The Bicycling World, Vol 53, No 3
Articles in this issue
- The Michigan wood-rim pool has boosted prices while the quality of rims has fallen; a tradesman who went to the pool's head found no prospect of relief, as timber owners now hold their stock back for higher prices.
- Trade changes: Charles Bushor opens at Swanton, Vt.; W. L. Taylor of Topeka sells to M. W. Long; Cherry & Kates open in Lincoln, Ill.; the Purington Cycle Shop, Bangor, enlarges; the Abbott Cycle Co. moves to Baronne street, New Orleans; Watterson & Momm of Goshen are succeeded by Fred E. Watterson.
- The Goodyear tire interests have incorporated the Goodyear Rubber Tire Co. under New York law with $1,000 capital and the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. under Massachusetts law with $10,000, K. B. Harwood and C. W. Sieberling figuring among the officers.
- The three-storey building at 1528-1531 Michigan avenue, Chicago, with 100 feet of frontage and 32,000 square feet of floor space, will be ready for the Diamond Rubber Co.'s Chicago branch to occupy on May 1st.
- George N. Pierce, head of the George N. Pierce Co. and president of the Cycle Manufacturers' Association, rides his cushion-frame bicycle to and from his office daily as he has for many years.
- The Reading Standard Cycle Mfg. Co. rechristens its Thoroughbred motor bicycle the "R-S" after Sales Manager Sherman persuaded Proprietor Remppis and the agents voted for the change; a new racer within the 110-pound limit is to follow.
- The Pope Manufacturing Company is taking contractors' estimates for additions to its Westfield, Mass., bicycle plant, preparatory to an important change requiring the extra room.
- A dealer's leg-pull about "torpedoes" stored in a second tank to boost high-speed motors backfires when the credulous beginner repeats the tale around town and other customers begin asking for them.
- Mr. Andrews of Andrews & George, Yokahama, explains that Japan's narrow roads and jinrickisha traffic keep the bicycle safe from the automobile, recalls presenting the Crown Prince with a nickelled Cleveland and selling 300 army machines, and warns that American jobbers' cheap crocks are undermining the high-grade trade.
- Argues that lubrication, not ignition or carburetion, is the motorcyclist's most critical concern; urges riders to use only the oil the maker specifies, follow his quantities and intervals, and keep the sight feed glass and oil tube clear.
- A trade correspondent endorses the paper's April 7 editorial "Makers Frown on Alleged Jobbers," describing jobbing buyers who shift a year's contract over five cents and urging that every bicycle be required to carry its manufacturer's name.
- Editorial: the rising price and doubtful quality of wood rims may restore the steel rim, which several makers admit is entering their calculations again now that weight no longer matters and steel costs about the same.
- Editorial on the jobbing and mail-order bicycle, prompted by the Yokahama importer's account; doubts that forcing makers to affix their names would raise quality, and argues instead for steadily raising the price of cheap stuff until the crock is impossible.
- Editorial regretting the decline of the club blind run, blaming leaders who turned it into a race to a familiar stopping place, and arguing that its value lies in novelty of course rather than speed.
- Walter Y. C. Arlidge of Meaford, Ont., writes that in 1901 he used his early 1½-horsepower Auto-Bi to collect some seventy fresh affidavits from scattered parties before the Court of Revision rose, helping carry the election by five votes.
- Calendar of coming events from the Revere Beach opening meet on April 19 to the Century Road Club of America's ten-mile road race at Valley Stream on July 8, including the eighteenth Irvington-Milburn twenty-five-mile and the New York Motorcycle Club's hill-climbing contest.
- A cablegram to Dillon B. Burnett reports Frank L. Kramer winning twice on his first appearance at the Buffalo Velodrome, Paris — a match from Emil Friol and a scratch win from a large field.
- Robert J. Walthour and Gus Lawson reach New York from Europe with W. Thomas Hall of Canningtown, who will re-appear in a motor-paced match at the Revere Beach saucer opening on April 19; Nathaniel Hawthorne Butler is said to have beaten Walthour three times in Paris.
- N. P. Mann, seized in Louisville, Ky., while trying to sell a bicycle, faced $500 bond for six months and was out $19 after the police disproved his claim of having bought it from an unnamed negro.
- San Jose leads California for bicycle theft at about one machine a day, ahead of Stockton and Sacramento, according to the "stolen bicycle book" circulated monthly among the State's cities and just forwarded to Los Angeles.
- A mail vote of the Federation of American Motorcyclists' Executive Committee gives Rochester, N. Y., the national meet over Chicago, most likely July 4-7 with a Hammondsport appendix, and the 350-mile New York to Rochester endurance contest on July 2-3.
- Besides Louis J. Weintz, James Zanes and W. W. Van Iderstine, four Bostonians — Ralph Wyatt of Brockton, W. F. Drea of Cambridge, W. F. Holbrook of Boston and W. S. Younie of East Boston — are being considered eligible to ride for money.
- A veteran motorcyclist's two-year tally of unpremeditated stoppages — 45 per cent ignition, 25 per cent fuel supply, 23 per cent transmission — is used to argue that regular inspection of small parts prevents nearly every roadside breakdown.
