The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 24, No 117
Articles in this issue
- The Shelby Steel Tube Co. was reorganized with a capital stock of $15,000,000 under a new directorate that included Colonel Pope and A.B.C. president R. Lindsay Coleman, consolidating virtually all American seamless tube manufacturers into one company with plans to list on the Chicago exchange.
- The reorganization committee of the Keating Wheel & Automobile Co. proposed a revised plan to inject $200,000 in new funds, issue preferred cumulative stock to creditors, and place management under trustee oversight for three years until the company could resume profitable production of bicycles and automobiles.
- Washington, D.C. bicycle dealer John H. Parr, formerly of Baltimore, was arrested at Culpepper, Va. on a second-offense petit larceny charge after taking in a customer's bicycle for repairs and failing to return it; he was fined $20 and ordered to pay $15 restitution.
- Following the Spanish-American War, Havana experienced a rapid bicycle boom with cycle exports from the United States to Cuba jumping from $5,286 in 1898 to $111,702 in 1899, driven by cooler winter weather and eager Cuban white-collar dealers opening cycle stores throughout the city.
- The Minneapolis Cycle Path Association's executive committee, working through Secretary Vanderhoof, launched a citywide cycle census and tag campaign with fifty of a planned 150 workers already secured, while the Minneapolis Cycle Trade Association agreed to account for 1,000 of the new 1900 cycle path tags after compromising on an earlier proposal to buy 500 outright.
- H. P. Snyder Mfg. Co. told Cycle Age it was confident of defeating the American Bicycle Co.'s threatened bottom-bracket patent suit thanks to the Cycle Trades Protective Association's funds and legal talent, while A.B.C. attorney William A. Redding said the papers awaited President Coleman's signature and explained the long delays in the earlier Owen vs. Pope and Tillinghast patent cases.
- Schenectady, N.Y. dealers reported an optimistic 1900 season on the strength of high regional wages and employment, with dealer E. L. Kerste already selling 1900 machines and predicting the coaster brake would spur sales, even as most Texas dealers handling A.B.C. bicycles were notified they must now pay cash on delivery under the new anti-trust law.
- An editorial argues the American Bicycle Co.'s scale gives it an edge exporting to Britain amid rising English prices, but contends independent makers who study British business methods and secure loyal, market-savvy employees -- particularly in parts-making and assembly -- still have real opportunities abroad.
- An editorial urges dealers to tighten installment terms, charging an extra 10 percent for time payments and demanding large first and monthly payments, arguing cash sales let a retailer turn over capital faster and that lenient credit policies actually drive delinquent customers to pay cash at a competitor's store instead.
- The American Bicycle Co.'s new policy of sending salesmen out with photographs instead of physical samples of its many lines (Tribune, Featherstone, Fay) is questioned by veteran sales managers, one of whom recalls losing income the moment he tried adding a typewriter to his own commission line.
- Cycle Age argues the American Bicycle Co.'s persistent public emphasis on its own size serves stock speculators trying to influence investors rather than sound commercial strategy, noting shares nominally worth a dollar trade at only about twenty percent of that figure and that the company's organizational troubles have never been fully disclosed.
- Cycle Age predicts the American Bicycle Co.'s consolidation will let legacy brands like the Imperial fade as advertising concentrates on eight or nine leading makes, with production likely squeezed into just four or five factories such as Gormully & Jeffery and H. A. Lozier & Co., to the benefit of independent makers who keep customer loyalty.
- Dealers nationwide are hedging against A.B.C. price hikes and dropped agencies by signing with independents, illustrated by an eastern dealer who, after a salesman warned that a Rambler price rise was coming, placed a big Rambler order but also lined up an independent maker to replace it in his territory the following season.
- A trade feature urges bicycle dealers to stock golf clubs, bags and clothing to capture the wealthy golfing set, recommending a renovated, decluttered showroom, an expert clubmaker who can build clubs to order for $3 to $5, and noting new public links opening in Chicago, New York, Boston and Buffalo.
- Citing the Cycle Trader, the feature advises dealers to choose their advertising paper by which one circulates most among the class of customer they want, favoring evening papers with many small prepaid ads in cities and the local weekly in small towns rather than picking a paper for its political leanings.
- A. H. Overman sold the Victor bicycle factory of the Overman Wheel Co. in Chicopee Falls to the J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co. and is retiring to Paris to pursue automobile manufacture; the firm's 1897 assignment liabilities of about $600,000 have been halved and should be nearly met from the sale of remaining assets.
- Cycle Age reports that a European competitor's attempt to belittle R. H. Wolff & Co. understated Wolff-American bicycle output, noting the Wolff factory actually produces 12,000 machines of the highest quality annually and has had no difficulty maintaining either its market position or its reputation for quality.
- A Senate subcommittee favorably reported a bill to create a federal Department of Commerce and Industries with a new Bureau of Manufactures, absorbing the state department's bureau of foreign commerce, the bureau of statistics, the patent office and the bureau of navigation to help American manufacturers secure foreign markets.
- The U.S. Mfg. Co.'s new Oshkosh, Wis. factory is turning out 1,000 cyclometers a day, aiming for 40,000 to 50,000 over its three-month manufacturing season using eight screw machines and nine die presses, and has begun building two-cycle gas and gasoline engines for the first time.
- The National American Cycle Co. of Akron reports no regret at rejecting the American Bicycle Co.'s buyout offer, having booked orders for upwards of 15,000 machines this season -- including a fresh 5,000-machine order -- and expanded its agencies from Maine to California and as far abroad as Finland.
- This trade-notes column reports the American Bicycle Co.'s $10,000,000 Illinois charter, a 5 percent wage-increase settlement ending the Cleveland Cycle Plating Co. polishers' strike, an about $800,000 fire and explosion loss at the Hopkins & Allen Arms Co. in Norwich, Conn., and a 7 percent dividend declared by the Bean-Chamberlin Mfg. Co. of Hudson, Mich., among dozens of smaller dealer and factory items.
- This patents column describes a combined three-and-four-point crank hanger bearing patented by Thomas Boyd of Christchurch, New Zealand, an ankle-motion pedal-and-cam device from J. R. Park of Norwich, England, and a reversible seat post patented by N. T. Slee of Baltimore and assigned to the Gormully & Jeffery Mfg. Co.
- This motor-vehicle supplement features an interview with Anglo-American Rapid Vehicle Co. officers Francis D. Carley and Henry Crowther defending their $75,000,000 capitalization and ties to promoters Lawson and Pennington, a European correspondent's survey of the German, French and English motor trade, and news of the upcoming 1,000-mile Automobile Club of Great Britain road trial.
- This buyers' column details Tillotson & Co.'s new Falcon models with straight tapered rear stays, the Iver Johnson $35 and $25 roadster lines, the Seymour Mfg. Co.'s Eclipse and Waldorf bicycles, R. H. Wolff & Co.'s eccentric chain adjuster, and glowing Reading Standard dealer testimonials from Ozersky Bros. of Youngstown, O. and the Bucyrus (Ohio) Cycle Supply Co.
- This sport and club column covers the L.A.W. national assembly's good-roads debate and Conway W. Sams' uncontested path to the league presidency after Keenan and Bidwell withdrew, the National Cycling Association's re-election of officers and Frank Kramer's transfer to the professional ranks, and the Century Road Club Association's new clubhouse on West 53rd Street in New York.
- Oliver Lawson measured the roughly 324-mile Klondike route from Dawson City to Skagway with a cyclometer fitted to his 1899 Wolff-American bicycle, completing the trip in fourteen days and recording exact mile markers between points such as Selkirk, Minto and White Horse.