Kansas Agitator

BICYCLES FOR BUSINESS.

Club of Newark Men Who Use the Wheel Not for Pleasure Alone.

There is probably no city of its size in the United States where the bicycle is used as much around town for practical business purposes as in Newark. The city is not so big and crowded as Brooklyn or New York, and it is quite convenient for merchant drummers, law clerks, brokers and other folks who have to cover a deal of pavements in the course of a day's business to stride their steel and rubber horses and roll swiftly from office to office or from end to end of town at no expense of cab or car fare, and with much saving of time and effort. On any of the business streets there dozens of business men can be seen any day speeding by on low safety wheels. The highways leading to Roseville and the Oranges are much frequented by bicyclers, many of whom do not wear the flannel shirts and knickerbockers of the rider for pleasure, and carry small sample cases strapped to their machines or slung from their shoulders.

Newark's city ordinances governing the use of bicycles in the streets were until lately quite as liberal as those of other large New Jersey towns. The metropolitan character of Newark naturally made the use of the bicycle proportionately greater than elsewhere under the same laws, and the same reasons made the bicycle more of a nuisance in the streets. That is why the police of Newark have been very active recently in keeping bicycles strictly within the letter of the law, and from this has arisen a novel association of bicyclers in that town, the first of the kind in the country. It isn't a club, it has no club house and its members wear no badge or uniform. It is purely a business organization, chiefly of business men, and its chief object is to look out for the interest of all bicyclers in Newark, to keep the city authorities stirred up in the matter of maintaining the streets and roads in good repair and to influence city legislation in the interest of bicyclers.

The association calls itself the Business Men's Cycle club and accepts any reputable bicycler or tricycler as a member, but is particularly anxious to enroll business men. The idea is to collect a great lot of names of men of business prominence and influence, so that when the club asks the city lawmakers to grant some new privilege to wheelers, or abolish some ordinance restricting bicyclers, or to mend some bad piece of pavement, or to open a new street, or to grade a road, the request will have the backing of a lot of men whose names will carry weight with the city government. Business men who use bicycles there are joining the movement in considerable numbers, and the members have already begun a campaign upon all the business men of their acquaintance, dilating upon the health and pleasure to be had in bicycling, and urging them to buy wheels and learn to ride, and then to join the association. The club proposes to wage a heavy war upon bad roads for a radius of ten miles around Newark.—New York Sun.