L. A. W. Bulletin and Good Roads, Vol 27, No 6
Articles in this issue
- An editorial leader on good roads as "a creation of man and a type of civilized society," arguing that solid, substantial highways take generations to build and that it is wasteful to attempt first-class roads in a shoddy manner.
- Profiles railroad man A. J. Cassatt, road supervisor of Lower Merion township, Montgomery county, Pa., whose insistence on building first-class roads from the start (quoting the Philadelphia Times) eventually won over skeptical tax-paying farmers.
- The editorial leader traces how the bicycle rose from a humorists' joke to a subject of pretentious poems and fine morocco-bound fiction, deserving a place beside the palfrey, sedan chair and coach-and-four.
- A humorous editorial responding to a New Jersey barber-consul who hesitates to admit a lawyer to the L.A.W., concluding the Bulletin does not object to lawyers "provided they are of the right class" with two dollars.
- Summarizes Secretary Abbot Bassett's report showing League membership up from 72,879 to 102,636 and $165,042 gross income, plus reports of the Highway Improvement, Rights and Privileges, Membership, Rules and Regulations, and Racing Board committees, the last detailing 2,912 race sanctions and 8,000,000 paying spectators in 1897.
- A sharp editorial rebuttal mocking the author of an "alleged medical journal" article on "The Dangers and Evils of Bicycling," quoting his attacks on tandem riding by men and women and suggesting he escaped from a lunatic asylum.
- G. Herbert Follows, in an article reprinted from Home Study Magazine, explains the physics of bicycle balance through experiments with a brick balanced on a pole, arguing it is impossible to stand perfectly still on a bicycle.
- Describes photographs by Albert Hucke of Belleville, Ill., taken abroad of a Munich boulevard and the St. Cloud-to-Versailles road, detailing the layered broken-stone-and-gravel construction Hucke found "as near perfect as they can be."
- A historical installment tracing the velocipede from Michaux's 1855 crank-driven hobby-horse and Lallement's machine through its Paris craze, the 1868 Franco-American race, and Charles Spencer and R. B. Turner bringing it to England and the Coventry Machinists Co.
- A poem by Joe Lincoln picturing angels casting their gleaming robes of snow over a dark and grimy city, likening it to hope lightening human sorrow.
- Reports the Washington, D.C. police regulation, drafted by L.A.W. regulations chairman Dr. W. W. Alleger and upheld in court, forbidding handle-bars more than four inches below the saddle on the testimony of physician-wheelmen that low bars contract the chest and limit forward vision.
- Profiles John A. S. Heath and J. Samuel Stephenson of Philadelphia, first- and second-prize winners (a Henry F. Miller and a McPhail piano) in the L.A.W. Bulletin membership competition, having recruited over 3,000 and 1,700 new members respectively.
- A dialect poem by Nixon Waterman about the argumentative loafer Bill Jones, who would solve all the world's problems at Slocum's grocery store until his wife sends him home to cut wood.
- A Good Roads article on how Essex county, N.J., spent up to ten thousand dollars a mile on macadam roads ruined by hasty laying, clay binding, insufficient rolling and the absence of any repair system, contrasting durable early macadam with poorly maintained later work.
- Argues that highways, like railroad roadbeds, should be divided into sections with men constantly employed to maintain them; the page also carries "Beauty of the Kentucky Pike" and a Good Roads Convention called for Anniston, Ala., on Feb. 16.
- Details a bill before the Virginia Legislature to assign able-bodied prisoners sentenced to more than ninety days to county road work and to levy a county road tax of fifteen to thirty cents per hundred dollars of property value.
- A signed letter from "N. V. T." contrasting the fifty-three million dollars Congress votes for rivers and harbors with the neglect of country roads, urging wheelmen to use their votes against "river and harbor grabbers"; the page also carries "Good Roads Easy to Secure" on a Lancaster county macadam proposal.
- Opens the L.A.W. official section with the 1897-98 officers (President Isaac B. Potter, Secretary Abbot Bassett) and standing committees, then division notices and consul lists for the Maryland, Ohio, and Michigan divisions, chiefly on pressing road-bill and membership work.
- Reports a special Pennsylvania Division Board of Officers meeting in Philadelphia on Jan. 18 that, after debate over candidates Keenan, Gideon, Elliott and Potter, voted 64-36 to back a national ticket with Isaac B. Potter for president and T. J. Keenan, Jr. for vice-president; followed by New York, Iowa, Michigan and Florida division notices.
- Gives Ohio's membership growth (3,081 by Feb. 1, 1898, up 882 in a year) by town, alongside the Racing Board Bulletin from chairman Albert Mott listing suspensions, sanctions and the Seattle Y.M.C.A. track's restoration, plus L.A.W. supplies and Isaac B. Potter's road books.
- The consolidated state-by-state list of membership applications and renewals received up to Feb. 11, 1898 (total 235), published under Article III of the constitution so members may protest objectionable applicants.
- Describes summer and winter photographs by Henry Schnackenberg of Brooklyn of the heavily used, tree-shaded Coney Island Cycle Path, praised as bringing more pleasure to more people than any horse-driven driveway.
- A correspondence department answering League members by number on routes, Canadian touring and the C.W.A., renumbering, and chain-and-sprocket fit, with a related dialect snow-shoveling letter signed "Sandy" and a note on Ohio's proposed topographical map.