The Wheelmen's Gazette, Vol 3, No 2
Articles in this issue
- Pope Manufacturing Co. announces the new Columbia machine line for 1888, inviting cyclists to inspect the full range and obtain the comprehensive free catalogue.
- The newly formed Clark Cycle Co. of Baltimore announces it is taking over from Sam L. T. Clark and Co. with expanded facilities, arguing their New Rapid bicycles and Quadrant Tricycles still have the best true tangent spoke wheels on the market.
- The King Wheel Company announces a greatly improved version of the King Bicycle for 1888, with lever drive, anti-friction bearings, and the same safety advantages against headers as previous models.
- The Springfield Bicycle Mfg. Co. presents its two 1888 Roadster models at $75 and $100, offering the option to upgrade from plain to ball bearings at any time for $25.
- George W. Rouse and Son of Peoria continue their easy payment scheme and second-hand catalogue service, taking in wheels for cash and offering repairs and nickel-plating.
- H. T. Hearsey of North Delaware Street, Indianapolis advertises as sole agent for the Rudge Bicyclette, offering bicycle repairs at cost price and winter storage at small expense.
- Club members debate the merits of racing tights versus the League regulation uniform, prompting the "Club Liar" to recount how, back in 1881 Kokomo, a fast-talking clothier named "Co." nearly sold him a pair of garish sky-blue pants and a hump-backed jacket before he slipped his own old coat back on unnoticed.
- A Minneapolis dispatch details how a match race between S. G. Whittaker and A. A. McCurdy collapsed into a betting scandal, with backers posting escalating side-bets, McCurdy refusing to ride after the rink lights were cut, and the referee awarding the stakes to Whittaker's backer.
- By Harry Estey: club member Joe Grant tells why the caddish Ed. Hall skipped town — after flirting with a farm girl already engaged to a jealous suitor named Bond, Hall was ambushed on the road, tied hand and foot to his own bicycle, and sent pedaling home in disgrace.
- Reprinted from the Indianapolis News, an essay on emerging mechanized substitutes for soldiers — electric microphones for picket duty, hidden retractable guns, bloodhounds, and military bicycles — as alternatives to exposing men to danger.
- A sarcastic editorial mocks arguments for admitting professional racers to the L.A.W. on a trial basis, and appends an Aesop-style fable, "The Arab and the Camel," about a guest who gradually displaces his host entirely.
- A parody exchange of petty sniping paragraphs between two rival English cycling papers over stolen wheels, safety records, and road-hog satire, mocking the pettiness of the transatlantic cycling press feud.
- A New Jersey correspondent reports winter riders undeterred by the cold, Howard A. Smith's returning branch store in Orange, an upcoming Hudson County Wheelmen entertainment featuring a Thomas Stevens lecture, and a jab at the American Wheelman's editor over advertising practices.
- A state-by-state and foreign roundup of cycling news from January 15 to February 15, 1888, covering dozens of club officer elections, the collapsed McCurdy-Whittaker match, and the Stanley Show in London.
- Reports Chicago club dances and social notes, and gives a detailed insider account of the Minneapolis McCurdy-Whittaker race as a betting "hippodrome" in which backers Tom Roe and Colonel Tanner tried to buy the result before the match collapsed entirely.
- A list of English cycle patents granted from October 1887 to January 1888, covering lamp attachments, brakes, saddle springs, and driving gears for velocipedes.
- A Philadelphia correspondent ("Quaker") reports a boom in local cycling despite winter cold, growing club membership and social exclusivity, plans for a citywide defense association for wheelmen's legal rights, and Jules Terront's 100-mile professional win at Birmingham.
- The Pope Manufacturing Company introduces the Surprise, a new tricycle model with adjustable ball bearings throughout, an Ewart detachable-link chain, and a Harrington cradle-spring, priced some $15–25 below comparable American and English machines.
- A specification brief for the Veloce, Pope Manufacturing Company's new safety bicycle for the season, giving wheel sizes, tires, felloes and spoking in detail.
- A short poem addressed by a rider to his bicycle, praising its grace and the freedom it gives him.
- Four Nashville Bicycle Club members — Joe Gibson Jr., Thomas Petri, Ed. Fisher, and Joseph Combs — set out on July 4th for an eight-hundred-and-sixty-mile tour to Niagara Falls via Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Cleveland, each riding a different machine and carrying luggage on backbone carriers.
- A comic poem addressed to the month of February, complaining of its brevity and wintry chill.