The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 24, No 122
Articles in this issue
- Washington, D.C. dealers reported that their spring opening week far exceeded even optimistic expectations in the first three days, with coaster brakes and chainless models attracting particular interest, despite heavy snow on the final days curtailing attendance.
- Springfield, Massachusetts bicycle agents were preparing for a strong spring season by adding new makes to their lines while tightening credit terms and reducing trade-in allowances for second-hand machines, as the trade anticipated its best year in recent memory.
- Despite Gus Meiselbach's public denial that he intended to make bicycles at the former Sieg plant in Kenosha, a Cycle Age reporter who visited the works found all machinery overhauled, new switch tracks laid, carloads of tubing delivered, and former employees promised work — contradicting his claim it was a speculative purchase.
- Representatives of the bicycle workers and allied trades submitted a proposition to the American Bicycle Company calling for employment of union labor only at a union wage scale, with the company's second vice-president promising to put the matter before the next board of directors meeting.
- Des Moines, Iowa bicycle and sporting goods dealers signed an agreement to close their stores all day Sunday and at 8 p.m. on weekdays (except Saturday) from March through November 1900, with signers including Hopkins Bros., W.J. Riddell, W.P. Chase Co. and Kenyon Bicycle Co.
- A letter from an Adelaide, South Australia bicycle-importing firm to an English manufacturer describes how British makers' neglect of colonial orders in 1896-97 let independent assemblers and B.S.A.-parts dealers flood the market, ruining the older importing houses and driving prices below cost.
- Fort Wayne, Indiana dealers reported strong prospects for the season despite the American Bicycle Company's methods, with Koehlinger & Bauer stocking both trust and independent lines, A.C. Katt pushing Ramblers exclusively, and the Meyers Cycle Co. and Marion Black experimenting with motor attachments.
- Fine spring weather in Worcester, Massachusetts opened a promising trade season with one store reporting twelve bicycle sales in a single day, while dealers anticipated good business generally but noted few inquiries for chainless models and flagged coaster brakes as the season's leading selling point.
- The National Association of Cycle Traders of England called a meeting of accessory and fittings manufacturers for March 13 to approve a scheme fixing retail prices, a move the London Cycle Trader said reflected trade doubt that reforms were attainable rather than indifference to conditions.
- Buffalo dealers described March trade as unusually dull compared with 1899, blaming the collapse of installment credit schemes and unchanged 1900 models, while a separate Buffalo suit (Caroline Metcalf vs. the American School Furniture Co.) aimed to test whether trusts organized like the American Bicycle Co. could be dissolved as illegal combinations.
- An editorial examines whether the Shelby Steel Tube Co., controlling plants from Hartford to Toledo with roughly 100,000,000 feet of annual capacity, can monopolize bicycle tubing, noting growing competition from brazed tubing and independent mills like Wilmot & Hobbs and the Atlantic Tube Co.
- An editorial argues that dullness reported in Chicago and Buffalo is a local anomaly against otherwise near-universal optimism nationwide, attributing Buffalo's slump to market saturation from aggressive local dealers and Chicago's to labor strikes and poor street paving.
- A bicycle-factory buyer complains to Cycle Age that manufacturers deliver parts to whichever buyer complains loudest or pays a premium regardless of when an order was placed, illustrating why contracts carry little real weight in the trade.
- A continuing survey tabulates over 500 dealer responses on trust versus independent bicycle lines (of 64 published that week, 22 handled independents only, 7 trust only), followed by pages of individual dealers from towns nationwide, from Pendleton, Oregon to Cambridge, Wisconsin, explaining their choice of makes such as Racycle, Iver Johnson, Crescent and Pierce.
- The Iver Johnson Sporting Goods Co. purchased the retail and jobbing business of the John P. Lovell Arms Co. at 163 Washington Street, Boston, positioning itself at the head of the New England trade in a deal that completed a remarkable reversal of fortunes between the two prominent sporting goods houses.
- Citing Bradstreet's 1899 statistics, the piece reports that lack of capital caused 34.6 percent of American business failures that year, more than incompetence, inexperience, unwise credit and undue competition combined.
