The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 21, No 47
Articles in this issue
- Toledo bicycle maker Joseph L. Yost transferred his factory to the mortgage holders for $10,000 and discharge of a $30,000 obligation, retiring to his elected post as Lucas County Treasurer and expressing satisfaction at paying all creditors in full despite being starved of working capital since the departure of his partners.
- The Japanese government appropriated 4,000,000 yen to expand its steel works after rising wartime demand, aiming for an annual output of 90,000 tons by April 1901 and 180,000 tons later, eventually extending to gun manufacture.
- Pope Mfg. Co. licensed the French firm Les Usines Clement to manufacture chainless bevel-gear bicycles and motor carriages under Pope patents in a new 800-by-400-foot Paris factory, with American superintendents, foremen, and machine tools throughout, in what the Cycle Age described as a model of international commercial cooperation.
- The newly incorporated Erie Cycle and Motor Carriage Co. of Anderson, Indiana planned to manufacture motor carriages priced from $350 to $600 alongside its existing bicycle line, with motors of two to eight horsepower.
- Ames Mfg. Co. of Chicopee, Massachusetts advertised all its bicycle machinery for sale, one of several New England manufacturers withdrawing from the trade as compressed margins made bicycle manufacturing unattractive relative to other metal-working opportunities.
- Roller skate manufacturers were offering favorable consignment terms to bicycle dealers looking to fill the winter season, with the natural overlap between skating and cycling customers making the combination an attractive option for shops in markets with cold winters.
- The National Association of Manufacturers' Mexican-affairs committee recommended establishing a bonded sample warehouse in Mexico City, and commissioner T. H. Martin of Atlanta found President Diaz and other officials eager to help American exporters, including bicycle makers, displace European-controlled trade.
- A. G. Spalding & Bros. announced its bicycles would remain at the established $50 price for 1899 despite New York and Chicago price-cutting, saying factory improvements would go toward quality rather than a lower price.
- A Columbus, Ohio dispatch found dealer Oscar S. Lear stocking 500 well-made 1898-model machines at reduced fall prices to sell as a medium grade next season, the Franklin Bicycle Company taking on the Eclipse line, and repair shops busier than ever despite some price-cutting.
- September traffic figures from Philadelphia's Fairmount Park commissioners showed 139,667 bicycles passing through the park's entrances that month, nearly matching the combined total of pedestrians, equestrians and horse-drawn vehicles.
- A Topeka correspondent found Kansas bicycle dealers able to ride nearly year-round in the mild climate, so unlike eastern counterparts none stocked sidelines such as cameras or clothing, giving the state more exclusive cycle stores than any comparable state in the union.
- A Buffalo dispatch found a syndicate pressuring the city's largest dry-goods store to take a rival's bicycle agency, another local department store abandoning bicycles after being stuck with unsold stock from a bankrupt maker, a flopped 'endless chain' coupon scheme for selling wheels, and the William Hengerer department store announcing it would manufacture its own King and Queen-brand bicycles under superintendent J. B. Eccleston.
- A presidential commission chaired by Judge Peter S. Grosscup, with assistant patent commissioner A. R. Greeley and New York patent lawyer Francis Forbes, opened hearings in Chicago to revise U.S. patent and trademark law to conform with the Paris, Madrid and Brussels international agreements.
- A Springfield, Mass. dispatch reported the plan to reorganize the bankrupt Northampton Cycle Company had been abandoned after assignee Spaulding raised only $23,000 of a hoped-for $40,000, while Ames Mfg. Co. of Chicopee prepared to auction its machinery October 19 and the Springfield board of trade sought a buyer for the Warwick Cycle Mfg. Co. factory.
- The Rubber Tire Association's October 6 New York meeting re-enacted its 1898 tire guarantee unchanged for 1899, covering repair or replacement of defective tires but not punctures or tires treated with anti-leak preparations, expiring December 1, 1899.
- The Cycle Age announced that Robert M. Jaffray had retired as company president after ten years to focus on his Canadian newspaper and other interests and would relocate permanently to Canada.
- An editorial criticized retail dealers who were giving up carrying sundries entirely to escape the habit of throwing them in with bicycle sales, arguing the real fix was stocking only standard, price-protected bicycle brands so sundries could be sold on their own merit rather than abandoning the line.
- An editorial examined 'Hawthorne Hill's' India Rubber World argument that crescent-shaped rims would keep American riders tied to single-tube and cemented tires even as double-tube detachables gained favor, concluding the public's growing wariness of poor single-tube tires would still reshape demand regardless of rim conservatism.
- Insurance boards' wariness of calcium-carbide storage was easing as an Ohio underwriters' board approved forty named acetylene generators and New England and New York boards set carbide-quantity limits, though makers like the Electro Lamp Co. still had to arrange dedicated storehouses to satisfy New York City insurers.
- Cycle Referee described a simple tapered-ring ball gauge, producible by any competent tool maker, that let dealers and repairmen detect bearing balls varying by fractions of a thousandth of an inch that would otherwise ruin a bearing.
- The National Wood Rim Association issued official size and grading standards for wood rims, defining 'standard' and 'XX' grades by allowable black seams, streaks and specks, though the piece noted the rules ignored woods besides rock-elm.
- A Davenport Leader writer mused on the endless variety of bicycle saddles — spring, rubber-cushioned, hammock-style — and the elusive search for one that is genuinely comfortable, alongside a note on W. H. Weishaupt's Chicago-patented handlebar adjustable to any angle.
- Repairmen agreed cheap and high-grade bicycles suffer the same breakdowns, but poorly aligned frames, badly laced wheels, inferior hub and hanger bearings, and rough-fitted parts make cheap machines fail far more often and take longer to repair — a Chicago cycle show inspection reportedly found only three exhibited makes with properly built wheels.
