The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 25, No 135
Articles in this issue
- Two former Stearns division employees of the A.B.C. organized the Riggs-Spencer Co. in Rochester to manufacture fitting sets for the Sager chainless driving gear, backed by $25,000 in subscribed capital and targeting an output of 25,000 sets in the first year.
- An auction sale of bicycles in Cleveland by outside dealers, rather than harming local trade, was credited by regular dealers with stimulating new public interest that sent buyers to established stores for bicycles at comparable prices with better after-sale service.
- New England bicycle dealers reported the 1900 season's volume was slightly below the past two seasons as the trade passed its peak, with independent makers' representatives having been more aggressive than trust salesmen and dealers who added golf supplies as sidelines finding them particularly profitable.
- A traveling salesman for one of the A.B.C.'s branch operations described his frustration at being reduced to a cog in a machine with no discretion over expenses or judgment about his own territory, contrasting this with the relative autonomy he had enjoyed before his firm was absorbed into the trust.
- Robert L. Jefferson of the Royal Geographical Society described how American low-priced bicycles had almost completely displaced British machines in Russia since 1895, caused by English manufacturers' refusal to fill orders during the mid-1890s boom, which forced Russian agents to source American machines that subsequently dominated the market.
- A roundup of dealer reports from Syracuse and Utica, N.Y. found the 1900 season had not lived up to the winter's "banner year" hopes, with one large dealer blaming the American Bicycle Co. trust's price-cutting and curbstone agents; Goodenow & Morehouse of Utica described how their stove trade and spring cycle trade now balance each other almost evenly through the year.
- The editors assessed the 1900 retail season nationally: unseasonable weather from New York to Montana and labor strikes in Chicago, Cleveland and St. Louis held sales below last winter's optimistic forecasts, and dealers were urged to add sidelines such as firearms, fishing tackle, talking machines, cameras, golf goods, and a stove-and-refrigerator combination that fills the off season.
- An editorial argued that repairers who also make themselves machinists stand to gain as automobile repair work grows, since motor-vehicle breakages demand lathe work, thread-cutting and fitting skill well beyond ordinary bicycle repair.
- Dealers were advised to keep show windows fresh with photographs and lithographs of racing men, motor-tandem outfits, and newly built cycle paths and road scenery, arguing that such displays draw passersby and indirectly stimulate touring and sales.
- W. Montague Perrett, previously associated for more than seven years with the American Dunlop Tire Co., joined the Diamond Rubber Co. of Akron, Ohio, as general representative, headquartered in Akron.
- A metal-trade correspondent reported that the influx of Americans and Europeans into the Philippines was creating strong demand for machinists and repair shops in Iloilo, Molo, Jaro and Santa Barbara, with bicycles beginning to appear in the islands but no facilities yet able to repair them.
- Citizens of Freeport, Ill. subscribed for $100,000 in preferred stock to keep the machinery maker Stover Mfg. Co. in town, after the American Bicycle Co.-absorbed Stover Bicycle Mfg. Co. plant there had already been closed and its machinery moved to other trust factories.
- Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was described as an active but low-priced cycling market served by some two dozen mostly small sub-agents, led by Maison Ormonde and Humber's Agency, with English bicycles holding only about 5 percent of sales against dominant Austrian, German and American machines.
- A technical essay under "Current Mechanical Topics" argued that the popular habit of judging a bicycle by how freely its bearings spin under no load is misleading, since a lightly loaded, slow-turning bicycle bearing actually needs a viscous, vaseline-like oil rather than the light oil suited to a high-speed grinding-machine spindle.
- A repair-shop correspondent, E. K. Baker of Paris, Texas, described and illustrated a home-built horizontal air compressor with a 3-inch bore and stroke that his shop used for pumping tires, brazing, and blowing gasoline spray through small machinery such as typewriters for cleaning.
- The weekly patent column reviewed E. G. Latta's removable eccentric crank hanger designed to sidestep the Smith-O'Wen bracket patent, L. E. Hoffman's steel-tube hospital stretcher buggy, the Caldwell brothers' unclinched detachable tire assigned to the Radax Pneumatic Tire Co., E. F. Ziegler's back-pedaling coaster brake, and W. F. Hawes's crank hanger with removable ball cups.