- Green Bay, Wisconsin dealer F. DeCremer drew crowds to his newly remodeled double storefront with an elaborate advertising campaign featuring a reproduced bill poster touting coaster brakes, chainless models, a Scotch-plaid-finish bicycle, and a home-trainer mile-record contest.
- A Newton, Iowa correspondent, E.J. Miles, writes to Cycle Age asking for precedents on towns granting wheelmen sidewalk privileges after winning a local council vote allowing bicycles on sidewalks in bad weather.
- Salt Lake City dealers report a prosperous season driven by renewed interest in cycle racing and support for prominent local riders, alongside notes on the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s denial of a lawsuit reported by a rival paper and Canada's new National Cycle & Automobile Co. factory in Hamilton.
- An editorial urges repair men never to skimp a repair job even at a customer's insistence on a cut-rate price, arguing a botched cheap repair does more lasting harm to a shop's reputation than turning away the job.
- An editorial contends that a retailer's willingness to seek new information and pay for trade papers marks the difference between a competent, growing merchant and one destined to fail.
- Prompted by a Huron, South Dakota merchant's bankruptcy after fourteen years without keeping books, the piece argues every dealer owes it to creditors to maintain a full set of accounts to prove good faith in hard times.
- The piece advises retailers to start with a fully paid-for stock of even modest size rather than a larger stock bought on credit, warning that outside investments and over-extended credit are the chief dangers to a young business.
- An Associated Press dispatch reports the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas's 1889 and 1895 anti-trust laws against the Waters-Pierce Oil Co., alleged to be a member of the Standard Oil trust, though the court limited its ruling to the specific Texas statute.
- A roundup of short trade notices including A.G. and J.W. Spalding sailing for England, a fire destroying the Simmons Saddle Co.'s rawhide-saddle factory in Camden, New York, the new Berlin-Racycle Mfg. Co. formed from the Canadian Racycle branch, and a general opening of Dayton, Ohio retail stores.
- Lists of dealership changes of ownership, new repair shops opened, retirements, and fire damage to bicycle stores across dozens of American towns, from Greentown, Indiana to Buffalo, New York.
- The second article in a Cycle Age series contrasts the American hub-mounted coaster brake with the English trade's preference for separate free-wheel clutches and hand- or tire-operated brakes, quoting the Irish Cyclist and the London Cycle Trader on why British makers remain skeptical of small hub brakes.
- The Bicycling World's anecdote about American Bicycle Co. sales managers who, after being feted at a January dinner, each received a bill from trust headquarters demanding $5.80 toward the banquet's cost.
- Illustrated patent notices including W.S. Busler's simplified back-pedaling brake, Hannibal Buchignani's double-tube tire fastening plate, H.L. Trebert's folding bicycle frame assigned to E.C. Stearns & Co., and two A.M. Price crank designs assigned to W.H. Fauber.
- A buyers' department describing the Thomas Machine Mfg. Co.'s sideplate-less pedal, the Ariel Cycle Mfg. Co.'s tenth annual "Good Stock Counts" catalogue and its $40-$85 model line, and the controversy over Iver Johnson's Arms & Cycle Works advertising bicycles "$15 Under the Market."
- The William M. Crane Co. of New York introduces the National Automatic bicycle pump, a penny-in-the-slot curbside air compressor weighing over 160 pounds that inflates a tire in three or four lever strokes.
- Julius Andrae & Sons' Milwaukee factory received an export order for 200 top-specification Andrae bicycles, with sales manager Schmidtbauer reporting the firm was shipping twice as many bicycles daily as in any previous season.
- A feature describes how conservative Boer farmers initially condemned the bicycle as likely to spoil horsemanship, preferring ox-wagon treks and horses, though younger Boers took up cycling despite the country's poor roads and frequent hills.
- Joseph H. Allen of Paw Paw, Michigan traded a bicycle he still owed money on for a mule that died the next day, was convicted of fraudulent sale of personal property, and was fined $10.80 in costs after his friends settled with the seller, E.B. Longwell.
- The National Cycling Association denies press reports that it seeks to annex Canadian racing control, noting only that some Canadian Wheelmen's Association members, including racing secretary W.J. Kelly, favor handing race governance to the N.C.A.
