The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 24, No 120
Articles in this issue
- Colonel Dodge reported that virtually every significant tire manufacturer had now taken a Tillinghast license and was in accord with the scheme for fair prices, while he stated he would grant no further licenses to protect those who had already built the market, and confirmed minimum tire prices of $2.75 unguaranteed and $4.25 guaranteed per pair.
- A.B.C. patent attorney Redding outlined his plan to run the Eagle and Snyder bottom bracket suits simultaneously by dividing witnesses between separate rooms, though he had not yet decided which suit would take precedence.
- The Georgia Supreme Court reversed the lower court ruling in the Alexander bicycle tax case, holding that a single $100 state license entitled a dealer to sell any number of makes without paying additional taxes per brand, a decision likely to benefit the American Bicycle Company by allowing it to sell all its lines in Georgia for one payment.
- Promoters in Rochester proposed a week-long cycle and automobile exhibition at Fitzhugh Hall starting March 24, offering low exhibition fees and promising vaudeville trick riders and dancing each evening to draw the public and stimulate trade.
- Columbus, Ohio dealers reported a bigger-than-expected turnout for their simultaneous opening week, with the Ohio Cycle Co. and American Machine Co. decorating their stores almost entirely in cycle goods; the item also reports the new Columbus Laminated Tube Company, headed by George C. Urlin, Louis Fink and Harry D. Freeman, readying its Goodale Street shop to make tubing for bicycles, bedsteads and automobile wheels.
- A. B. C. patent attorney Redding granted the Eagle Bicycle Mfg. Co. a thirty-day extension to file its answer in the Eagle bottom-bracket suit, prompting C. T. P. A. counsel Dyrenforth to needle Redding's earlier boast that he could run the Eagle and Snyder suits simultaneously.
- American Bicycle Co. representative Henry A. Goddard arrived in Australia to open a Cleveland-bicycle sales branch, selling for cash only from Melbourne and Sydney; the roundup also covers the Austral Cycle Agency's Beeston-Humber trademark fraud at Port Darwin, Massey-Harris's new $45,000 Melbourne building, and the Anti-Friction Ball Co. of Coventry's push into the Australian trade.
- Philadelphia's 'Cycle Row' on Arch Street drew crowds during opening week, with dealers C. C. Hildebrand (Cleveland, Niagara), 'Bob' Garden (Crescent, Monarch, Tribune) and Charles S. Smith & Co. (Rambler) making standout displays; the item also notes Traffic Manager Brewster's shipment of 150 American Bicycle Co. models aboard the Normandie for its Paris Exposition exhibit at Vincennes.
- An editorial rebuts accusations that Cycle Age's criticism of the American Bicycle Co. trust stemmed from being denied its advertising, arguing the paper is bound to no man and noting it once carried ads for houses that later joined the combine without losing their patronage.
- Cycle Age reports that of 120 dealer replies received so far to its canvass of 1,000 leading dealers on 1899-1900 machine lines, 22 back the trust exclusively while 68 oppose it though many still handle its goods, with fuller results promised in future issues.
- Dealers including Libbie B. Smith, the Lei-Kinsey Implement Co. of Boulder, Colo., and the Colorado Springs Cycle House describe tightening installment terms to $2-a-week or $10-a-month payments after losses from reckless credit; the piece also details Indianapolis's 'Good Time Sales Plan' $5 time-payment surcharge with a $1-per-month rebate for early payoff.
- Washington, D.C. dealers reported unusually brisk opening-week inquiries, crediting building construction and the incoming twelfth-census workforce, while the board of trade pushed for legislation against traveling 'fake auction' bicycle sales that skirt local licensing.
- Irish Cyclist-compiled tables covering 65 British cycle makers, 14 tire makers and 14 tube makers show cycle-maker net profit collapsing from $1,797,286 in 1898 to $535,203 in 1899 (1.3 percent), attributed to suicidal price-cutting rather than falling sales volume.
- A Buffalo dealer complains that unchanged 1900 patterns are killing trade-in demand, limiting allowances to 50 percent on old machines, and warns that Buffalo's heavily unionized, anti-trust laboring class will shun American Bicycle Co. machines this season.
- Memphis dealer A. D. Powers of Pritchard & Powers describes displaying Cycle Age clippings—including Major Taylor's mile record—on his shop's bulletin board and easel card to draw customers; the column also carries the Buescher Mfg. Co.'s denial it is closing, the Cycle Trades Protective Association's March 30 membership deadline, and a long list of dealer ownership changes and fire losses, including McMurray & Baker's $25,000 Jacksonville fire.
- Trade notes column reporting F. W. Morgan of Morgan & Wright planning a model stock farm near Beloit, Wis., tire vulcanizer Antonio Seriance inheriting $40,000 from an Austrian aunt, Toledo's 1899 total of 14,790 bicycle licenses, and the $1,000,000 Newark fire that destroyed W. V. Snyder & Co.'s department store along with L. S. Plant & Co.'s bicycle department.
- A debate feature weighs the return of one-inch frame tubing against the established one-and-one-eighth-inch standard, arguing appearance and rigidity depend on frame shape rather than tube diameter alone, with contributions signed 'M. C. D.' and 'L. G. A.'
- An editorial argues the Patent Office's loose 'utility' standard lets worthless bicycle patents multiply, illustrating the point with a gimmicky patented driving gear that adds two extra sprockets and a chain without improving on ordinary bicycle propulsion.
- Patents Still Uninteresting: Apparently No Cessation in the Weekly Output of Weakly Cycle InventionsWeekly patent review describing W. H. Underwood's liquid-driven 'man-motor' bicycle, H. S. Halford's extended pedal foot-rest attachment, and G. W. Deafenbaugh's two-speed sprocket-and-clutch driving gear, plus J. S. Copeland's new back-pedaling tire brake patent.
- The syndicated automobile department reprints Hon. John Scott Montague's address on British motor-industry overcapitalization, citing the Daimler Co.'s 1896 flotation by Harry J. Lawson and the Great Horseless Carriage Co.'s inflated £750,000 capital, plus notes on Automobile Club of America good-roads lobbying for the Higbie-Armstrong act.
- New-products department covering the Velox Machine Works' combination rubber-and-rat-trap pedal, new Liberty Cycle Co. models priced $30 to $75, the Frank Mossberg Co.'s new Attleboro bell factory turning out 2,000 to 3,000 bells daily, and newly issued catalogues from the Hendee Mfg. Co. (Indian bicycles), Simmons Hardware Co. and the American Tire Co. of Toronto.
- Racing and club department covering plans for the L. A. W.-N. C. A. national meet at Milwaukee, Sutherland's motor-paced win over Mutton in Australia, Minneapolis milkman Charles Nelson's $10 fine for riding a protected cycle path, Major Taylor's reinstatement bid to the American Racing Cyclists' Union, and a proposed dime-per-cyclist chain-letter fund for a New York-to-Chicago cycle path.
- A roundup of European restrictions on women cyclists: Vienna bans riding with hands off the handlebars, Germany requires a police-tested riding permit, Florence mandates carrying two warning bells, and France requires a married woman to obtain her husband's signed permission to join a touring club.