The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 20, No 128
Articles in this issue
- Buffalo branch stores of the American Bicycle Company quietly removed the A.B.C. name from their advertising in an apparent attempt to conceal their trust affiliation and recapture labor-class customers who had been boycotting trust-made goods.
- A Buffalo department store sold 300 A.B.C. bicycles at $16.50 each despite a threatened injunction, while the new plant managers were powerless to stop the sale of machines purchased before their takeover.
- Buffalo cycle repair shops were overwhelmed with work, with the surge driven chiefly by demand for fitting coaster-brake appliances to older bicycles as warmer weather arrived.
- A customer who paid $17.50 cash for a cut-price bargain bicycle was told by the salesman to inflate his own tires, then had one roll off the rim entirely soon after, and was last seen trading the machine back in at a downtown cycle store.
- Leonard B. Gaylor of Erie, Pa., filed suit against Ernest J. Willis of the Park Row Bicycle Co. for selling Kelly handlebars alleged to infringe on Gaylor's expander patent, with the American Bicycle Company possibly implicated as a licensee of the same patent.
- Favorable reports from all Toledo bicycle shops reached the Grinders' and Strappers' union, confirming that every union member in the city was back in employment.
- Dr. Stockton applied for a court receiver for the Stockton Mfg. Co. in New York, with the veteran inventor believed to have lost heavily in the venture originally co-founded with George Warwick.
- The Cycle Age dismissed rumors of a merger with the Cycling Gazette and reported that the Bicycling World planned to relocate from Boston to New York, with trade opinion viewing the move as a step toward reducing the surplus of bicycle trade journals.
- The newly adopted constitution and by-laws of the Minneapolis Cycle Trade Association were published in full, offered as a model that other local dealer organizations could adapt with few modifications.
- Sydney correspondence reported that the leading American bicycle manufacturers were establishing direct representation in Australia, with Harrison Rotherham en route to represent Stearns & Co. alongside Goddard of H.A. Lozier & Co., as Australian agents introduced free-wheel and chainless machines to a growing market.
- A U.S. Treasury table broke down bicycle and parts exports by destination for March and the nine months ending March 1900 compared with the prior year, showing sharp gains led by the United Kingdom, Germany and British North America alongside smaller markets such as Argentina, Japan and British Australasia.
- A Cycle Age correspondent asked a leading Washington, D.C. bicycle dealer what marks a successful salesman, who stressed tact, letting the customer talk out his real concerns, and never resorting to price-cutting just to close a sale.
- The Cycle Age rebutted a string of accusations from the trust's house organ point by point, including claims it secretly courted American Bicycle Co. advertising, plotted a merger with the Cycling Gazette, and wrongly listed Luthy & Co. of Peoria as an independent maker, while noting about sixty independent manufacturers had banded together to fight the Smith bottom-bracket patent.
- Six months of American Bicycle Company management had shuttered roughly fifteen factories, including the Crawford, Syracuse Cycle, Barnes, H. A. Lozier, Indiana Bicycle and Buffalo Cycle plants, idling two to three thousand workers, while former owners who sold out through Mr. Spalding found their 'pink contract' options worthless.
- After a dealer refused to answer a Cycle Age survey circular, saying he wouldn't 'furnish elbow grease for new comers,' the paper argued that dealers who share business ideas with rivals through its pages ultimately gain more than they give.
- A detailed legal analysis examined how the anti-trust statutes of various states applied to bicycle manufacturers, finding that nearly all makers technically violated one state law or another through price-maintenance and pooling arrangements, with the Stearns case serving as the focal example.
- This week's dealer-news roundup covered the Shugers Cycle Co.'s expansion in Coldwater, Mich., Nelson J. Baher's new Keating agency in Mystic, R.I., J. A. Ceely's store opening in Attleboro, Mass., Cross Bros.' refitted factory in Vassar, Mich., and San Francisco's J. T. Williams promoting cycle paths.
- Indianapolis dealer Geo. C. Detch reported his best trade in years, saying customers increasingly sought top-grade machines rather than cheap models and that trust-made bicycles now sold for $5 to $10 less than the previous season; his lines included the Olive, Spalding, Imperial and Jewell.
- Trade briefs included growing bicycle imports into Servia, George M. Scott of the Waltham Mfg. Co. reporting brisk inter-mountain sales, the Elmore Bicycle Co. of Clyde, Ohio building its first automobile, and the Layton Park Mfg. Co.'s Milwaukee parts factory being shut by the sheriff on executions exceeding $3,000.
- Quoting the Carriage Monthly, the Cycle Age endorsed placing trade journals in factories where workmen could read them during the noon hour, arguing that better-informed mechanics do better work and that trade papers are often the source of new shop ideas.
- The seventh installment of the Cycle Age's coaster-brake series described the Nester brake's roller-clutch mechanism, patented and sold by F. M. Smith & Bro. of St. Paul, Minn., and the New Departure Bell Co. of Bristol, Conn.'s brake, notable for placing its drum on the left side of the hub.
- The patent column mocked a dubious puncture-locator device and a thickened-tread single-tube tire while praising a genuinely meritorious crank hanger, and noted patents for Olaf Pihlfeldt's Birmingham Small Arms Co. back-pedaling rim brake and J. W. Owen of Ithaca, N.Y.'s back-pedaling tire brake.
- A letter to the editor examined the geometry of adjustable handlebars that split and pivot at the center, arguing that advertised claims about interchangeable grip angles on both sides overlooked the different pitch required for raised versus lowered positions.
- The new-products department featured the Edmonds, Metzel & Cole Mfg. Co.'s self-locking 'Perpetual Pedal Rubbers,' pedal rubbers designed to stay seated without the usual retaining pins working loose.
- The National Cycling Association welcomed Canada's new Canadian Cyclists' Association, formed in revolt against the old Canadian Wheelmen's Association, as a sympathetic ally; delegates from the U.S., France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland then resigned from the International Cyclists' Association to form a rival federation, the Unione Cycliste Internationale.
- At the Fountain Ferry Cycle & Athletic Association's season-opening meet in Louisville, Stevens won the mile open and Freeman took the handicap as McFarland failed to appear, while the day's highlight was a motor-tandem race between Rutz and Hausman's Aster-powered Orient and Maya and McFarland's De Dion-powered Orient, run in 3:15.
- At Paris's annual Easter Grand Prize meet on April 15-16, Italian riders swept every major event, with Eros, once managed by the late Choppy Warburton, winning the Grand Prize and Bixio and Ferrari taking the tandem race, while hour-record holder Taylor won the ten-mile paced race in a new European record of 16:18, beating Jacquelin by two and a half laps.
- Philadelphia's premier unpaced rider Charlie Church announced he would permanently leave the track to take an electrical-industry position in Winnipeg, while Frank Kramer was set to make his professional debut at the Vailsburg races with Jay Eaton and 'Bobbie' Thompson pacing him.