- A survey of cycle-path and good-roads campaigns describes the Canadian Wheelmen's Association petitioning Ontario for $1,000,000 in provincial road aid, over $1,500 raised by the Melbourne Cycle Pathways Association, a Sydney path from Manly to Bayview, and a proposed New York-to-Chicago side path led by the L.A.W.'s New York division.
- Owen Kimble describes plans to turn Fountain Ferry track into a season-long entertainment venue with weekly bicycle and motor-cycle races featuring McFarland, Stevens, Newhouse, Maya, Walthour and Charles Miller.
- The California Associated Cycling Clubs formally transferred control of all Pacific coast track racing to the National Cycling Association, with W.L. Loos of San Francisco named the coast representative overseeing California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
- The piece predicts a proposed match race between veterans Sanger and Zimmerman at the 1900 L.A.W. national meet in Milwaukee will outdraw current riders, since it re-stages their old rivalry rather than pitting an old-timer against younger blood.
- St. Louis cyclists won a bill requiring street-sprinkling carts to use a perforated-pipe device and to pass over streets four times daily instead of two, ending the flooding that had made local riding difficult.
- A Motor Age interview finds former middle-distance cycling champion E.A. McDuffee now advertising cigarettes via locomobile in Philadelphia, fending off mischievous street boys, and offering to race Jimmy Michael at any distance up to thirty miles.
- Season training on the Prince cement track in Paris began March 3 with Elkes, Ross, Huret and Jacquelin, and the returning English rider Robertson, who is attempting a comeback in middle-distance racing after retiring in 1898.
- At Wellington, New Zealand, W. Tierney and E. Reynolds split the professional sprint titles while eighteen-year-old W. Reynolds swept the amateur championships despite a dangerously banked track that threw several riders into a gully.
- Representative De Ran's bill before the Ohio legislature would let counties form side-path commissions funded by a $1 annual bicycle license, building paths at least three feet wide and fining unauthorized riders $5 to $25.
- Montgomery County, Pennsylvania side-path commissioners petitioned the court for a mandamus compelling county officials to levy the 50-cent-per-bicycle tax authorized under the state's new side-path law.
- Nearly one hundred Salt Lake City racing men are training full-time for the coming season, with meets planned at the eight-lap Salt Palace track and the quarter-mile Calder's Park track.
- The L.A.W. set July 10-15 for its national meet in Milwaukee, with A.D. Meiselbach chairing the arrangements committee and a program including theater entertainment, an all-night smoker, lake excursions, and a Grand Avenue multicycle race.
- The Treasury's internal revenue bureau ruled that a railroad's baggage receipt for a bicycle carried alongside its owner on a passenger train is exempt from revenue-stamp taxation as an express or freight receipt.
- Gougoltz won the Grand Prize of Algiers on March 4, narrowly beating Parmac in the final with Banker third, and also won a ten-kilometer paced match, while Parmac and Lortz took the tandem race.
- At the Twenty-second Regiment's spring games, C.D. Barclay won the mile handicap after scratch man W.E. Mosher broke his leg in a spill, while W.H. Conners and A. Junkind placed first and second in the two-mile.
- The Paris municipal council reported the 1899 Grand Prix earned $12,089.06 against $10,234.61 in expenses, a $1,854.45 profit, and pledged another $2,000 toward the 1900 event.
- J.E. Poorman announced he is reviving his once-classic Decoration Day road race under his own management, promising grand prizes and track races between motor bicycles and automobiles.
- Tom Cooper and Earl Kiser, the top two finishers in the previous year's championship, prepared to sail for Europe to represent American racing, delayed by exposition-season crowds booking steamship passage.
- A column of short racing notes covering the Antwerp Grand Prize date, rumors of Jimmy Michael's comeback, Frank Kramer's standing as the best 1900 drawing card, and Philadelphia winning the Intercollegiate Bicycle Racing Association's annual meet.
- An Austrian trade editor recalls warning in the 1880s that sewing-machine dealers' rush into bicycle installment credit would end in a crash, and now proposes reviving a blacklist to curb dealers who chronically extend and renegotiate their debts.