L. A. W. Bulletin and Good Roads, Vol 24, No 5
Articles in this issue
- Readers' letters opening with the "Singular Coincidence" contest (William Mardis's unlucky-thirteen stolen wheel) and running through Montclair, N.J.'s membership boom, rust-stain remedies, Louisville's suspended bell-and-lantern law, and complaints about pedestrians and saddles.
- Editorial reprinting a dialect fable of a butting goat and an unmoved ram to ridicule a new St. Louis organization that styles itself a rival to the League over Sunday-racing rules.
- Notice that railroads west of Buffalo and Pittsburgh will carry L.A.W. members to the Louisville National Meet for a single fare, with the president, secretary and a Boston party leaving via the Fall River Line on August 7.
- Editorial occasioned by a complimentary letter from attorney Millard C. Ernsberger, reflecting on the praise and criticism the Bulletin receives and the value of courtesy in replying to readers.
- Note on the Massachusetts Division's midsummer Meet at Cottage City, alongside "Those Fines" defending the secretary's enforcement of the renewal-fine rule and praise for the Utah Division Hand Book.
- Editorial advising that young children take no permanent harm from cycling if not overtired, supervised on public roads, and not allowed to exhaust themselves on the wheel.
- Myrtle Reed's comic prose-poem parody of Walt Whitman, recounting a beginner's painful, bruising first attempts to balance and ride a bicycle.
- Recurring department noting newly issued maker catalogues, including Servoss' Sectional Road Maps, the Funk & Wagnalls "Firefly," the Shepherd Mfg. Co.'s "Chancellor" and "Arabe," and Pope Tubing Co.'s carbon-steel tubing.
- A Western railway official counsels moderation against laws forcing railroads to carry wheels as baggage; printed beside the text of the Michigan Wide Tire Law rebating road taxes for wide-rimmed lumber wagons.
- Sterling Elliott's signed appeal proposing $5,000 in six prizes to the Bulletin advertisers who enroll the most new L.A.W. members during 1897, aiming at a million members within five years.
- A. Cressy Morrison's atmospheric account of a moonlit lakeshore ride from Milwaukee through White Fish Bay, Sheboygan and Port Washington, fording Beaver Creek and pressing on into the small hours.
- A correspondent details a recommended cycling itinerary through Nova Scotia from Yarmouth to Halifax via Shelburne, Liverpool, Chester and the Land of Evangeline, noting hotels, road conditions and duty-free passage for League members.
- Report that farmers at a club meeting near Anderson, Indiana, spoke warmly of keeping roads fit for bicycles, urging wheelmen and farmers to recognize Good Roads as their common cause.
- A correspondent warns members against the famous Waynesboro-to-Staunton pike through the Shenandoah Valley, describing year-round road-mending with egg-coal-sized broken stone and the near-impassable clay road to Natural Bridge.
- Horace J. Smith's Good Roads essay drawing from the 1792 act for the Philadelphia-to-Lancaster turnpike, the first in the United States, on its graduated tolls by tire width, weigh-scales, guide-posts and mile-stones.
- Roster of L.A.W. headquarters officers for 1896-97 (President Sterling Elliott, Secretary Abbot Bassett), standing committees, and the state-by-state list of division chief consuls and secretary-treasurers, plus official pins, badges and membership-blank forms.
- Racing Board notices: Charles H. Fenner's resignation as Louisiana handicapper, the Evansville-to-Nashville circuit-date transfer, sanctions granted, riders suspended or declared professional (many from New Orleans, Weatherly Pa., and Denver), and referee rules on handicap starts.
- Consolidated division reports and notices, including the Ohio Division's sixteenth annual meeting at Dayton (membership, road-book and highway committees), Michigan, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Illinois division business, the Missouri and Massachusetts rolls of honor, and Renewal List No. 10.
- The constitutionally required list of membership applications received up to July 31, 1896, arranged state by state with names, clubs and addresses, totaling 1,118 new applicants.
- Editorial replies to readers' questions on routes, road books, badge laws, baggage carriage on the Michigan Central, and miscellany, including notes on a back-volume index and a proposed League motto from a California member.