Page:The Cycle Industry (1921).djvu/131

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THE FUTURE OF THE INDUSTRY
117

its headquarters are The Towers, Coventry; the manager being Major Watling and the secretary Mr. Timerick.

In conclusion, those who imagine the cycle industry has anything left of its old time sporting glamour, when to be connected with it was regarded by some as a pleasant means of existence hovering between work and play, with a big proportion of the latter, should at once disabuse their minds of any such ideas. The cycle industry is now one of Britain's staple trades, and has settled down on industrial lines of great magnitude. Enormous sums of money are locked up in plant and machinery at its various factories and works which produce the subsidiary articles that go to make up that portion of the trade known as accessories. It is quite impossible to give an accurate figure as to the amount of this capital or the number of employees, partly because a good portion of the capital is in private concerns and also on account of the cycle and motor industries being interconnected to so great an extent that it is difficult to say where one begins and the other ends.