The Bicycling World, Vol 5, No 3
Articles in this issue
- Reviewing two years of growth into the country's strongest amateur athletic association, the editorial credits the League's firm, dignified handling of the amateur-versus-professional question and its recognition by the N.A.A.A.A. as the governing body for bicycle championships, and welcomes the Bicycle Touring Club's proposal for reciprocal membership privileges between the two organizations. It also urges wider appointment of touring consuls to help League members find road and hotel information away from home.
- The editorial argues that a thirty-five per cent import duty, plus royalties and freight charges, forces a first-class English bicycle worth $80 to cost $133 landed in America against $125 for the best comparable American machine, and urges the League's Chicago annual meeting to press for a reduced tariff on bicycles and tricycles as a more practical benefit to wheelmen than unrestricted park access.
- Fourteen members of the Boston Bicycle Club traveled by train to Providence to join the Providence Club for a Rhode Island clambake at Rocky Point, where bad weather prevented cycling but the day included bowling (won by Boston), a mile walk won by President Carpenter of Providence, and a clambake at which Sig. Nicolini captured the pennant for the Boston side. The visit closed with dinner at the Dorrance Hotel and a billiard tournament won by the Bostons, cementing the Providence Club's reputation as gracious hosts.
- The 'What Is To Be' column lists club runs for the week of 26-30 May: the Boston Bicycle Club departs for the Chicago L.A.W. meet on 27 May with Sunday and Memorial Day runs to Natick and Nahant; the Roxbury Bicycle Club rides to Natick via Brookline Reservoir and to Black Rock House, Cohasset; and the Crescent Bicycle Club rides to Lexington via Waltham on 30 May. It also reports the Chelsea Bicycle Club's 19 May annual meeting, which elected William E. Gilman president, Francis W. Whiting captain, and Wendell P. Yerrinton secretary-treasurer, and adopted a new club badge design.
- Race results from mid-May 1882: at Grand Rapids, Elsa Von Blumen raced against trotting horses before a crowd of a thousand, winning two of five heats with a best time of 4:28; at Washington D.C., J. McK. Borden swept the Capital Bicycle Club's third annual races on May 20, winning the three-mile (10:46), one-mile handicap (3:10 — declared the best recorded outdoor racing time in the United States), and five-mile (17:44) events. The section also covers spring bicycle races at Staten Island, Mott Haven (Columbia College, won by R.G. Rood in 7:48), and Cambridge (Harvard Athletic Association, won by R.S. Codman in 7:52).
- 'Geesee' of Marblehead urges the L.A.W. to appoint consuls in every town with League members so touring cyclists can find contacts for road and hotel information, noting that Marblehead's dozen-plus League members have no consul. 'Cyclos' of Dunkirk defends his L.A.W. reorganization plan for subordinate state organizations, praises the Bicycling World's stand against the Pope Manufacturing Company's withdrawal of advertising, and reports favorably on the Livingston cyclometer; 'Pedal Pusher' of Salem explains that his earlier criticism of the Essex Meet's location was written three weeks before publication and before he knew the Lawrence Club had organized it.
- A parody poem by Capt. C. P. Shillaber (adapting an English ballad), read at the Massachusetts Bicycle Club's February 1882 annual dinner, in which champion wheelman Si Elmer, undefeated in racing on both sides of the Atlantic, is challenged at Beacon Park by a silent stranger clad all in white; the stranger's wheel snaps in two on a header, yet he still touches Si Elmer at the finish, killing him instantly.
- The first installment of a promised series on American bicycle and velocipede patents, examining an 1866 patent for a treadle-driven child's hobby horse (H. A. Reynolds), P. Lallement's 1866 velocipede patent (reissued 1877), and various wheel-improvement patents by Buzzell, Radden, and Hanlon, and arguing — citing Justice Bradley of the U.S. Supreme Court — that many bicycle patent claims rest on unsustainable 'bluff' rather than genuine legal scope.
- Reprinted from the Philadelphia Bulletin, the report describes a Fairmount Park Commissioners' meeting at which Gen. Isaac L. Wistar's complaint that 'deadly bicycles' frightened his carriage horse was referred to the committee on superintendence and police; committee chairman Mr. Remak found no substantiated accidents, noted horses shied as often at water carts and ladies' parasols, and recommended the board drop the matter entirely.
