Une Corporation devient majeure, by Charles Dufresne — L’Officiel du cycle, 2 October 1954, the Dealers’ Federation Comes of Age

From L’Officiel du cycle, du motocycle et du camping, 2 October 1954, the paper’s special number before the 1954 Paris Salon du Cycle et du Motocycle, page 7: Charles Dufresne, president of the federation of cycle and motorcycle dealers, on the trade of the vélociste-motociste coming of age: the bicycle as the base of every modern industry and the cyclomoteur as the machine that brings motorization to hundreds of thousands of French people. The title, headings, captions and lists are transcribed as printed; the text is summarized in Ebykr’s words, and the page images carry it in full.

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[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. Opening section. The author, speaking for the Motocistes-Vélocistes who devote their activity to two-wheeled machines and earn their living by it, says that, at the price of hard labor that they nevertheless pursue because they love their profession, it is plain that a period is over and a new age has been reached. Conscious of its responsibilities as of the economic and social importance of its role, the Corporation is now of age, and this event is the fruit of a double evolution, professional and technical.]

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[Ebykr summary, after a star break. The bicycle, the base of all modern industry, of the motorcycle and of the automobile, long reigned alone over the world of “2-roues”, drawing its success from its ideal simplicity; but in return that simplicity implied in some sort a minor character for the Corporation, which was paradoxically compared with the younger branch of the automobile trade. Today, thanks chiefly to the Cyclomoteur, that extraordinary combination of cycle and motorcycle technique, it is by hundreds of thousands that the French are coming to the benefits of motorization.]

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[Ebykr summary, after a second star break. The author asks whether it is necessary to insist that national industry in this branch could not have conceived and carried out its prodigious effort of the last decade if the network of Vélocistes-Motocistes had not already existed across the country. Established in the smallest market towns, his colleagues adapted at once to the new demands of material and commercial work. They equipped the two and a half million users of every category of machine running in the streets and on the roads; they handle upkeep and repair and in fact give the guarantee; they are in permanent contact with the customers and hear their thousand wishes and complaints.]

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[Ebykr summary, after a third star break. Having to solve for themselves all the daily problems posed today by a motorcycle fleet equal in numerical and economic importance to the automobile fleet, the Motocistes know that they belong to a Corporation that has come of age and that, as such, intends to enjoy the full and rightful profit of its work.]

Déclaration de M. Charles DUFRESNE,
Président de la Fédération Nationale
des Vélocistes et Motocistes.

UNE CORPORATION
DEVIENT MAJEURE

7

[A text page in two parts, with one photograph. The upper two thirds is running text in a plain sans-serif type set across the right two thirds of the page in short paragraphs, with a wide blank margin at the left. Four of the paragraphs open with a large drop capital (P, B, E and D), and a small asterisk ornament sits alone between the sections. Below the text, at the left, an attribution is set in italic: the declaration of M. Charles DUFRESNE, president of the Fédération Nationale des Vélocistes et Motocistes. Under it the headline “UNE CORPORATION DEVIENT MAJEURE” stands in two lines of large, widely spaced, light upright capitals. To the right of the headline is a halftone portrait photograph of an elderly man with receding white hair and rimless glasses, head and shoulders, in a collared overcoat with a necktie and slightly turned to the left, against a plain dark gray ground. The photograph carries no caption. The printed page number 7 sits at the lower right above a thin ruled line. No artist signature or agency mark is present, and faint reversed type from the back of the leaf shows through just below the headline.]