L. A. W. Bulletin and Good Roads, Vol 27, No 2
Articles in this issue
- A recurring column of reader-contributed notes and replies, including member No. 37,895's design for an over-and-underground street railway, New York's new road rules for vehicles, a League house-decoration design idea, and tips on resetting cyclometers to zero and spanners versus wrenches.
- Describes the Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls Cycle Path in Wisconsin, built by the Eau Claire Cycle Club through virgin oak woods, six feet wide with a hard rolled surface and a cattle-guard at the highway crossing.
- Editorial leader arguing that the bicycle entered the drama of life as a pleasing harlequin, laughed into popularity by newspaper paragraphers and caricaturists, yet has long since passed from jest to earnest as a practical machine.
- Editorial contending that the tables have turned and it is now the man who does not ride a bicycle who must explain himself, since the machine is economical, healthful and time-saving.
- Editorial on the function of law as the preservation of equal and exact justice, warning against perverting the law to force economic, political or religious creeds upon fellow citizens.
- Technical article advocating longer cranks paired with higher gears, citing an English writer's recommendations by rider height and urging manufacturers to offer cranks in quarter-inch sizes from six to eight inches.
- Quotes Dr. Leonard Waldo's lecture on the 'American Bicycle' before the English Society of Arts, with discussion by Archibald Sharp on chain efficiency, nickel-steel tubing, brazed frames and the evolution of the chainless wheel.
- A numbered diagram and key naming the seventy-four parts of a bicycle, from handle grips and fork crown through hubs, cranks, sprockets, chain and mud guards.
- Historical sketch tracing the Celeripede, Draisine and hobby-horse craze in France and England, the riding schools, the women riders, and the ridicule and physical strain that brought about the Dandy Horse's decline.
- Urges wheelmen to lobby Congress for a charter to bridge from above Buffalo to Grand Island in the Niagara River, the Bridge Company having promised five years of toll-free passage to L.A.W. members with their wheels.
- Argues that lever and treadle drives, repeatedly tried and discarded, remain inferior to the crank and rotary action, since a seven-inch crank's forty-four-inch foot circle proves easier and less tiring than treadle motion.
- Lists the 182 prizes in Sterling Elliott's L.A.W. Bulletin membership competition, headed by J. A. S. Heath and the Keystone Bicycle Club of Philadelphia, with pianos, bicycles, watches and Veeder cyclometers awarded by number of applications secured.
- Reviews League growth from 38,477 members in January 1896 to 102,636 in January 1898, and Sterling Elliott reflects on the costly Bulletin competition's part in recruiting; notes the South Carolina Good Roads Association's organization.
- Reports G. Richmond Parsons' Highway Improvement Committee work in Rhode Island, including a Wide Tire Law, guide-board amendment and pavement investigation, plus resolutions thanking Governor Dyer and General Roy Stone of the Office of Road Inquiry.
- Compares granite block, asphalt, vitrified brick and crushed-stone macadam pavements for durability, noise, foothold and suitability to grades, quoting the Municipal World, alongside notes on a Sacramento County road-bond victory and Rhode Island's Wide Tire Law.
- Lists the 1897-98 League officers (President Isaac B. Potter, Secretary Abbot Bassett) and standing committees, carries Bassett's detailed letter to secretary-treasurers on renumbering the membership roll, and gathers division notices from New Hampshire, New Jersey, Iowa, Florida, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
- Carries the New York State Division's condensed annual report and Secretary-Treasurer W. S. Bull's financial statement, recording growth to 25,906 members under ex-Chief Consul Isaac B. Potter and a proposed bicycle-theft reward plate scheme.
- Minutes of the Illinois Division's annual Board of Officers meeting at Chicago under Chief Consul William H. Arthur, electing National Assembly delegates and committees and rejecting retiring Chief Consul Fred Patee's report as unfit for the records.
- Chairman Albert Mott's notices suspending and reinstating riders, including the Athlete Wheelmen of Philadelphia barred from sanctions and John and Clarence Elliott of Wilmington suspended, plus accepted amateur records by Ray Duer of Buffalo, and a list of stolen wheels.
- The state-by-state list of new membership applications published under Article III of the Constitution, covering Colorado, Connecticut and Massachusetts through Pennsylvania and beyond, with numbering carried past 122,000.
- James B. Olcott's essay on John Loudon MacAdam, the Scottish road-maker who revolutionized British road-making by insisting roads be drained and surfaced with broken stone borne by the native soil, refusing both a baronetcy and a parliamentary grant.
- Reader questions answered, including No. 159,740 on using a chain wider than its sprocket and No. 103,806 on removing enamel from a frame, followed by the comic dialect letter 'Deer Uncle Bulaten' from Sandy of East Squakit.