The Bicycling World, Vol 52, No 6
Articles in this issue
- Grinburg & Morris, trading as the Manhattan Storage Co., settled out of court the day before trial with New York dealer F. A. Baker, paying both the value of an Indian motor bicycle they had bought from a defaulting installment purchaser and the fees of Baker's lawyers.
- A New Jersey dealer complains that wood rim makers have raised prices 10 cents a pair while shipping unseasoned stock that warps out of shape, and says he has heated his shop all autumn by burning the bum rims he accumulated during the summer.
- D. P. Harris, the New York manufacturers' representative who handles everything from bicycles and coaster brakes to spokes and nipples, reports a splendid year much better than 1904 and unusually early, heavy ordering for 1906.
- The Canada Cycle and Motor Co., Ltd. netted $10,458 on sales of $1,072,028 for the fiscal year ending in July, selling fewer but higher-priced bicycles; the Diamond Rubber Co. of Akron, Ohio, raised its capital stock from $750,000 to $3,000,000.
- A year after abandoning the exclusive agency system, Rudge-Whitworth, Ltd. of Coventry reports the best year in its history with a net profit of $232,563.93; the Swift Cycle Co. and lamp maker Joseph Lucas, Ltd. also report improved balance sheets.
- H. Clarke Saunders, the veteran New Brunswick, N. J., dealer, tells The Bicycling World that the cycle business is more than holding its own and that he has disposed of more than twenty-five motorcycles this season.
- American bicycle exports for September 1905 rose to $67,283 from $60,849, led by a $16,954 jump in shipments to Japan following the end of the war with Russia and a $3,993 gain in Mexico, offsetting a sharp drop in the United Kingdom trade.
- The German-Austrian Mannesmannrohrenwerke, long expected to fail after the collapse of its English sister works, has wiped out its accumulated losses and earned $725,000 in the year just closed.
- United States Consul General Guenther reports from Frankfort that of the 74,500 bicycles imported into Switzerland in five years, 49,500 were German, 12,500 French, 6,000 American and only 1,700 English — England once controlled the market and its trade there is now almost nil.
- Paul Weigand, the leading dealer in St. Augustine, Fla., has bought the three story Manson Building and will convert it into an apartment house, keeping the store floor for his bicycle business.
- "Jock" in the Scottish Cyclist argues that an absence of hurry, not mileage, is the essence of touring, contrasting the scorching tourist who is asked only "How far did you go?" with the potterer who stops on a hilltop or at an old-fashioned inn.
- Advises that a motor which suddenly speeds up, misses and then accelerates without cause is often suffering from a leaky float partly laden with gasolene, and that "tickling" the float will usually show whether it is floating as it should.
- Reports a good market for motor bicycles in the north of Sweden and in Finland, where communications are poor and Belgian and German machines currently hold the lead.
- Alderman S. M. Becker plans to introduce a measure in the Milwaukee, Wis., Common Council to mount a detail of policemen on motorcycles to suppress automobile scorching, catch runaways and better regulate traffic.
- The leader endorses H. A. Gliesman's letter from the Tiger Cycle Works, arguing that far from cycling being dead, hundreds of old riders and thousands of new ones hunger for cycling literature, and that only men out of touch with the sport repeat the "cycling-is-dead" prattle.
- Praises William C. Chadeayne for succeeding George A. Wyman as holder of the cross-continent motor bicycle record, recalling his moonlit battle with snow in Wyoming, his midnight crossing of the Great Divide and his ride across the desert with eyes inflamed by alkali dust.
- Five members have preferred charges of disloyalty against W. T. Marsh of Brockton and A. A. Hoyt of East Whitman, Mass., for promoting unsanctioned race meets at Charles River Park after C. A. Libbey was disqualified on a special Marsh racer; President Betts suspended both pending judgment.
- A Cheshire, England, cyclist crossing a canal bridge was caught round the neck by the tow rope of a barge being shunted underneath, dragged from his machine along the road and left unconscious and severely bruised.
- The New York Motorcycle Club will hold an F. A. M.-sanctioned open regularity contest on Election Day over the ninety miles from 10 West 60th street to Bedford, N. Y., and back, at an average pace of fifteen miles an hour with four secret timing controls.
- French cyclists are circulating petitions asking the government to cut the six-franc annual cycle tax, contending it is out of proportion to the average value of a bicycle now that the machine has become such a democratic means of transportation.
- Charles Nolan of New York City is reported by one of the daily papers to be planning an around-the-globe motorcycle trip beginning with a run to San Francisco, though neither his object nor his date of departure is stated.
- Roused by the City Engineer's threat to tear up the Blaisdell avenue path, Minneapolis cyclists are organising to protect every sidepath in the city and intend to question each aldermanic candidate on his attitude, as they did the year they helped defeat an anti-bicycle mayoral candidate.
