L. A. W. Bulletin and Good Roads, Vol 26, No 1
Articles in this issue
- Editorial leader arguing that women who took up cycling for summer health now turn to skating and other winter outdoor sports, making the bicycle an all-the-year-round family physician.
- Editorial on the conflicting testimony of correspondents about bad roads, overcharging railroads and poor League hotels, asking riders to verify grievances before the Bulletin prints them.
- Editorial defending the bicycle skirt as a sanitary, dress-reforming garment that ladies should wear through the snowy and muddy winter seasons rather than reverting to long trailing skirts.
- Reprinted editorial from the American Medico-Surgical Bulletin defending moderate bicycle use as a fascinating, immensely valuable health-giving exercise while warning against its misuse by reckless riders.
- Essay on man's natural tendency to assimilate all motion to the wheel, quoting an old New York article on 'The Wheel Instinct' that traces the impulse from boys' shingle wheels to oars, sails and the modern cycle.
- Feature on correct riding posture, criticizing the crouched 'scorcher' and prescribing a roughly ten-degree forward inclination, with figures and saddle/bar adjustments for road riders (cites Michael's high-gear style).
- Illustrated history of the earliest two-wheelers, tracing the hobby-horse, Baron von Drais' Draisine, Niepce's Celeripede, and patents by Dennis Johnson, John Baynes, Louis Gompertz and W. K. Clarkson.
- Geo. L. Wilson describes the St. Paul Cycle Path Association, which built thirty miles of cinder and clay side-paths to Como Park, Fort Snelling, Minnehaha Falls and White Bear Lake, with construction methods, costs and plans for 1898.
- Reprints a Denver correspondent's proposal for a hundred-foot-wide stone highway from Boston west through Cleveland, St. Louis, Denver and Salt Lake to San Francisco, costing about $200,000,000, as a good-roads boon to labor and manufacturers.
- Good Roads department article on road-building courses at the Institute of Technology and Lawrence Scientific School, and how the Massachusetts Highway Commission's sixty resident engineers and county hearings train town officials and foremen.
- Good Roads piece giving Massachusetts figures for macadamized country highways, with the 1896 average cost of $10,369 per mile of completed road and detailed per-mile breakdowns for grading, drains, telford and broken stone.
- Good Roads article warning that 'viewers' too often divert roads for personal reasons, reproducing Deputy Secretary of Agriculture John Hamilton of Harrisburg's nineteen-point Road Viewers' Report form.
- League official matter listing 1897-98 officers (President Isaac B. Potter, Secretary Abbot Bassett) and standing committees, then numerous proposed amendments to the Constitution and By-Laws on junior membership, the amateur rule and Sunday racing for the St. Louis National Assembly.
- Consolidated short notices from the Illinois, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Delaware, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, District of Columbia and Massachusetts divisions, covering district reapportionment, recruiting badges and National Assembly delegate elections.
- Condensed report of the New York State Division's annual meeting under Chief Consul Walter S. Jenkins, electing National Assembly delegates, honoring retiring Chief Consul Isaac B. Potter (membership grown from 3,031 to 26,907), and resolving on the Palisades parkway, six-day races and bicycle-tax opposition.
- Chairman Albert Mott's notices restoring or refusing sanctions (Luzerne County Fair Association, W. C. Bass, Reading Trotting Association), ruling off Henry J. Pote, and listing accepted amateur and professional records and the suspension of E. T. Lewis of Baltimore.
- Brief list of stolen bicycles by make and number, including a Trinity, a Cleveland and a Wilhelm, alongside Abbot Bassett's notices of League ticket holders and lapel buttons.
- The consolidated state-by-state list of membership applications received up to the date of issue, published under Article III of the Constitution, with new renumbered League numbers for Indiana, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York and other divisions.
- Reader Q&A on cyclometer accuracy, valve repair, British cycling maps and the renumbering of League memberships decided at the Albany General Assembly, plus a note on touring Great Britain via the Cyclists' Touring Club.