- An essay on manufacturing accounts warned against fixing bicycle prices by copying competitors' lists rather than tracking true prime cost, urging separate ledger accounts for materials, wages, advertising and stock-carrying charges (5 to 10 percent added yearly) to avoid the ruin that follows guesswork pricing.
- A Bay City, Mich. dispatch found back-pedaling coaster brakes universally popular with local dealers and riders, gas lamps less so, growing interest in golf sundries, and talk of establishing the city's first dedicated wholesale sundries house.
- A piece urged dealers to install outdoor bicycle stands to stop customers leaning wheels against storefront windows (a common cause of broken glass), to display rather than shelve fall sundries before the season ends, and to invest in modern show cases and courteous, well-trained sales staff.
- The New York Commercial Advertiser explained that rim cutting, now more common than punctures, usually results from mismatched rim and tire sizes, often because small manufacturers stock only one rim size, and urged makers to stamp rims with their intended tire size.
- A practical tip recommended treating bicycle-store floors with a boiled linseed oil and Japan dryer mixture, applied at night, to keep dust from showing as badly as on bare or over-matted wood floors.
- The American Machinist's account of several court rulings established that a manufacturer who supplies parts (lamp burners, hammock blocks, textile fabric for collars) expecting a buyer to combine them into a patent-infringing whole is liable for 'contributory infringement,' a principle the piece warned applies directly to bicycle-parts makers.
- The ninth article in a wood-rim manufacturing series detailed how strips should be inspected and marked before steaming, with imperfections positioned to suit both bending and molding, and warned that overheating with dry live steam can carbonize and weaken wood rims as easily as under-steaming leaves them insufficiently seasoned.
- The Cycle Skate & Novelty Co. of Buffalo offered roller-rink operators detailed advice on ventilation, floor-space ratios (one skater per 30 square feet), courting the 'best element' of local society, refreshment and flower booths, and installment-plan skate sales to keep the winter roller-skating revival profitable.
- The Cycle Age criticized a Rochester newspaper's article urging riders to make their own repairs with darning needles, chewing gum and broom wire, showing how the suggested fixes for punctures, bent sprockets and broken spokes would fail and only send the rider back to a proper repair shop.
- A technical piece argued that brazers commonly overheat joints to a damaging white heat mainly because hard commercial spelter requires it, and that switching to a softer, lower-melting spelter would braze frames just as strongly while preserving the tubing's strength.
- The patents column described John W. Hoffman's back-pedaling rear-hub brake, a facing tool for castings by A. R. Jackson, H. H. Fefel's high-gear driving mechanism, Thomas Curley's adjustable pedal, and a Parker chainless bicycle that offset the rear wheel to center its cam-wheel drive under the rider.
- U.S. Consul-General Stowe at Cape Town urged American manufacturers to protect and credit the South African dealers who pay freight and duty and promote their goods locally, rather than undercutting them with direct sales to customers those dealers had introduced.
- U.S. Consul McCunn at Dunfermline reported strong local prejudice against lightweight American bicycles and wooden rims in damp Scotland, recommending American makers place stock only with dealers equipped to repair and supply parts, and listed cycle dealers in Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy.
- A feature traced steam-motocycle pioneer S. H. Roper's early experiments through successors George F. Whitney, Cross of Providence, and the Stanley twin brothers of Newton, whose 400-pound 'Stanley' steam wagon could carry two passengers 25 miles per hour on a third of a cent's fuel per mile and was slated for $600 production.
- The buyers' column rounded up new products including a detachable Waterbury cyclometer sold through A. G. Spalding & Bros., a Garvin double-face milling machine for cycle factories, an American Machine Co. 'Hygienic Oscillating' saddle base, new C. J. Smith & Sons hubs, a Power Mfg. Co. chain, Ramsey swinging pedals, and Wilmot & Hobbs' comparative strength tests of Clincher versus seamless tubing.
- A sport-news roundup covered Sterling Elliott heading the Massachusetts L.A.W. nominating ticket, the Colored Wheel Club of Germantown's inaugural race meet in Philadelphia, John S. Johnson's mile match-race loss to a thoroughbred horse in St. Louis, the racing board's abandoned championship point table after circuit riders raced in defiance of the League, and San Francisco wheelmen's planned parade celebrating Market Street's asphalt repaving.
- A dispatch described a clash at the Athletic Park track between promoter Tim Hurst's Mound City Racing Association and the American Racing Cyclists' Union after Hurst moved the five-mile championship final to Sunday, which Gardiner and Major Taylor — who refused to race on the Sabbath — would not ride, so the final was postponed after darkness fell, following heats led by Bald, Cooper, Gardiner, Kimble and Taylor.
- With Gardiner and Taylor absent over Sunday racing, Bald and Cooper tied for first in the five-mile championship final while Cooper swept the two-mile and one-mile Mound City handicaps for $435 in winnings, and Johnson and Munroe won the two-mile multicycle handicap.
- An informal New York meeting of track owners and racing clubs, including representatives of Manhattan Beach, Berkeley Oval, Vailsburg, Ambrose Park and Rochester, considered forming a new track association, with George A. Needham of the Kings County Wheelmen mentioned for its presidency and talk of the L.A.W. surrendering control of professional racing.
- Los Angeles wheelmen secured a franchise for a sixteen-mile elevated, electrically lit wooden cycleway to Pasadena after wealthy Pasadena resident Horace Dobbins overcame South Pasadena officials' long refusal to grant right of way.
- At a rain-postponed 'outlaw' race meet in Washington, D.C., Arthur Gardiner won the one-mile handicap four-fifths of a second outside record time and Major Taylor was presented a bouquet by a Southern crowd despite the meet's unsanctioned status.