In 1884, Mark Twain wrote
“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it--if you live.”
Get it? "The Breaks," or The Brakes?
In an unpublished essay titled “Taming the Bicycle,” Twain details his daring efforts to learn to ride a large-wheeled “penny-farthing” bicycle invented by James Starley in 1871 (Levinson).
In 1885, Starley's nephew John Kemp Starley invented the first “safety” bicycle called the Rover (“Icons of Invention”). Starley's creation of a better-balanced and chain driven bicycle stirred further innovation in the 1890's based on safety and mass production.
Through the Gilded Age, the public perception of the bicycle went from that of a dangerous play toy for rich daredevil men to a popular, practical device for the working class that everyone could use.
Bicycles were expensive at first and not available to masses. Robert Smith notes that “any of the nearly two-thousand men employed in cycle plants in 1890 would have had to work nearly half a year at the prevailing wage to purchase one of the machines he helped assemble” (Smith 26).
However, in many ways the high prices of bicycles financed the research into the design of bicycles before mass production began. Early bike enthusiasts bought bikes before innovations including John Boyd Dunlop's invention of the pneumatic tire and the subsequent inventions of brakes and gears, preventing unsafe bicycles from getting in the hands of the masses too early. Although safety features cost extra on bikes, bicycle prices began to drop in 1893, as a result of public pressure and overproduction on the part of the manufacturers (25).
Bikes became not only a popular recreation and a practical machine but it would also help stimulate many business innovations of the era. Bicycles provided an energy efficient alternative to horses and brought rapid individual transit before the mass production of affordable cars. The innovations in mass production including mechanization, vertical integration, and aggressive advertising—all ideas that the automobile industry would adopt soon. Many automobile makers were originally trained in bicycle plants, taking ideas about assembly line production and planned obsolescence. Major bicycle manufacturers spent between $4 million to $9 million a year to advertise bikes in newspapers designed to market the “identity” of a cyclist (Furness 17).
Though early models of the bicycle were marketed towards the upper class (costing around $100 to $150), the bicycle had become affordable to working people by the turn of the 20th century (Smith 17).
In 1895, suffragist Frances Willard wrote in her book, A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle:
“Tens of thousands who could never afford to own, feed and stable a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life” (Willard 11).The president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union emphasized how important the bicycle had been in reviving her health and political optimism, using a bike as a metaphor for politics of action, stating "I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum"(“A Whole Philosophy of Life”).
At the onset of the bicycle craze, physicians accused the bicycle of producing “chronic disease” while priests condemned it as “diabolical devices of the demon of darkness” (Smith 1). Cycling soon proved to not only to be beneficial for strengthening the lungs, improving circulation and building muscle tone but it also changed America's conception of moral propriety and social rules (67). The bicycle was touted as an alternative exercise for women to horse riding in 1890 (Tyng 61). Not only did the bike provide for good exercise but many people argued that it also encouraged temperance because it deterred men from drinking so they could control their bicycle.
Though bicycles were originally intended for use by men, women began to use bicycles and it changed their fashion choices from clothing like the restrictive corset to more comfortable clothing such as bloomers. Though some would criticize bicycle fashion as a moral decay and the bloomer would eventually disappear, “rational dress” would be welcomed by most as a “reform that had been long demanded by common sense” (Smith 109). Susan B. Anthony affirmed the progress the bicycle had brought about for women, stating in a New York Sunday World interview on February 2, 1896: "Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood” (Bly 10). While the bicycle enabled greater freedom for the working class and for women at the time of its invention and mass marketing, the bicycle's freedom on the roads became some what of a liability given its unique status. Many people considered bicyclists menaces on the road. Taxi cab drivers and “teamsters” (previously used as a term for horse-and-buggy drivers rather than truck drivers) tried to have cycling defined as a “hazardous occupation”(Smith 198). Bicycles would be given the same rights as other vehicles in 1897 along with the restrictions and responsibilities that those laws imposed (197). I
In 1931, George Bernard Shaw would joke about bicycle hysteria, remarking, “newspapers are unable, seemingly to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization”(Moyers 3). Despite having literally paved the road for the possibility of other vehicles, especially the automobile, the bicycle became a marginalized vehicle in the increasingly populated roads and its presence on the road began to decrease.
In 1931, George Bernard Shaw would joke about bicycle hysteria, remarking, “newspapers are unable, seemingly to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization”(Moyers 3). Despite having literally paved the road for the possibility of other vehicles, especially the automobile, the bicycle became a marginalized vehicle in the increasingly populated roads and its presence on the road began to decrease.
The bicycle continues to remain a fixture of American culture with approximately 16 million bikes being sold in the United States every year (“Facts and Figures”). Approximately 66% of the 130 million bicycles sold globally are made in China (Panday). While the bicycle is still popular, its role in broader society has changed dramatically. The bicycle is still viewed as a luxury item of conspicuous yet pragmatic consumption. Riders pride themselves for reasons beyond the superfluous waste when compared to their Gilded Age counterparts, though they still benefit from many of the capitalist innovations in bicycles. The status and identity a bicycle provides no longer only has to do with fashion and the results of marketing but rather an embracing of the values it achieves beyond money. The bicycle is still the symbol of self-reliance to its current enthusiasts, representing an environmental and safer alternative to the automobile.
