The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 22, No 50
Articles in this issue
- Buffalo trade observers blamed the season's epidemic of broken forks on alley bicycle shops that expanded on loose credit in 1897, assembled poorly made machines, and then sold them cheaply to young riders on long payment terms, with the Cycle Age noting that one such shop's operators had now opened a grocery store in the same premises.
- New York department store managers Adams and Co. intimated in a press advertisement that the American Humber company had told them it would likely close its factory for 1899 except for replacing defective parts, confirming that the company's policy of allowing department stores to sell at any price had destroyed its market viability.
- Canada's Department of Trade and Commerce figures for August 1898, the first month under the new 25 percent British-preferential tariff, showed American cycle exports to Canada up 12.5 percent over 1897 despite the tariff disadvantage, driven largely by a jump in agricultural-implement sales, even as British Empire exports to Canada rose only 11.4 percent.
- A crowd of lawyers and creditors gathered in Washington to press the Supreme Court to issue the official forms needed to operate the new federal bankruptcy law, warning that continued delay would embarrass millions of dollars in property interests.
- An analysis of the international Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property argued U.S. law fell short of treaty obligations on trademark registration and patent priority dates for citizens of other member states, a question the patent and trademark commission sitting in Chicago, New York and Washington was actively weighing; separately, the Monarch Cycle Mfg. Co. won a $3,580 verdict against the Roger Wheel Co. of Cincinnati for breach of contract.
- The Cuban and Pan-American Express Co. of New York began a regular express service to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Central and South America with steamship and rail connections, offering importers and exporters equitable freight tariffs and collection services.
- The Rudge-Whitworth company of London, the first English bicycle maker to adopt the net-price list, reported a net profit of more than $100,000 for the year ending August 31, a 10 percent dividend, after fully providing for debenture interest, depreciation and bad debts.
- A consular report described Chinese merchants' near-universal honesty in verbal contracts enforced by trade boycott rather than lawsuit, the continuing importance of the 'comprador' intermediary despite the rise of European banks, and the futility of trying to build China trade by correspondence rather than a resident agent.
- The Monarch Cycle Mfg. Co. announced its 1899 prices, settling its roadsters at the popular $50 mark, the Cooper Special racer at $60 and Defiance roadsters at $35, with Dunlop detachable tires as standard equipment and Goodrich single-tube pneumatics optional.
- The U.S. consul at Newcastle, New South Wales reported that prejudice against American bicycles, stemming from a bad batch of relabeled Canadian wheels and doubts about wood rims in the hot climate, was fading as dealers imported more high-grade American machines, though he urged sturdier dress and chain guards for the local market.
- The Spaulding & Pepper Co. tire factory at Chicopee Falls, Mass. was sold at auction for $17,000 to Reimers & Myer of New York and immediately resold to Noyes W. Fisk of Springfield, who planned to reopen it as a small, high-grade bicycle and motor-carriage tire works under a new stock company.
- An editorial traced how American bicycles' export trade, dismissed as a passing joke in 1895, grew to $7 million by 1897 on lightness and value, but warned that a flood of shoddy machines dumped on European consignment by opportunistic makers was now dividing American exporters into 'well-known' and tarnished 'not-well-known' camps in the eyes of foreign jobbers.
- A companion editorial argued that bicycle catalogues had grown stale and interchangeable, and that only manufacturers willing to candidly explain their material, design and construction choices, rather than recycled 'specifications,' could produce genuinely original 1899 literature; it also dismissed talk of the bicycle dealer's coming 'extinction,' noting the repair trade was thriving as the installed base of wheels grew by 500,000 to 700,000 a year.
- A technical piece explained how a storage battery could let a bicycle factory's engine be sized to average rather than peak load, illustrated by a New York office building running two Sprague elevators and 500 incandescent lamps off a 25-horsepower engine and a 118-cell battery for under $1,200 a year in steam.
- Patent Commissioner Duell refused to register a color alone as a bicycle trademark, ruling that no manufacturer may monopolize a paint or enamel color since that would improperly remove it from the public domain.
- U.S. Consul-General Cole at Dresden complained that American exporters' slow shipments, citing an Ohio tool company invoice paid in August but still undelivered by October 7, were souring German buyers who had already paid by sight draft, and warned the practice would damage American trade in Germany if uncorrected.
- A construction note described a French method of embedding beveled oak blocks in herringbone pattern directly into asphalt for barracks and hospital floors, and a comparable American technique of bedding locust stringers and tarred Georgia pine planking in concrete to create a factory floor that could bear heavy machinery anywhere without special foundations.
