The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 24, No 116
Articles in this issue
- The American Bicycle Company's patent counsel confirmed the trust intended to aggressively enforce its patents across all lines, with a second bottom bracket suit being prepared against the H.B. Snyder Mfg. Co. and hints that the Jeffery detachable sprocket patent would also be used against independent makers.
- Drawing on the four-year history of the original Owen vs. Pope patent suit, the Cycle Age predicted that the bottom bracket case against the Eagle Bicycle Co. would similarly drag on for three or four years through deliberate delay tactics by both sides, noting the patent had only about five years left to run.
- A press story claiming Boston shoe-eyelet maker Eleazer Kempshall had gone to England to form a $200,000,000 trust controlling the entire U.S. tire industry was dismissed by industry insiders as fantasy, with Charles Flint himself reportedly regarding Kempshall as a joke.
- Buffalo repair shops report brisk winter demand for enameling, re-nickeling, and fitting coaster-brake attachments to old machines at $5 to $10 per job, while one east-side shop cuts down 300 carried-over 22- and 24-inch frames to 20-inch and dealers including Weed & Co., the Poppenbergs, and Adam Hauck & Sons announce their 1900 lines.
- The assignees for the Warwick Cycle Mfg. Co. won a $11,023.33 judgment against the Second National Bank of Springfield, Massachusetts, for a preferential payment the bank received shortly before the company's 1898 insolvency filing.
- Cycle Age disputes a Minneapolis newspaper report that L. S. Buffington's patent-interference victory gives him control of all acetylene bicycle lamp designs, noting his four patents date only from 1897-98, well after several such lamps were already shown at the 1896 cycle shows.
- Seventeen-year-old George Rivers sued Century Cycle Co.'s A. B. Post in New Haven, Connecticut to recover $42 paid toward a $60 bicycle, testing whether a minor can repudiate an installment contract while the dealer argues he can still be held liable for rental.
- New Orleans cycling has revived as Canal Street and, soon, three miles of Camp Street are repaved with asphalt over the city's old tile pavements, though women's machines now make up only 3 to 5 percent of sales and dealers are pushing for a coliseum-style board track.
- Colonel Theodore A. Dodge tells Cycle Age that Tillinghast tire licensees will pay 5 percent of net receipts to the Single Tube Tire Co. rather than the old flat 25-cent-per-pair fee, and that all significant single-tube tire makers have now taken licenses.
- A London cable reports 130 British bicycle manufacturers meeting in Birmingham agreed to a general price advance blamed on rising raw-material costs, a move Cycle Age reads as an admission that English makers still cannot match American and German manufacturing efficiency.
- The Overman Wheel Co.'s buildings at Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts are being transferred to the Stevens Arms & Tool Co., with proceeds from the machinery, stock, and accounts expected to pay the Overman company's creditors virtually in full.
- Eclipse Bicycle Co. president H. H. Fulton returned from England with a contract for 40,000 Morrow coaster hubs and brakes (minimum 1,000 per week) placed with the newly reorganized, $250,000-capital Green & Houk Co., whose directors include Rudge-Whitworth's Vernon H. Pugh and J. K. Starley's brother William Starley.
- An editorial reads U.S. Treasury figures showing bicycle exports to the United Kingdom falling from $2,128,491 in 1897 to $684,536 in 1899 while shipments to Cuba jumped from $8,836 to $111,702, concluding American makers have chased new markets on price rather than building the reputation for quality needed to hold old ones.
- An editorial defends the Tillinghast patent license's fixed minimum tire prices as having rescued a trade demoralized by cut-rate makers, and muses that dealers would welcome a similar price floor applied to complete bicycles.
- An editorial backs the congressional push for a commission to study trade conditions in China, Japan, Siam, Korea, Siberia, and the Philippines, noting U.S. cycle exports to the Far East remain under $500,000 annually with a German traveler reporting Japan's 1898 finished-cycle imports at $240,800.
- This column's condensed listing of new stores, ownership changes, and fire damage is followed by news that Joseph Hurd has reopened the bankrupt Rockford (Ill.) Cycle Co. plant under his own name, W. M. Brewster has been named the American Bicycle Co.'s traffic manager, and the Quaker City Wheelmen are reviving a Philadelphia trade show for February 17-25.
- This trade-notes column reports fifteen Cleveland Cycle Plating Works polishers striking for a 10 percent raise, the Diamond Rubber Co. expanding its Akron plant toward 4,000 tire pairs a day, and a Rochester jury awarding the Chainless Cycle Mfg. Co. $1,034.55 against its fire insurer, among dozens of smaller factory and dealer items.
- This mechanical column challenges bicycle mechanics to design bottom-bracket hangers that avoid the Owen-Pope-A.B.C. patent (offering to publish any submitted), profiles a die holder for automatic screw machines proposed to the American Machinist, and reviews several newly patented bevel-gear and lamp devices assigned to the American Bicycle Co.
