Читать книгу The Modern Bicycle and Its Accessories - Julius Wilcox - Страница 5

Table of Contents

“The nothing of the day is a machine called the Velocipede. It is a wheel carriage to ride cock-horse upon, sitting astride and pushing it along with the toes, a rudder wheel in the hand. They will go seven miles in an hour. A handsome ‘gelding’ will come to 8 guineas; however, they will soon be cheaper unless the army takes to them.”—Letter of John Keats to a friend, about 1818.

The future historian of cycledom will clearly note that 1898 was memorable for the reincarnation of the chainless; that the chain models were improved in quality and reduced in price, and that the trade did not hold a show, this being the first lapse since those events began in this country in 1890. Conservative old England, where shows were first held and the bicycle really began to succeed, has just closed her twenty-first or “coming-of-age” show in London, and the other large cities of the kingdom are, in their turn, pushing the show around the circuit as usual. America—progressive and enthusiastic—after less than one decade of it, exhausted itself for the time, and the National Board of Trade of Cycle Manufacturers decided to pass 1898, refusing to give sanction to either national or local exhibitions.

From the stand of the riding public much might be said on the affirmative side of the show question. The show brings under one roof all the new models and accessories for the coming year, affording ready means of comparisons, instructive, even if sometimes odious; maker and rider come together, and the latter especially, has opportunity to renew old friendships; the copious reports and illustrations in the daily and trade press arouse expectation in the cycling public, and undoubtedly make many new converts; the gap between riding seasons is bridged across “the winter of our discontent,” and things are kept on the move. Not denying aught of this, the makers reply that they are not in the amusement business; that this is a costly form of advertising directly, also delaying trade both by inducing buyers to wait to see it all and by tying up their representatives when they ought to be on the road visiting agents; that no other business has or needs such gatherings; and that shows were originally intended to bring together maker and dealer, not maker and rider.

Intelligent and impartial observers who have studied the question from both sides, say that all the trouble has come from the American habit of overdoing, and that the makers are to blame for deviation from the original idea, and for going into gorgeous competitions in electric lighting, costly furnishings and decorations and a prodigal waste of printed matter; that when aisles are packed and the week is a society event, the greatest thing in a show, the one chiefly cared for, and really about the only one that can be seen, is the show itself, the crowd itself being what the crowd attends; that the thing becomes a grab for “souvenirs” and a spectacular waste, instead of an exhibit of cycles and accessories to those who really want to see them.