The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 20, No 20
Articles in this issue
- Cleveland's 1898 season opens with a rush; stocks sell out within days and at least fifty small outskirt dealers now build custom bicycles from parts rather than selling established brand-name machines.
- The Ewart Manufacturing Co. files a $20,000 suit against the Baldwin Adjustable Chain Co. for infringing the Paine adjustable chain-pin patent, which expired only this year after long commercial use.
- William N. Whitley Jr. is organizing high-class American and English bicycle makers into a league to prosecute patent infringements by competitors and parts makers.
- Chicago bicycle frame shops are running at capacity cutting frames to specification, reflecting the surge in built-to-order business from dealers across the Midwest.
- Columbus dealers report brisk spring demand and anticipate the best bicycle season in trade history, with buyers favoring machines in the $50-$60 range.
- Cycle manufacturers respond with near-unanimous opposition to L.A.W. chief consul Sherwood's proposal to convert the League into a purchasing cooperative, with dealers warning they will cut League advertising if the plan proceeds.
- Cincinnati dealers weather a strike-driven injunction against the Machinists' Union at the Bullock Electric Company (maker of the patent roller sprocket and chain) and flood damage from the Ohio River that swamps the Schlenter Cycle Mfg. Co. and the J. & A. Eagan Co. Connecticut's Supreme Court of Errors separately upholds the removal of John C. Cassidy as receiver of the Premier Cycle Company.
- Toledo dealers find rentals of used and traded-in bicycles a wonderful stimulus to trade, re-enameling '96 and '97 models for hire after one store's rental income alone covered its season's operating expenses. One Toledo shop already carries 100 rental machines and has rented out its entire fleet in a single day.
- The editor argues that a trade journal's overriding obligation is faithfulness to its subscribers, applying the employer-employee analogy to argue that a paper favoring advertisers at the expense of factual reporting betrays its readers; a companion piece, "The Modern Trade Dilemma," argues cycle makers are right to resist L.A.W. chief consul Sherwood's purchasing-cooperative scheme just as farm-implement dealers resist catalogue houses.
- Comprehensive survey of import duty rates on bicycles in principal foreign markets, showing how tariff levels affect American export competitiveness.
- Technical comparison of coaster brakes and external rim brakes, discussing the advantages and mechanical trade-offs of each system.
- Joseph McKee of the National Board of Trade's transportation committee reports progress in reclassifying bicycle shipments more equitably; the article also notes that fire has destroyed the Wilhelm Bicycle Works at Hamburg, Pa.
- Rouse, Hazard & Co. of Peoria, Ill. publicly rebuts reports that it cut wages 10 percent and switched to cheaper materials, explaining that a piece-work pay recalculation, not a general cut, briefly idled its machine shop and assembling room before being resolved amicably.
- This week's patent digest covers E. H. Leaycraft's side-acting tire brake, F. A. Hollenbeck's saddle design, W. S. Gubelmann's detachable sprocket-wheel fastening, H. C. Dover's dust-proof gear case, and Casper Bickel's six-part simplified pedal, among other new cycle patents.
- New York's Appellate Division rules that Mary Rice, a 17-year-old domestic servant, can rescind her installment contract for a $45 bicycle bought from Syracuse dealer William Allen Butler (Reuben Woods' Sons Co.) and recover her $15 in payments, since a bicycle is not a "necessity" a minor can be bound to pay for.
- Some twenty-five to thirty English makers now list tricycles to meet rising demand from riders who lack confidence on two wheels, using differential bevel-gear axles (supplied by the Abingdon Works Company) so the outer wheel can outpace the inner one on turns. The Sparbrook, Hamber, and Nimrod models illustrate distinct underhung-axle, square-frame, and central-chain variations.
- A veteran trade member laments the industry consolidation sweeping away long-established business relationships, noting that reorganization erases familiar faces not only from trade lists but from factory offices and shop floors.
- Continued series examining engineering and commercial obstacles facing the emerging motorized bicycle industry.
- A. H. Overman of the Overman Wheel Company publishes an open letter challenging the Pope Manufacturing Company to a joint-committee test comparing his Victor chain bicycle against Pope's Columbia bevel-gear chainless, disputing Pope's characterization of Prof. Carpenter's dynamometer tests of bevel-gear efficiency.
- The Miami Cycle and Manufacturing Co.'s 600-hand, twelve-hundred-bicycle-a-week Middletown, Ohio plant has been entirely converted to electric drive by the General Electric Company, with induction motors from 5 to 30 h.p. running the machine shop, frame department, and polishing room lines without the vibration of belted steam power.
- The Monarch Cycle Mfg. Co. ships the largest single carload of bicycles ever sent from Chicago, 33 freight cars carrying 4,700 machines, bound for Wanamaker's (1,700), Hamburg (1,500), London (500), and the company's New York branch (1,000).
- Weekly sport and trade news covering professional racing, league politics, and regional cycling developments.
- Indianapolis cycle leaders threaten to withdraw support for the 1898 L.A.W. national meet unless chief consul Sherwood abandons his agency scheme, despite the awkward fact that local leaders helped bring Sherwood's organization to Indianapolis.
- John S. Johnson leaves for Cincinnati to train under Tom Eck with an eye on Jimmy Michael's crown; St. Paul wheelmen plan the season's first organized century run over the Northfield course on May 29, followed by a Minneapolis businessmen's century the next day, and the St. Paul city council appropriates $4,000 for new bicycle paths.
- H. C. Martin retires after seven years running Buffalo's Decoration Day 25-mile road race over the Bowmansville course; local Orient agents Finn and Sullivan take over promotion with a horse-and-carriage first prize and an Orient triplet for second, plus new fencing to keep spectators off the course. Buffalo Athletic Field president A. C. Johnson also offers his track for a benefit meet to fund the city's delegation pressing Indianapolis for the 1899 L.A.W. national meet.
- Boston's newly organized '99 Meet Club, led by President F. Howard Porter, lines up 100 members and a full committee slate to campaign for the 1899 L.A.W. national meet, while in Philadelphia the managers of Eddie McDuffee and Tom Linton open talks with Dick Kain to match their riders against Joe Vernier, and Tom Eck's novel banked oval at Woodside Park nears completion.
- Senator Dodge's good-roads bill, backed by testimony from federal road expert E. G. Harrison estimating $3,000,000 in annual mail-contract savings from better roads, passes the Ohio Senate and heads to the House with wheelmen lobbying for a four-member salaried roads commission.
- State handicapper Glenn D. Stuart announces plans for an expanded 1898 Michigan racing circuit with events planned across more than twenty cities from La Porte, Indiana through Grand Rapids and Bay City to Hillsdale.
- New York racing column reporting Jimmy Michael's $15,000 contract and Dave Shafer's recruitment of a Western pacemaking team; also covers the Salina, Kansas bicycle club's campaign to put good-roads improvement on the spring election ballot.