Page:The fastest bicycle rider in the world - 1928 - Taylor.djvu/53

 As time went on I became convinced that the color line was drawn against me in St. Louis and Cape Girardeau by hotel proprietors when in reality the strings were pulled by my co-racers. They evidently felt that I was a good enough rider to land the championship out on the track and that the best way to insure one of their number corralling the honors was to have me kept off the race course through some ruse. I was suspicious that this plan was afoot following my experience in St. Louis. When the brazen Cape Girardeau trick was pulled on me I became convinced of their diabolical plan and had made up my mind that I would never ride in another race.

True to their word the group of officials and bicycle racers who saw me off at the Cape Girardeau Union Station did their utmost to have me barred for life from the tracks of the country. They put every pressure they could muster into service at the N. C. A. meeting that winter with but one thought in mind—to bar Major Taylor for life from all the tracks. I had been automatically suspended for my failure to ride in the Cape Girardeau championship meet, and this well-developed plan to have the sentence carry life suspension against me followed my application for reinstatement.

Meantime the facts of the case had been thoroughly presented to the public through the press. I had always received the fairest treatment at the hands of the newspapers of the country, regardless of the unfair tactics that I was almost continuously facing at the hands of most of the racers on the track. Now the press again came to my rescue and when I sorely needed assistance. News items and editorials in most of the leading papers in the country, from both above and below the Mason-Dixon line, crystallized public sentiment in my favor.

The fact that I refused to desert the L. A. W. arrayed a large number of riders against me. The case was stated thus by the Philadelphia Press: "Major Taylor was the last professional to desert the L. A. W. and join the outlaw movement. It required a considerable amount of argument to move him, and he was never satisfied with himself after he flopped. He rode the outlaw races in the fall of 1898, and his failure to win a clear title doubtless added to his discomfiture, and when the riders reached Cape Girardeau, Mo., he was thoroughly disheartened. His failure to secure desirable accommodations was the straw that broke the camel's back, and he packed his grip and returned east. Therefore the riders' independent movement knew him no more.

"He went back to the L. A. W. and remained there until the League abandoned cycle racing and left him without a guardian. Now he wishes to ride under the N. C. A., but before the N. C. A. will register him he must make his peace with the riders, or fail in