- W. C. Chadeayne completed his transcontinental ride on a 3 horsepower Thomas motor bicycle at San Francisco on October 30, beating George A. Wyman's record in 47 calendar days, 11 hours and 35 minutes; his letters describe climbing Sherman Hill, riding the railroad ties and pitching over a 30-foot embankment near Ogden.
- After C. C. Hopkins took the matter up for the F. A. M. and the local club, the Southern Pacific R. R. withdrew the 50-cent charge it had begun imposing on motorcycles using its San Francisco–Oakland ferries; the machines are again carried free.
- David L. Carroll, backed by F. A. M. Legal Action Committee chairman John C. Higdon, had himself arrested and fined $2 to test Mayor P. D. Watt's ordinance barring motorcycles from the streets of Reidsville, N. C.; Higdon's brief cites Swift v. Topeka, State v. Collins and Judge Gaynor in Knight v. Lanier.
- At Tuckerton, in the New Jersey clam district, an unharnessed colt planted itself across the road and kicked Alfred Genn from his wheel, leaving him in hospital with a fractured skull and internal injuries.
- Every cyclist in Russia must now carry a photograph bearing a special police stamp and the number of his bicycle, because the revolutionary party has been making wide use of the wheel.
- Nick Kind won the Tiger Wheelmen's fourth club championship event, a blind 21½-mile handicap on the Hoffman Boulevard at Jamaica, L. I., in 1:05:25; scratch man Urbain McDonald made fastest time in 1:01:25 but lost by 37 seconds and now leads the point score with 75.
- Paul Dunkel was killed instantly at the Steglitz track in Berlin on the 19th ult. when the rear tire of the nearly 1,000-pound pacing machine he was riding for Bruno Demke exploded and the machine swerved back and crushed his unprotected skull and ribs.
- E. Nelson of Philadelphia finished first off 1 minute 35 seconds in the annual Camden to Atlantic City road race but faces a protest that he took pace from an automobile and motorcycles; Edward Bloomfield took first time prize with 3 hours 28 minutes for the sixty miles.
- At the closing meet of the season at the Buffalo velodrome in Paris, Rene Pottier beat Marcel Cadolle by a lap and left Robert J. Walthour five laps behind in a 50-kilometre race, incidentally taking the hour record with 48 kilometres 900 metres behind human pace.
- Two members of the Grenada Cycle Club, Perey and Marcus, fought with navajas while riding their machines; Perey drove his knife through his opponent's arm in the first bout, but Marcus wounded him in the right lung in the third and he died soon afterward.
- H. P. Christoffson cut the San Francisco–Los Angeles motorcycle record by half a day to two and a half days, riding a Thoroughbred over the 507 mostly mountainous miles in 27 hours of actual riding and doing the last 170 miles in 10 hours 45 minutes.
- The New York State division of the Century Road Club of America will hold its annual field day at Smith's, Valley Stream, L. I., on the afternoon of November 7, with several bicycle races besides the usual games.
- Joseph Willis of Concord, an unknown quantity, won both the one and five mile road races at Acton, Mass., riding the five in 16:49 off two minutes, while Tiger Wheelmen scratch man Charles Milkowait of Cambridge took first time prize in 14:02 1-5.
- New York professional cracks George Schreiber and W. R. Lee met in a five-mile home trainer match at the Harlem Casino during an entertainment given by the Mahwah Club; Schreiber won in 7:11 1-5 after a hard ride.
- The Muskegon, Mich., Motorcycle Club banqueted the town councilmen in thanks for their liberal appropriations toward improved highways during the year.
- A tourist recounts how his younger partner's habit of "eating up miles" led them into the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania and West Virginia and finally to a night ride over a cliff on the Blue Ridge divide, from which he was saved by a scrub cedar growing out of the rock.
- Alfred H. Seeley of the Century Road Club of America describes a 2,015-mile tour of Germany, Switzerland and France made with Carl von Witzleben of the Deutsche Radfahrer-Bund — Hamburg to Berlin, Heidelberg, Schaffhausen, a C. R. C. A. double century at Lausanne, and Buffalo Bill's show at Nevers.
- Flat floor racing opened for the 1905-1906 season before a packed house at the 65th Regiment Armory, Buffalo, N. Y., with H. Kriegbaum, E. Delling and Alfred Mercer among the winners; E. J. Hanks caused a bad spill that wrecked Schudt's wheel, and R. J. Hoover took the five-mile final in 13:57.
- Abstracts the week's grants, including Francis M. Rites's valve gear for internal combustion engines, a Salisbury brothers tire, Harry Ingham's bicycle with a spring seat mast, Pierre Casavant's pneumatic tire protector and Patrick J. McGinn's automatic cycle pump from Bulawayo.