The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 24, No 121
Articles in this issue
- Colonel Dodge, before departing for Paris, confirmed that all significant single tube tire makers had taken Tillinghast licenses, outlined the binding price clause in each license prohibiting any form of direct or indirect price reduction, and stated that no more licenses would be granted to newcomers who had not borne the cost of building the market.
- The Eagle Bicycle Mfg. Co. filed its formal answer to the A.B.C.'s bottom bracket suit on time, denying all allegations and citing prior patents and inventions, though A.B.C. counsel Redding described it as a routine document presenting no new features.
- Reports from Kenosha indicated that Gus Meiselbach had purchased the former Sieg manufacturing plant with the intention of operating it as an independent factory, reportedly in exchange for a large block of A.B.C. stock, a move that would represent a significant break from the trust.
- Chicago's bicycle retail season officially opened as warmer weather arrived after a severe winter, with dealers redressing their showrooms and reporting an increase in inquiries though noting a striking lack of enthusiasm and bustle compared to the trade's peak years.
- Detroit's sixteen downtown stores drew unexpectedly large crowds during a three-day general opening despite icy sidewalks, with strong interest in coaster brakes and cushion frames; M. W. Beals displayed the Pathfinder, Royal and Hudson lines while John L. Poole & Co. took over the closed Pope branch to sell Columbia, Hartford and Barnes machines.
- The Rochester Cycle Board of Trade, with newly elected secretary C. J. Conolly, unanimously rejected Megargle & Harrison's proposed cycle show in favor of simultaneous three-day store openings, and admitted the Regas Vehicle Co., Arthur McNall and C. C. Newton as new members.
- Springfield, Mass. dealers reported drying roads boosting April-delivery orders and trimmed warranty-repair costs promising better profits than 1898-99, with the Columbia branch folded into Spalding's sporting-goods store and the Victor branch closed after the Overman Wheel Co.'s collapse; Minneapolis dealers, meanwhile, planned a citywide 'bicycle day' opening promoted by the Minneapolis Tribune.
- An editorial argues independent makers are now competing more with each other than with the trust, noting A. B. C. factories running below capacity and parts plants closed, and predicts prices on high-grade machines will converge as quality and advertising become the deciding factors.
- Georgia's attorney general ruled that despite the Alexander decision, the American Bicycle Co. must still pay the $100 manufacturer's tax separately for each of its constituent companies' 1899-made machines, since those bicycles were built before the trust's formation.
- Short editorial notes fault the New York Herald for crediting an implausible $150 motor-cycle price claim, relay a British consular report on an English cycle maker losing Japanese trade to more accommodating American rivals, and note a British war-office push to standardize military bicycle fittings.
- The first installment of results from Cycle Age's canvass of 1,000 leading dealers on their 1899-1900 lines publishes scores of quoted replies grouped as 'A Solid Anti-Trust Brigade,' 'These Will Handle Trust Goods' and 'Favor Independents on General Principles,' including a Milwaukee dealer citing union customers who won't buy A.B.C. goods and an Atlanta dealer noting the trust cut its discount from 60 to 30 percent this year.
- Northwestern jobbers report country and crossroads retailers, not city dealers, driving the season's heaviest demand—mostly for $25 machines—with independent manufacturers taking about thirty days to fill orders because they are overwhelmed with business.
- Minneapolis dealers adopted a uniform price list adding a 5 percent surcharge for time sales and requiring one-third to one-half down with the balance due in two to three months, tightening terms after years of losses from overly generous credit.
- Buffalo dealers revived a sub-agency plan paying repairmen $5 per machine sold and tried a novel scheme of driving a sample-loaded delivery wagon to factory gates so workingmen could order bicycles by sample during their lunch hour without requiring a peddler's license.
- A Pittsfield, Mass. jobber cites the Meiselbach factory's layoffs as proof the A. B. C.'s jobbing sales department isn't meeting expectations, while a nearby Barnes agent complains that buying from the same trust source as his Stearns-selling rival undercuts his exclusive arrangement.
- Phoenixville, Pa. dealers Keinard Bros. report thriving trade among well-paid factory laborers, with most sales shifting from $25-35 machines to $40-50 grades, and credit a profitable side line of phonographs and firearms for carrying them through the winter; the item also notes Judge Townsend's Hartford federal court ruling that the mortgage on the insolvent Worcester Cycle Mfg. Co.'s Middletown plant is invalid as to later-acquired property.
- Wm. H. Crosby and Arthur D. Dana of the Independent Supply Co. bought a controlling interest in the Springfield Drop Forging Co., raising its capital from $67,500 to $100,000, with Crosby as president and Dana as treasurer and general manager.
- Jesse H. Bailey, former head of the insolvent Spaulding & Pepper Co. tire works of Chicopee Falls, maintains there is no real discrepancy in his accounts and will clear up the matter once able to return from New Haven, where his removal from a hotel to a hospital during his arrest allegedly endangered his health.
- Government trade tables show total U.S. bicycle and parts exports falling from $2,759,540 to $1,795,706 over the seven months ending January 1900, with United Kingdom exports dropping from $382,299 to $173,155 while shipments to Japan jumped from $1,738 to $15,528.
- Trade notes column reporting the Frontenac Mfg. Co.'s Syracuse factory running 220 men day and night in the 'healthiest state' of its history, W. A. Bremer of the Bremer Cycle Mfg. Co. claiming the first bicycle built northwest of Chicago, G. J. Halter's $7,500 purchase of the idle Surbridge bicycle factory machinery in Hagerstown, Md., and the newly incorporated Shepard Wheel Co. of Rochester ($100,000 capital, $75,700 paid up).
- Cycle Age announces a planned series comparing American and English coaster-brake designs to educate dealers and repairmen on the still-evolving mechanism, and reports the Hartford Rubber Co.'s $1,000 essay-and-record prize competition for riders and dealers using its single-tube tires.
- Patent review describing C. G. Tiefel of Rochester's automatic back-pedaling brake that binds equally from both sides of the hub (patent assigned to the Canfield Brake Co.), Ivor Rees's reversed pedal-pin construction, and J. R. Rowland's auxiliary hand-lever drive for tricycles; also lists the Dayton, Ohio dealers' third annual opening lineup.
- Cycle Age corrects the New York Sun's claim that the Supreme Court's invalidation of Sterling Elliott's Hickory Wheel Co. pneumatic-tire patent (in the six-year Frazier & Co. carriage-tire suit) lets anyone use pneumatic tires royalty-free, clarifying the ruling applies only to Elliott's patent and leaves the Tillinghast and Dunlop patents untouched.
- The automobile department covers plans to limit motor-cycle horsepower in N.C.A. race sanctions, the failed good-roads cooperation talks between the League of American Wheelmen and A. R. Shattuck of the Automobile Club of America, and 561-pound driver Big Joe Grimes's plan for a transcontinental automobile record attempt.
- New-products department covering the Newport, Ky. White Star acetylene lamp's spring-snap carbide cup, the Norwood Bicycle Co.'s $35 top-of-line Cincinnati models, the Fulton Machine Works' new one-inch-tube frame fittings for the Thistle, and the newly formed $5,000,000 Tube Steel Co. of Wheeling, W. Va.
- Racing and club department covering the International Cycling Association's stormy Paris meeting recognizing the N.C.A. over Secretary Sturmey's objections, Eddie Bald's announced return to the racing path after training at Louisville, the St. Paul Cycle Path Association's sixty-five-mile path system, and George Banker's second-place finish at Biskra, Algeria's season-opening meet.