- This patents column reviews a one-piece wood-frame bicycle by J. H. Payne of Alexandria Bay, N.Y., a wire-secured detachable tire from A. T. Collier of St. Albans, England, S. G. Smith's novel steering head, and a three-part seat-post expander patented by John Knape and assigned to the Grand Rapids Cycle Co.
- The U.S. Attorney General ruled that rail bills of lading to Canada or Mexico require only a 1-cent war-revenue stamp, not the 10-cent stamp previously demanded by the internal revenue bureau, since such shipments count as exports.
- The Bunker Saddle Co. acquired the exclusive U.S. and foreign manufacturing rights to James E. Plew's "soft nose" pneumatic saddle, since Plew had been too occupied with other business to push its sales himself.
- Morgan & Wright sued Farwell, Ozmun, Kirk & Co. of St. Paul in U.S. circuit court, seeking an injunction and an accounting of profits over rubber bicycle tires the firm has allegedly sold since July 1893 in violation of Morgan & Wright's patent.
- A correspondent describes Honolulu's five bicycle firms (led by Whitman & Co.), a self-policed board of trade keeping repair prices steady, and customers who pay cash for the priciest machine in the store while barefoot and half-dressed.
- Reprinted from the Philadelphia Ledger, the item likens American exporters' refusal to quote prices in local languages and measures to a peddler trying to sell goods in a language his customer can't understand, using Italy as the example.
- The item warns that doing business in Russia demands patience and long credit, since foreign creditors are rarely paid in a Russian business failure even though the Russian government itself has reliably paid for the millions of dollars in goods it has purchased.
- H. J. Gute, sales manager for Frank Sturges's United States bicycles and a cycle salesman since 1889 for firms including the Michigan Cycle Co. and Monarch Cycle Mfg. Co., is leaving the trade to become secretary of the Owosso, Michigan Sanitarium and Mineral Bath Co.
- Chicago swindlers Peter Kummer and a man named Pomeroy used a fraudulently inflated $250,000-to-$500,000 credit rating to obtain 300 bicycles from the Acme Bicycle Co. of Elkhart, Indiana, shipping them to Chadron, Nebraska before Acme recovered 100 of the machines by replevin in Sioux City.
- Erie, Pennsylvania dealer Jacob Roth has opened the Roth Cycle Works, occupying 5,000 feet of floor space with ten workmen to build his self-designed two-grade "Pennsylvania" bicycle, with 500 machines planned for spring and fifty already ordered.
- This motor-vehicle supplement covers the Automobile Club of America's push to become a national organization from its Waldorf-Astoria meeting rooms, the Automobile Storage and Repair Co.'s new $15-a-month "Station No. 1" near Central Park, and New York's and Washington's new steam-engineer licensing requirements for automobile operators.
- This buyers' column covers the Nassau Lamp Co.'s Rough Rider acetylene lamp, R. H. Wolff & Co.'s new Japanese-language Wolff-American catalogue (following French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, and Finnish editions), and C. A. Coey's rail-riding third-wheel attachment for bicycles.
- This sport and club column covers T. J. Keenan Jr.'s surprise withdrawal from the L.A.W. presidential race in favor of Conway Sams, the National Cycling Association's first-year report of $59,407 in prize money won by 110 professional sprinters, and Oswego, N.Y. dealers protesting a new sidewalk-riding ban.
- The National Cycling Association elected John A. Blaurock president and reduced amateur club dues from $25 to $10 at its first annual meeting, while 1898-99 amateur champion Frank L. Kramer asked to be transferred to the professional class.
- Philadelphia's league lights are preparing an all-night smoker on February 15 at the Century Wheelmen's theater for the roughly 300 delegates expected at the L.A.W. national assembly, with the uninstructed Pennsylvania delegation ready to back Conway Sams should Keenan decline the presidency.
- Racing star E. C. Bald is weighing an offer from an English concern to drive its motor vehicles in European road races this season, including the Paris-Bordeaux road race, partly because he found it increasingly hard to reach bicycle racing form last year.
- Zimmerman, Harry Elkes, Tommaselli, Meyers, Banker, Arthur Ross and their managers sailed from New York to race in Europe, while Major Taylor cabled that he would decline a French team offer that required Sunday racing.
- N.C.A. chairman A. G. Batchelder is seeking Pan-American Exposition authorities' cooperation to bring the International Cyclists' Association's 1901 annual meet to Buffalo during the exposition, which would draw racers from France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Holland, Mexico, and Canada.
- A touring feature follows a steamer trip up the crooked St. Johns River to Sanford and describes shell-paved cycle paths linking Tavares, Eustis, and Mt. Dora through Florida's lake country, where alligators, rattlesnakes, and biting red bugs are hazards for wheelmen.