- A lengthy mechanical rebuttal to a Brooklyn trade writer's claim about pedal-pin thread direction used a geometric proof to argue that a left-hand thread belongs on the right pedal (and a right-hand thread on the left) so that the pin's rolling action screws it inward rather than backing it out.
- A repair-shop technique piece explained how a lathe, calipers, a screw-pitch gauge and a shop-made brass templet and bevel gauge can be used to duplicate worn hanger cones and cups, noting the indirect goodwill value even though direct profit on the work is small.
- A reprinted letter from a hardware merchant recounted launching his own bicycle and sundries store on January 1, 1900, describing the slow, advertising-driven process of drawing customers away from established habits and the gradual growth of trust once won.
- A traveling salesman for a Michigan machinery house recounted discovering, on a sales trip in Guatemala, that a "German" woodworking machine his prospect's rival had bought was in fact his own firm's product, re-exported through Hamburg and relabeled as a native German make.
- An English cycle dealer of Cambridge, suspicious of a bicycle renter who gave a false address, alerted police and, with the help of another dealer's information, saw two detectives capture the thief by motor car within about an hour.
- An English trade journal polled its largest advertisers on the best time to stop advertising, publishing their tongue-in-cheek replies, such as stopping only "when you have convinced everybody... that you have better goods and lower prices than they can get anywhere else."
- A miscellany of trade brevities included Arthur Zimmerman's plan to re-enter the bicycle and automobile business, the Simmons Hardware Co. of St. Louis raising its capital stock to $4,500,000, and the American Bicycle Co.'s denial that its Boston Pope-department store had closed despite strike-related trouble in Cleveland.
- Import figures for 1897-99 showed complete-bicycle imports into New Zealand falling from 11,496 to 6,806 machines while imports of cycle materials held steady, indicating that local assembling of parts, especially through the port of Lyttleton serving Christchurch, was displacing finished-cycle imports.
- Scotland's inspector of constabulary urged local authorities to supply rural police constables with bicycles or an annual allowance for their own machines, reporting that bicycle-mounted constables covered their beats and were visited by superior officers more often.
- Citing The Keystone, the piece argued that a jobbing house's credit man, though usually resented by retailers as a prying "grand inquisitor," actually protects them from over-buying on credit and the business failures that speculative credit can cause.
- Product notices covered the E. A. Collins Co.'s Toomey adjustable dress guards and detachable child's bicycle seat, the E. W. Bliss Co.'s major expansion of its Brooklyn press-and-die works, W. H. Fauber's circular asserting his one-piece hanger patents, and the Richardson Ball-Bearing Skate Co.'s new "White Light" gasoline arc lamp offered to bicycle dealers as a sideline.
- The League of American Wheelmen's national meet was previewed for Milwaukee, July 10-15, including a new nine-lap board track built on stone foundations and modeled on the 1892 course where Walter Sanger set his records, with racing under National Cycling Association rules.
- Ex-champion E. C. Bald's spring comeback attempt at Fountain Ferry came to nothing after his betting instincts were aroused at the Kentucky Derby, leading him to follow the horses to Buffalo instead, prompting reflection on how rarely veteran sprinters recover their old form once fully retired.
- Paced racers in Paris, including Elkes, Ross, Taylor and Walters, protested the huge motor tricycles used for pacing at the Parc des Princes track and threatened to boycott it unless manager Desgrange banned them, after Bauge's tricycle-paced win and a tricycle-caused fall injured Edouard Taylor.
- Major Taylor, restored to good standing after more than a year's N.C.A. suspension, handed Treasurer Tom Cooper a $500 check from Fred Johnson of Iver Johnson's Arms & Cycle Works at Vailsburg and signed to ride an Iver Johnson bicycle for the season under manager R. W. Ellingham, with a July 4 match series against Jay Eaton planned.
- The Dayton Bicycle Club prepared a July 4 race meet under N.C.A. rules on its fast half-mile track, offering $400 in professional prize money plus motor-cycle exhibitions, with entry blanks available from Chas. A. Hall of Dayton.
