The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-10-05
BICYCLE-MAKlNG.
Tremendous Growth of the Indus
try-Outlook for Next Year.

Tremendous Growth of the Indus
try-Outlook for Next Year.
People who call bicycling passing fad
have probably never stopped to consider
what an enormous amount of capital is
employed in the business OF making
wheels in this country. says a writer in
the New York Sun, and probably have no
idea of the number of people dependent
upon the business, The figures are aston
ishing. There are in this country to-day
about 100 goodsized bicycle manufac-
tories. If all the smaller concerns were
counted in, concerns that turn out from
so to 200 bicycles year, the number
would be swellcd to about 800. The num-
Der Of bicycles these 800 factories will pro-
duce this year will not be less than 500, 600
At an average cost OF SIS each to the
buyer this means that $37, 800, 600 will be
spent in this country this year for BIZ
cycles, providing, of course, the entire
product is sold. But there is little doubt
of that. Go to bicycle and try to
buy high grade wheel. They will take
your order and tell you they will deliver
the wheel in a couple of weeks. More
good wheels have been sold this season
than have been made and it is doubtful il
some of the manufacturers catch up before
the snow flies.
But the $37, 10000 do not cover the en-
tire expenditures IN the bicycle way of
the people of the country. There are cos
tumes-bloomers and such-lamps, cy-
clometers. patent mud-guards and patent
this-that-and the-other kind of apparatus
that will swell the sum to $50, 600 900.
Where does all this vast sum of money
go? WE'LL in the first place, some of the
manufacturers who few years ago were
~,
But there can be nothing unusual or par
ticularly undesirable in that; they built up
the business from nothing and have fur
nished the public with one of the greatest
sources of enjoyment ever known. Some
of the rest of the money, after the manu-
lecturers have had their bit, goes for ma
terial and the balance to the army of
workingmen, women, boys and girls whose
labor turns the raw steel, rubber, wood and
leather into the finished product.
How many are in that army? The num-
Der can only be estimated. In Chicago
factory that turns out 80, 900 bicycles year
800 persons, mostly full-grown men, are
employed. That would be an average of
37.5 bicycles to each employee. If there are
100000 machines to be made and each
employe makes thirty-seven and a half
machines there would have to be, there
fore, 13,33315 employees. But as there can
not very well be third of an employee it
may be well to drop the fraction, call the
number 1888 and let one of them work a
little overtime
That estimate, however, includes only
the people employed in the actual or e1-
clusively bicycle-factories. 1t takes no
account OF the workmen employed in
machine-shops in. making bicycle parts
which are sent to the bicycle factories and
handled by the employees there only as the
bicycles are put together. The Chicago
factory mentioned above does not manu-
tacture more than one-half the parts of its
own machine. That fact, of course, makes
1t necessary to double the 1883 to find the
number of people in the bicycle army,
which gives 26, 666, and still not including
the country agents and their salesm en- and
helpers, who surely swell the total to
10000. Next year enough more money
will be invested, factories started, people
employed and wheels made to increase by
half all the estimates above given.
The number of BICYCLES tn ne Turned ont