles W. Hills and Louis J. Delson; and the Regas Vehicle Co. of Rochester, N. Y., $25,000 capital, directors J. Harry Sager, Cora B. Sager and George D. Green.
- Announcing the dissolution of the "tire fluid combination" formed against the Neverleak patents, the G. W. Cole Co. says it will keep defending the Duryea suit brought against W. G. Schack, claims Mr. Cole invented the collapsible tube in which Stop Leak is sold, and threatens patent suits against manufacturers, jobbers and dealers.
- Riders are complaining that the cross-frame bicycle so debated in England has increased vibration beyond endurance, so the spring-frame boom halted by the cross frame's exploitation is once more being heard of.
- The week's grants include William Covintree's pneumatic tire (674,436), William I. Bunker's saddle cushion, Andrew J. McCormack's wheel hub, Murray B. Watson's bicycle post, James J. Slevin's bicycle fork, Charles W. Sponsel's brake mechanism and John Furbow's air pump, plus Frederick O. Bullis's gear-wheel design assigned to the Acme Coaster-Brake Co.
- For the week ending May 21 Great Britain again led the cycle export manifest at well over $10,000, but Denmark and Japan took the heavier shipments — Copenhagen 174 cases at $4,637, Japan 145 cases at $4,264, Hamburg 137 cases and London 305 cases at $3,065.
- Homer Seekford of Springfield, O., was arrested charged with stealing a bicycle, having apparently made a regular business of the practice for months.