326
CYCLING
The makers who by their mechanical genius had brought the manufacture of cycles well on the way towards perfection, each one striving to improve his own detail, were now swallowed up by company promoters and adventurers, bent simply upon lining their own pockets, at any cost, by supplying a world which had suddenly gone cycle-mad. The result was that energy was mainly turned to the payment of dividends by the grossly over-capitalized companies. Machines, instead of being built by mechanics proud of their work, in many cases were simply put together in the shortest possible time, and turned out in the greatest possible numbers in one or more standard patterns. For these the world clamoured, and for a year the makers could not produce them fast enough. In another year the
numbers about 56,000 members, scattered throughout Europe and America and even the East. It is the only international organization of the kind, though almost every other country possesses a national club. The League of American Wheelmen, started in 1880 in a very small way, was able, after a period, to claim a membership of over 100,000, a degree of prosperity which it could not maintain, for by 1900 its members had dwindled to 28,000. The Touring Club de France, founded 1895, at the present time is numerically the strongest, with 72,000 members, but cycling is only one, if the chief, of its objects. An International Touring League has been formed by the national clubs, and it numbers a quarter of a million members. The aim of these associations is the promotion of cycle touring. They publish road-books, maps, and journals ; they recommend hotels in their own and other countries with fixed tariffs; they appoint representatives to aid their members when touring; and they have succeeded in inducing most governments to allow their members to travel freely across frontiers without paying duty on their cycles. Another important branch of the work of these clubs, either directly or indirectly, is the improvement of the roads. This is accomplished either, as in Belgium, where all the roads are paved, by the taxation of cycles and the consequent demand on the part of riders for side paths ; or by grants of money, as in France, to aid the State ; or, as in Great Britain, by the publication, through a body known as the Roads Improvement Association, of good-roads literature, and by watching, promoting, or suppressing, when possible, various parliamentary and local government and railway bills affecting cyclists. In the United States also the League of American Wheelmen is devoting itself more and more to the good-roads question with satisfactory results, laws for improved road legislation having been passed in many states. The clubs have in all countries erected a system of warning-boards upon dangerous hills. In France even the best route is suggested by a sign-post, while cyclists who come to grief in lonely places find a repair outfit for their free use. The large touring organizations have therefore, to a great extent, superseded the old clubs. If these still exist in a quiet way—a few possessing well-appointed club-houses—they have lost their usefulness, now that all the world cycles, and survive merely as social organizations. The Stanley is an exception. It continues to promote the large annual show of cycles, held almost regularly since 1877, the makers of England and other countries having borrowed the idea, until the big yearly exhibition of machines has become an institution everywhere.
Fig. 11.—Singer’s “’Xtra,” 1S79. demand decreased. The inventive spirit had become dormant, the British market was over-stocked, and, as the British manufacturers refused to consider the wants . of foreign customers, their store rooms remained crowded w ith unsold machines, dividends were unpaid, and all but the strongest firms went to the wall. Although cycling remained as popular as ever, the trade became disorganized, through seeking, frequently by cheapness and the resurrection of antiquated ideas, to bolster itself up, rather than by individual excellence to regain its lost position. The only attempt to meet individual requirements was to be found among a few makers who built cycles to fit their riders, as was done at the very beginning of the industry. A similar state of affairs, more or less, exists in almost all other countries. In America a huge trust was organized, by which it was hoped that the wants of manufacturers, rather than the desires of purchasers, would be promoted. But ever since Lallemant’s patent was purchased by one company, and sustained, it has been the effort of the American cycle makers to compel riders to purchase machines made in the fashion which was most profitable for them. Hence dropped steel forgings, wood rims, and single tube tyres were for a time all but universal in America. As American cycles are made by the most perfect automatic machinery, and as the parts can be duplicated, the whole of Europe, as well as America, for a year or two, was all but monopolized by the manufacturers of the United States. They, however, paid little more attention than the English makers to European wants, so that they, too, began to lose their hold. With the Fig. 12.—The “Rover,” 1885. 20th century, however, the outlook became more hopeful. Each country also possesses an organization for. the Although cycle tours were taken and cycle clubs established almost as soon as the cycle appeared (the Pickwick government of cycle racing; and although these unions, Bicycle Club of London was founded in 1870, and is the one object of which—usually the main one-—is the enoldest bicycle club in the world), and although the Cyclists’ couragement of cycle racing and cycle legislation, boast an Tourbm Club, then known as the Bicycle Touring Club, enormous membership, their membership is often composed was.organized in 1878, it was not until 1895 that this of clubs and not individuals. Among the most important organization assumed its present importance. To-day it are the National Cyclists’ Union of England and the Lnion
