The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 25, No 152
Articles in this issue
- Tire manufacturers gathered at the Waldorf for three days of conferences with Colonel Dodge over Tillinghast license price restrictions, focused on the narrow dispute over unguaranteed tire pricing and pre-existing blanket contracts, but failed to reach agreement, with Dodge maintaining he could not alter license terms without consent from all parties.
- San Francisco Bicycle Board of Trade directors visited Oakland and secured dealer signatures for a new Oakland bicycle board of trade, while coast trade awaited 1901 prices and samples before booking business, and Los Angeles dealers investigated motorcycle lines during eastern buying trips.
- The Cooper Handle Bar Co. relocated its adjustable handlebar manufacturing plant from Detroit to Fenton, Michigan, where local citizens had organized to attract the factory, with orders on hand promising a steady production run for the coming bicycle season.
- A Wall Street banker inquiring about the A.B.C.'s annual report told the Cycle Age it was one of the most unsatisfying reports his house had seen, and that A.B.C. shares had continued to fall on the exchange since the stockholders' meeting, reflecting serious investor dissatisfaction with the combine's management.
- The Cycle Age editorial addressed trade anxiety about the A.B.C.'s $5.8 million inventory figure, explaining that the number represented roughly 150,000 bicycles rather than the 250,000 widely assumed, since sales had been running at 47,500 per month and had continued for two to three months since the reporting date.
- A correspondent with recent experience in China described cycling customs and trade conditions there, noting the growing interest among the upper classes and the business sophistication of the leading importing houses, which used telegraph and cable facilities on a par with Western commercial firms.
- Recent patents included a wire-fastened detachable tire casing for crescent-shaped rims and a new changeable-gear mechanism, along with a roller-pin chainless driving device by Charles Baylor of La Porte, Indiana; the column also noted that T.B. Jeffery of the G.&J. sales department had taken up a new position.
- Brief trade notes covered a dissolution of partnership among sporting goods dealers in Eugene, Oregon; a sheriff's seizure of the Major Cement Co.'s New York establishment; H.P. Snyder & Co. of Little Falls deciding to manufacture steam-driven motor vehicles; and various other short business items.
- English bicycle journals were engaged in a vigorous debate over the merits of long cranks and high gears versus short cranks and lower gears — a question long discussed in Britain but never fully resolved — and the Cycle Age summarized the competing arguments for the benefit of American readers.
- The sports column sharply criticized Margaret Gast's 2,000-mile continuous road ride as a spectacle that had secured only brief notoriety and public censure, arguing that her unnatural conception of feminine cycling was to be pitied for its wretched associations rather than celebrated as an athletic achievement.
- For the first time in years, paced middle-distance races at the Chicago Coliseum were drawing respectable crowds, with some of the country's best riders competing each night on a ten-lap indoor track in the Jack Prince and James Kennedy promotion.
- At a September 30 Berlin race meeting, spectators who disagreed with a result expressed their displeasure by hurling beer glasses at the riders on the track, demonstrating that European cycling fans still took a passionate and physically demonstrative interest in the sport.
- The Newark, N.J. bicycle retail trade had consolidated to a smaller number of genuine dealers after the elimination of casual trade speculators, with competition reduced, repair business growing steadily, and the remaining dealers taking on profitable sidelines to supplement the cycle trade.