- The American Automobile Association and the Federation of American Motorcyclists agree to respect and enforce each other's suspensions, so that a punished automobilist cannot compete as a motorcyclist or drive at a motorcycle meeting, and vice versa.
- Over forty Oakland club members answered the call and rode to the new Maurer boulevard road for the captain's cup, won by Edward McTighe after a long sprint from a final of seven that included Samuel Hancock and Robert Bassett.
- Vice-President Carritt of the F. A. M. Eastern District appoints Lincoln Holland of Worcester, a veteran L. A. W. recruiter, as Massachusetts State representative.
- A foreign writer contrasts the rider who prepares with bi-weekly training spins for a month before the season's first tour with the unfit rider who spends his holiday calculating mileage and finishes it too exhausted to eat or sleep.
- A rural French magistrate finds for the motorcyclist who killed a dog, ruling that citizens may let their dogs run the roads only at their own risk since dogs are animals of extreme mobility and a serious danger to traffic.
- President A. G. Armstrong of the Century Road Club of America organizes a free joint run of all New York, Long Island and northern New Jersey clubs from Columbus Circle to Grant's tomb and over the Williamsburg bridge to Coney Island.
- Paul Barczik of the Fourteenth Regiment Athletic Association, Brooklyn, rode two miles from scratch in 5:10½ at the regiment's spring games, cutting sixteen seconds from C. E. Schoenick's New York armory record; Thomas Rowland was second.
- Cycling members of the Spokane Amateur Athletic Club, with C. C. Holzel as chairman, will open the Washington season with a Decoration Day meet at the Interstate fair grounds; dealers donated Rambler, National and Cleveland bicycles as prizes.
- The Tiger Wheelmen opened with a run from New York to Valley Stream and a five-mile handicap won by Christopher Kind in 14:15 from Nicholas Kind and Charles P. Soulier; champion Urban McDonald fell at the start and finished fifth.
- Max Ozersky is forming the Mahoning County Cycling Club at Youngstown, Ohio, for Sunday runs and road races, and reports local dealers have sold more wheels this quarter than in the first three months of many previous years.
- William Reed, off six minutes, won the Atlantic City Wheelmen's opening ten-mile handicap on the Ventnor beach course; D. Byron Mathis struck a post and broke his collar bone in two places, and scratch man Frank Young took first time in 31:30 after W. Ivy punctured near the tape.
- M. J. Gilbert, H. G. Wolzendorf, W. M. Butler, George Lang jr. and R. H. Laing have signed the call for a meeting to form a cycling club in St. Louis, Mo., once among the liveliest cycling centres in the country.
- A German cartoon imagines a "kitchen mechanic" — a motor bicycle belted and geared to grind Hamburger steak, blow the fire, turn the spit and roll pie crust — and recalls a real American blacksmith who ran his shop tools off his machine.
- Nobel O. Tarbell's roads record report for the Century Road Club of America shows Harry Early passing Ernest G. Grupe at the head of the century list, with Emil Leuly third and Fred E. Mommer dropped to fourth; 57 centuries were ridden to April 1.
- The Grand Rapids (Mich.) Bicycle and Motorcycle Club will hold its seventeenth Memorial Day fifteen-mile road race, with a Cleveland bicycle heading the prize list and a National for the first rider of that machine to finish.
- Advice on the season's overhaul: leave wheel-truing to a skilled repairer, soak bearings, pedals and chain in kerosene, dissect the crank hanger, keep head and hanger balls of differing size apart, and expect no home re-enamelling to match the factory.
- Counsellor J. C. Higdon, chairman of the F. A. M. Legal Action Committee, advises Pennsylvania member B. E. Zerby that he may shoot a dog that threatens his life whether it is licensed or not, so long as his weapon is carried openly.
- The New York Motorcycle Club opens the Eastern season on April 22 with an open century from Bedford Rest, Brooklyn, to Patchogue and back; the Brooklyn Motorcycle Club repeats the course on May 8, awarding gold-lettered ribbons, rosettes and a dinner instead of medals.
- Dr. Samuel Cochran's letter from Hwai Yuen, published in the Westminster magazine, describes bevel-gear trouble that cost three hours in twelve miles, mud-blocked forks, a drenching, and a night on cornstalk leaves in an inn on the road to Nan Hsu Cheo.
- Willard Parsons took both the Miller and Travis cups in the Garden City Wheelmen's five-mile handicap over the East San Jose course, beating Livio Maginni from the same 45-second mark by a fifth of a second in 13:35; Bowen won the twenty-one-man novice event.
- Members of the Muskegon (Mich.) Motorcycle Club petition the city council to enforce the ordinance forbidding the throwing of glass into the street, rather than bear the cost of others' carelessness in punctured tires.
- Abstracts of recent grants including George H. Holgate's carbureter, Frederick G. McKim's and Robert A. Harris's pneumatic tires, Charles C. Keyser's motorcycle friction throw-off clutch, Charles E. Duryea's tire valve, and Charles S. Scott's detachable tire assigned to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.