However a cyclist may feel in regard to this question of English or American machines, it would be best in the long run to settle the question entirely upon the merits and quality of the work. It is a bad plan to implicitly take the word of a salesman regardless of one’s own judgment. The variety of machines has become so great that it is more than likely the customer will generally have to buy from the maker who has adopted the special style of machine the buyer is determined to have. But let this not deter him from insisting on a high grade of workmanship and excellence of material. CHAPTER XIX. CRANKS AND LEVERS AND TANGENT SPOKES. The subject of cranks and levers has been touched upon from a philosophical stand-point, but an ingenious squib in a maker’s catalogue on the subject has suggested the propriety of treating its mechanical features more fully. The squib referred to runs as follows: “CRANKS VS. LEVERS. “The question of a motive power for cycles is as old as the first idea of wheel riding. Inventors, after having persistently tried and abandoned every other known motor,—steam, electricity, etc.,—have made every effort to discover the best way of applying leg-power. “While nine-tenths of the cycles have always been driven by cranks, in a few cases the attempt has been made to show that power could absolutely be created by the use of levers, and that if the power could be applied on one side only of the axle, avoiding the return stroke of a crank, the result would equal a man’s lifting himself over a fence by his boot-straps. “In their eager pursuit of this one idea its advocates have lost sight of the fact that the question is of the economical use of the power we have, and that it is as impossible to _create_ a power as to overcome the laws of gravitation. For hundreds of years the machinery of the world, practically speaking, has been driven by cranks. In this fact we have the testimony of the highest mechanical genius the world has known. “Engineers agree that the crank is the only economical method of applying power—that it transmits to the driving shaft ninety-nine per cent. of the power applied. In no class of machinery except cycles is the attempt made to use levers where cranks could be used.