- Profiles L.A.W. belt-holder Lew T. Frye of Marlboro, Mass. (No. 3) and champion racer G. D. Gideon of Germantown, Pa. (No. 4), and separately notes that New England wheelmen bound for the Chicago L.A.W. meet should travel via New York on Friday evening to attend the Bicycle Touring Club's Saturday meet under Chief Consul F. W. Weston, with Boston Bicycle Club members told to have their machines crated at the Fitchburg Station by four o'clock Saturday afternoon for the six o'clock Chicago train.
- Reader queries on road conditions: H. T. R. of Philadelphia asks about the roads from Girard, Pa. to Rochester, N.Y. and whether the turnpikes between Philadelphia and Bellefonte, Pa. are passable for bicycles; a New York correspondent asks whether the roads between Albany and Worcester, Mass. are ridable; and F. M. G. of Chelsea explains the difference between the Birmingham (English) and American wire gauges used to measure bicycle spokes, backbones, and forks.
- Prints Edward C. Hodges's draft constitution for the League ahead of the 30 May Chicago meeting (officer roles, amateur-eligibility rules, $1 initiation fee and dues) alongside the complete Order of Parade listing all 130 member clubs by admission date from the founding Boston Club (June 1880) to the newest, Dunkirk, N.Y. (Massachusetts alone supplying 31 clubs), plus the full Chicago meet programme covering headquarters at the Grand Pacific Hotel, wheel storage, races, the business meeting, parade, and banquet.
- Boston Club gossip ahead of the Chicago meet: Capt. Carpenter of the Crescent Club is recovering from a fall and will miss Chicago; C. K. Munroe of the New York Bicycle Club is back from a Florida canoe trip; a Lowell wheelman reportedly plans to wheel to Chicago and back over two months; W. B. Everett of the Boston Bicycle Club has become a partner in the Soule Photograph Company; and the Keystone and Lexington bicycle clubs have sent their club rules and by-laws, with the Lexington club also announcing a 20 June excursion to Mammoth Cave returning via Louisville. The column also reports a romantic tale of Elsa Von Blumen's physician suing her and attaching her bicycle, and closes with a list of official denials of Boston Club rumors.
- Quoting the Washington Star at length on the bicycle's growing use as a practical business tool in the capital, noting Mr. Scribner's pupils among middle-aged businessmen and Mrs. Belva Lockwood's tricycle as a familiar city sight, and naming the small circle of Washington machine owners: William Heney, R. P. Barbour, Dr. Ellis Bliss, Mrs. Lockwood, pioneer tricyclist Frank Marlow, and S. Lansburg.
- A satirical evolutionary poem by 'Noah Count,' read at a Boston Bicycle Club gathering, in which an elderly monkey recounts a nightmare vision of his ape descendants degenerating into hairless, tailless 'men' who abandon natural locomotion to ride absurd double-wheeled contraptions, mocking the current wheeling craze as a regression to ape-like folly.
- Reviews the June 1882 issues of Century and St. Nicholas magazines: Century features a portrait of Cardinal Newman engraved by Cole, John Muir's 'Bee Pastures of California,' Carlyle's 'Irish Reminiscences' at Killarney, and an article by Godkin of the Nation on 'The Danger of an Office-holding Aristocracy'; St. Nicholas opens with a schoolboys' visit to Longfellow shortly before his death and recommends the bicycling story 'The Whirligig Club' to young wheelmen.
- Warns readers that the Wolverhampton, England dealer Wm. Ford & Co. cashed money-order drafts from Pennsylvania buyers without ever delivering the ordered bicycles or answering inquiries; the paper is withdrawing Ford & Co.'s advertisement and cautions against two more English firms, George Hughes & C. Gorton of Wolverhampton and Burnett & Farrar of Leeds, unless they deal more honorably with American bicyclers.
- Fred G. Bourne directs Eastern members of the Bicycle Touring Club to report to 791 Fifth Avenue, New York, by 9:30 a.m. Saturday, 27 May, recommending rail travel over boat; Chief Consul Frank W. Weston will leave Boston's Albany Depot at 4:30 p.m. Friday and welcomes company, with the New York meet timed so attendees can still join the Boston Club's train at Albany for the Chicago L.A.W. meet.