While bicyclists relish in their hobby, the majority of society today looks upon cyclists in a different light. Today, less than one percent of all commuters use bicycles to commute to work (Furness 30). Motorists consider bicycles a nuisance and an obstacle in the way of their road. Our society may revere bicycles as a form of recreation and exercise today, especially as a childhood right of passage but many no longer view cycling as a legitimate adult form of transportation. Zach Furness notes in One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobiles how we perceive bicycles as a “childish” device. Furness cites an example of this trope in The 40 Year Old Virgin, where Steve Carell's character, Andy Stitzer, rides a bike to work. Andy Stitzer's coworkers, friends, and girlfriend consider his bike evidence of his childish inability to grow up, proving he is unmanly (Furness 111). Ultimately, his girlfriend buys him a bike, embracing his quirkiness that stems from his innocence. The example of Andy Stitzer shows us how the bicycle has become stigmatized as outside the norm of society for adults.
Just as bicyclists brushed off criticisms from detractors in the Gilded Age, bicyclists reject the judgments from those that deem bicycling unworthy of their status on the streets. They have embraced their antagonistic role in the road while also asserting that they can abide by the “grown up” rules designed to ensure their safety. Bicyclists have successfully petitioned government to build bike lanes in many cities. Nevertheless, bicycles face a danger especially in urban areas. In 2009, 630 pedalcyclist deaths accounted for 2 percent of all traffic fatalities during the year. Seventy percent of those deaths occurred in urban areas (“Bicyclists and Other Cyclists”). When Mark Twain warned that you would enjoy a bicycle “if you live” he was commenting on the dangerous design of the penny-farthing he rode; Today, after all the possible safety innovations created for and required of bicycles to legally ride, the threat to their lives is mostly the external threat posed by automobiles.
Many bicyclists consider themselves activists with a duty to highlight the injustices that car culture perpetuates. Cyclists have even used their bicycles as a method of protest. One example of this kind of protest is the recent series of naked bike rides that have occurred all across the country to promote awareness of how cars pose a threat to their safety, both on the road and environmentally. These naked protests also share the spirit of disregarding dominant concepts of social propriety as their predecessors in the bicycle craze, while emphasizing the idea of positive body image that can be achieved through cycling.
Through bicycle activism, the bike has come to represent more than just sentiments about road safety, healthy lifestyle, and fashion; the bicycle has become a physical manifestation of individual power that accepts individual responsibility. At the same time, the egalitarian nature of bicycle culture welcomes both the amateur and the professional. Although the bicycle was designed for the individual, the roads bicyclists demanded demonstrated the possibility of collective effort in producing social benefits and bridging social connections.
“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”
-Ernest Hemingway
Works Cited
Works Cited
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“Bicycling.” Outing, an Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Recreation (1885-1906); Feb 1890; 15, 5; American Periodicals Series Online. Web. pg. 46
“Bicyclists and Other Cyclists.” Traffic Safety Facts 2009 Data. Washington, DC: NHTSA's National Center for Statistics and Analysis, 2010. Web.
Bly, Nelly. “Champion of Her Sex.” New York Sunday World. February 2, 1896. Web. 28 Sep. 2011.
"Facts and Figures.” League of American Bicyclists. 2011. Web. 28 Sep. 2011. <http://www.bikeleague.org/media/facts/#americans>
Furness, Zach. One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobiles. Temple University Press. Philadelphia, PA. 2010. Print.
“Icons of Invention: Rover safety bicycle, 1885.” Making The Modern World. 2004. Web. 28 Sep. 2011. <http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/icons_of_invention/technology/1880-1939/IC.025/>
Levinson, Cythia. “The Amazing Bicycle Tamer.” Cobblestone. Peterborough. May/June 2009; 30, 5; Web. 28 Sep. 2011.
Moyers, Bill. "Big Odds and Small Acts of Rebellion." Vital Speeches of the Day. 77.1 (2011): 3-10. Military & Government Collection. EBSCO. Web. 28 Sept. 2011.
Panday, Amit. “The Business of Bicycles.” Dare. Web. <http://www.dare.co.in/opportunities/manufacturing/the-business-of-bicycles.htm>
Smith, Robert A. A Social History of the Bicycle. American Heritage Press. 1972. Print.
Tyng, Emma Moffet. “Exercise For Women.” Harper's Bazaar (1867-1912); Aug 9, 1890; 23, 32; American Periodicals Series Online. Web. 28 Sep. 2011.
Willard, Franics E. A Wheel Within A Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle. Woman's Temperance Publishing Association. Chicago, IL.1895. Web. 28 Sep. 2011. <http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=CUAfAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA11>