- The proposed Associated Manufacturers of Cycle Parts drafted a one-year agreement binding signatories to a unanimously-adopted price schedule, barring memoranda sales, ante-dated bills and secret commissions, and requiring any price-matching exception to be telegraphed through the association's secretary to all members simultaneously.
- A digest of recent court rulings on partnership law covered incoming partners' non-liability for prior debts, a retiring partner's continued exposure when his interest stays in the business, individual liability for a partner's misrepresentations, and the requirements for transferring a dissolved firm's assets to a reorganized one.
- The patents column described Robert A. Wilson's expansion-tolerant annealing box, Fred M. Martyn's adjustable handlebar with gripping cups on a hemispherical core, Benjamin F. Wheeler's concavo-convex wooden saddle frame, and T. G. Salsbury's eccentric hypocycloidal driving gear for bicycles or motor vehicles.
- A repairer described sawing off an old front sprocket's arms an inch from the hub and riveting on a new sprocket of the popular pattern, a faster, more profitable repair than duplicating the worn original that also let him fit a larger sprocket than the old pattern allowed.
- A digest of the new federal bankruptcy law's fee schedule showed a $25 clerk's deposit (waivable for indigent voluntary bankrupts), sliding trustee and referee commissions on distributed assets, and a worked example totaling $415 in officer fees on a $12,000 estate, far less than under the repealed state insolvency laws.
- A detailed technical profile of George E. Whitney's East Boston steam motocycles traced his boiler design back to S. H. Roper's pioneering work, described his copper-tubed vertical boiler and unique double-cranked valve motion, and detailed the combination steering-throttle-reverse spade handle he developed for driving in Boston's narrow, crowded streets.
- An essay speculated that just as the bicycle gave individuals personal mechanical locomotion, a future 'poor man's motor' sold in small, portable, decentralized units of power might let workmen run machinery from cottages in the country rather than concentrating in cities around steam and electric plants.
- The Philadelphia Cycle Board of Trade planned a February motor-carriage show, while C. E. Woods of the Fischer Equipment Co., designer of the Woods motor carriages, argued that buyers of fine vehicles wanted carriage-style luxury and finish rather than bicycle-derived construction, and said he had abandoned pneumatic tires for motor carriages in favor of properly sprung hard-rubber tires.
- The buyers' column rounded up new trade goods including Bridgeport Gun Implement Co.'s Star and Bridgeport pedals, a Frank E. Bundy acetylene carriage lamp with replaceable 'carblot' carbide cartridges, David Bradley Mfg. Co.'s America and new Oriole models, a Fox Machine Co. revolving 40-spoke wheel-assembling stand, and the Meyercord company's blank decalcomania nameplates for small-run bicycle builders.
- Short items reported a new roller-rink stock company forming in Richmond, Ind., the settlement of a wage-cut strike at Iver Johnson Arms & Cycle Co. in Fitchburg, Mass., the Toledo Tube Co. expanding into two former Great Western Pin Co. buildings, and Denver dealer Hedley Salmon, longtime agent for Rambler bicycles, dying October 24.
- A sport-news roundup described Eddie Bald's stage-fright-ridden debut as a melodrama actor in 'A Leaf of Laurel,' foreign riders Teddy Hale, Stephane, Frederic and Pat O'Halleran signing for the Madison Square Garden six-day race, Major Taylor's Philadelphia record attempt balked when Willow Grove track turned out to be closed for the season, and Edouard Taylore training behind Henri Fournier's motor tricycle at Berkeley Oval.
- The American Cycle Racing Association sued L.A.W. Racing Board chairman Albert Mott, President Isaac B. Potter and I.C.A. secretary Henry Sturmey for $25,000 over a racing-board bulletin warning foreign riders against the unsanctioned six-day race, calling it the culmination of Mott's interference with A.C.R.A. meets.
- In a fifty-kilometer international team-paced race at Parc des Princes in Paris, England's Armstrong and Linton defeated France's Bouhours and Champion despite pacing mishaps for both English riders, Armstrong winning in 58:42 4/5 after lapping Champion twice.
- American Racing Cyclists' Union president E. C. Bald sent the International Cyclists' Association a lengthy statement defending the professionals' breakaway from L.A.W. control, citing years of taxation without representation by the League, and asked the I.C.A. to defer judgment until a new eastern racing body could be organized and seek recognition ahead of the 1899 world championships in Montreal.
- C. W. Miller, home from three months racing in Europe, said broken wind shields and chains cost him a shot at Berlin's 24-hour race (won by Huret), and that he now wants a Paris match race against Huret and, if he wins the coming New York six-day race, an attempt at the 24-hour record behind motor tandems.