The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 24, No 118
Articles in this issue
- Detroit bicycle dealers reported unusually strong early demand for the 1900 season, attributing the boom partly to a street railway fare increase that was prompting working-class riders to buy bicycles instead, with dealers forecasting record sales and growing interest in chainless and coaster-brake models.
- An Iowa district court ruled against E.C. Stearns & Co. in a suit to recover payment for bicycles, invoking the state's anti-trust statute which voided contracts involving price-fixing agreements and relieved the buyer of any obligation to pay, a decision with potentially far-reaching implications for exclusive agency contracts in the bicycle trade.
- Nearly half a dozen Columbus bicycle dealers went out of business since the previous season closed, including dry-goods stores and the Columbus Bicycle Co.'s local outlet, leaving a smaller number of specialists who expected better concentrated trade in 1900 and were planning a coordinated March spring opening.
- The Cycle Age expressed skepticism about a meeting of English bicycle manufacturers who resolved to raise prices, noting the absence of major firms including Rover, Raleigh and Premier, the lack of any floor debate before the resolution passed, and widespread trade press opinion that the attempt to defy supply-and-demand laws would fail.
- The Cycle Age argued that any monopoly control of the bicycle trade would reduce dealers to barely-paid agents at the monopolist's mercy, drawing on the English example of the John Griffiths Corporation, which had ruined dealers by establishing rival stores next door, and warning that the A.B.C.'s patent enforcement drive was the most plausible American path to the same outcome.
- A Green Bay, Wis., dealer wrote to the Cycle Age arguing that assigning one A.B.C. salesman to carry three or more lines was failing because a man expert in one brand could not sell unfamiliar brands with equal conviction, allowing independent single-line agents to outperform trust salesmen and capture agencies the trust should have held.
- The Cycle Age advised dealers and repairers to file manufacturers' catalogues systematically by product category rather than discarding them, arguing that the 1900 jobbing-house catalogues were especially comprehensive and that ready access to them would help dealers locate obscure parts, compare prices, and satisfy customer inquiries for items not in stock.
- Government bankruptcy expert E. C. Brandenburg proposed to Congress requiring repeat bankrupts to repay a rising portion of their debts before receiving a discharge, shifting the burden of proving honest record-keeping from creditors to the debtor, and creating penalties for obtaining additional credit through misrepresentation of assets.
- The Cycle Age warned that the A.B.C.'s April 1 dating extension was encouraging dealers to over-order, quoting a trade analysis showing that long datings raised manufacturing and selling costs, produced earlier cancellations, and frequently caused dealer failures when overlapping obligations came due simultaneously in the dullest months of the year.
- Former Pope Manufacturing Co. secretary L. S. Dow and several other prominent bicycle industry figures incorporated the National Automobile & Electric Co. in Indiana with $250,000 in capital, purchasing a south Indianapolis factory site and planning to begin construction immediately with the goal of producing self-propelled vehicles within ninety days.
- Albert Wade of Monticello, Minn., received a patent for a tubeless detachable tire that used a toggle-joint mechanism to press the tire's bead edges into the wheel rim groove and prevent air leakage without an inner tube, while Frederick Hinckley received a refined back-pedaling coaster brake patent featuring a redesigned four-ball clutch.
- The Cycle Age praised the League of American Wheelmen's national assembly for unanimously striking the word 'racing' from its constitution, ending a long factional dispute over race control, and noted that the friendly press coverage that followed augured well for the organization's ability to concentrate on good roads and other core purposes.
- At its Philadelphia assembly the League of American Wheelmen unanimously elected Isaac Potter Sams as president, dropped its long-running attempt to control professional bicycle racing from its constitution without floor debate, and formally acknowledged that race governance would pass to the National Cycling Association.