- Miss Marguerite Gast completed 113 hours 23 minutes of continuous riding on a triangular New England road course to claim a women's record for ten centuries (1,000 miles), finishing in good physical condition despite contrary winds and rain.
- At the Atalanta Wheelmen's fifth annual meet at Vailsburg, N.J., McFarland won the 22-starter five-mile professional handicap in 11:54 4-5 over Kiser and Kramer, Jimmy Michael broke New Jersey's two-, three- and five-mile paced records on his first metropolitan appearance since returning to the track, and Major Taylor paid his $500 forfeit to Treasurer Tom Cooper before riding an exhibition.
- Paced by Bertin's outsized motor tricycle, Bauge won a two-day Paris race and broke the world hour record with 39 miles 942 yards (and the twenty-mile record at 28:22 1-5), after Edouard Taylor was forced out by a tricycle axle failure and Ross withdrew when his tricycle's tire rolled off.
- Bert Russell of Springfield, Mass., paced by the Massasoit Cyclo Club, rode from New York to Boston in 21 hours 3 minutes, clipping nearly three hours off Major Taylor's 1898 record despite a spill in the darkness near Bridgeport, Conn.
- The Canadian Wheelmen's Association renewed its bond with the Dominion government exempting touring League of American Wheelmen members from customs duties on their bicycles, and arranged accident insurance paying members $5 a week for four weeks or $125 to survivors in case of death.
- The Canadian Wheelmen's Association executive accused the newly formed Canadian Cyclists' Association of usurping control of the Dominion Day meet awarded to Ottawa's Capital Bicycle Club, and threatened to withhold trophies and suspend any C.W.A. riders who competed in it unless the C.C.A. relinquished control.
- John Lawson, the "Terrible Swede," broke the American 24-hour motor-paced record at Los Angeles with 528 miles 928 yards, well past the previous 492-mile mark, despite losing pace for roughly a quarter of the time when the motor tandems broke down.
- Before crowds of 4,000 to 5,000 at Salt Palace park, Iver Lawson won the scratch mile handicap in 2:01 4-5 over Chapman, and the Gunn-Turville tandem team beat Edmonds-Ensign and then Chapman-Lawson in a closely contested tandem handicap final.
- Cleveland dealers assembled prizes, including a $500 piano as first prize plus 25 bicycles and two tandems, for a July 7 road race intended to revive interest in road racing and, by extension, in the local bicycle trade.
- The newly organized International Cyclists' Union, formed in Paris in opposition to the I.C.A., warned riders belonging to Italy, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S. and Belgium that racing in non-affiliated countries would bar them from the Grand Prix de Paris, the world championships and the Grand Prix de l'Exposition.
- At Vailsburg, Orlando Stevens won the quarter-mile open over Frank Kramer, Walthour and Cooper and then swept two straight match heats against Jay Eaton, while the five-mile professional handicap was taken by Dan Kraemer ahead of Aaronson, Lefferson, Miner and McGue.
- Fifteen-year-old Walter W. Smith Jr. of the Kings County Wheelmen, motor-paced by J. W. Judge and Charles Miller at Berkeley Oval, lowered the amateur mile record to 1:28 and the half-mile to :45, prompting a re-trial ordered by referee Batchelder over a watch discrepancy.
- Before 15,000 spectators at Charles River Park, Burns Pierce beat Jimmy Michael in their twenty-mile motor-paced match race at Boston in 34:29 3-5, after Michael lost his pace and dropped back before rallying to finish close in his first defeat since returning to racing.
- Minneapolis stepped up enforcement of its new bicycle-license ordinance, stationing police on cycle paths to check for tags; sales reached nearly 6,000 in a single day, bringing the season's total to about 22,000.
- L.A.W. local consul Fred L. Brown of Golden, Colo. described how the Colorado & Southern Railroad, after first insisting a cycle path stay 30 feet from its tracks near Golden, agreed to let it run just six feet from the rails, allowing the Golden-Denver path to proceed.
- Brief items included Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York renewing his L.A.W. membership on the day it expired, the French pacer Champion challenging Jimmy Michael to a race of five to fifty miles, and the League of American Wheelmen's new contract for $1,000 accident-insurance policies costing members 30 cents a year.