The Influence of the Bicycle on Roads.

—Road construction remained in a lackadaisical state with here and there a spurt, with now and then an intelligent supervisor who appreciated the need of better wagon roads, until the coming of the bicycle. That machine may be considered a descendant of the old celeripede, which consisted of two wheels connected by a horizontal bar on which the rider sat and propelled himself by pushing with his feet alternately on the ground, through the velocipede, which had the front wheel pivoted to the framework for easy steering. The attachment of pedals is credited to a Scotchman, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, about 1840, who applied them to the rear wheel. In 1886 Lallement in the United States and Michaux in France, placed the pedals on the front wheels. The front wheel was gradually increased in diameter until in the ’eighties it sometimes measured as much as 60 inches. The rear wheel decreased as the front increased. The stability of the wheel was not very great; headers were common, and mounting was difficult. To overcome these defects of the “ordinary” there was developed, 1885, the “safety,” approximately the present bicycle, in which the pedals are carried on a separate shaft and the power transmitted by chain and sprocket to the rear wheel. With the invention of the Dunlop[124] pneumatic tire, and consequent overcoming of much of the jolting so objectionable in more solid tires, the adoption of the bicycle as a means of pleasure and business locomotion was extremely rapid. The cycling boom reached its height about 1896 or 1897, by which time a great many large manufactories of bicycles had been established over the country. A frenzy seized upon the people and men and women of all stations were riding wheels; ardent cyclists were found in every city, village, and hamlet.

As a result of the cycling craze there were organized numerous “wheel clubs” and finally a national one known as the League of American Wheelmen, organized about 1887. Its object partly social and partly to popularize the new sport of cycling, became a few years later almost wholly a form of propaganda for “better roads.” Newspaper space was freely utilized; many papers making special and regular features of “good roads”; pamphlets were published and distributed broadly, and a magazine was established.[125]

At first the wheelmen were met by the cry of selfishness, with the argument that the city folk wanted the farmers to build good roads for their pleasure; but men of foresight, men of affairs, saw the benefits accruing to all kinds of business and added their influence. Mr. Potter, a lawyer of New York City, who had graduated in civil engineering at Cornell University before turning to the law, became interested in the good roads movement, studied and made himself one of the best posted men on roads in the United States. When the League of American Wheelmen decided to start a magazine he was selected for its editor and manager. Under his direction the subscription list of Good Roads soon reached more than 30,000.[126] “The articles strive to show the value of roads in a commercial sense and by a comparison with other countries demonstrate how far behind America is in this respect.” Pictures of good and bad roads were used freely, thus holding the attention where reading matter alone would have failed. European roads, the French especially, were described and played up through newspapers generally. Scarcely a journal that did not run leaders and other articles on the benefits of good roads and methods of building and maintaining the same. Our ordinary roads were decried on every hand. A lady voices her opinion thus:[127]

I came to this country with the best prejudices, having enjoyed the privilege of meeting with some of its noblest representatives in my fatherland. I admired much the individual independence, the high standing of women, the gentle sway of the church, the liberal education of the children, and the unsurpassed charity that extends even to distant countries. I must confess that I was struck with the bad roads everywhere, in cities as well as in the country, and at the same time, amused at the compensation one gets when one meets with an accident. Why not spend the money in the improvements of the roads—make these roads perfect, and then let everybody look out for himself.

In summer the worst road is good; but in winter schools have to be closed, the children are stopped in their regular pursuits, learning becomes desultory, and the strong feeling of duty that has to be developed from the very beginning of life by strict good habits gets slackened and slighted; and so also the attendance of the churches—for many people the only comfort in the struggle for existence—becomes an impossibility. And especially the painstaking farmer must find it hard to drive his team through the muddy, clayey road, in bringing the fruits of his labor to the market. I hear him, with many a suppressed oath on everything under the sun, dragging his cartload through the mud and standing pools, and in snowstorms he is sometimes totally lost. All communication stops.

And so on for a column or more. She inserts by way of anecdote which shows that two of the greatest Germans who ever lived did not think the lowly road too insignificant to discuss:

When Heinrich Heine for the first time met with the royal poet, Goethe, he was so impressed with the majesty of his personality that he could speak of nothing less than the plum trees on the chaussée, between Jena and Weimar.

Also Bill Nye, the humorist, takes a rap at the roads in this manner.[128]

Our wagon roads throughout the country are generally a disgrace to civilization and before we undertake to supply Jaeger underwear and sealskin covered bibles with flexible backs to the African it might be well to put a few dollars into the relief of galled and broken down horses that have lost their breath on our miserable highways.

The country system, as I recall it, was in my boyhood about as poor and inefficient as it could well be. Each township was divided up into road districts, and each road district was presided over by an overseer of highways, whose duty it is to collect so many days’ work or so many dollars from each taxpayer in the district. Of course no taxpayer would pay a dollar when he could come and make mud pies on the road all day and visit and gossip with the neighbors and save his dollar too.

The result seemed to be that the work was misdirected and generally an injury to the road. With all our respect to the farmer, I will state right here that he does not know how to make roads. An all wise Providence never intended that he should know. The professional roadbuilder, with the money used by the ignorant sapheads and self-made road architects, would in a few years make roads in the United States over which two or three times the present sized load could be easily drawn, and the dumb beasts of the Republic would rise up and call us blessed for doing it.

This bit of doggerel appeared in Good Roads about the same time:

They May Be Sinking Yet

Old farmer John drove off to town

All on a rainy day.

The glistening highway up and down,

With mire shone all the way.

The gentle weeping raindrops fell

And had fallen all the night;

The bottom of that highway—well;

’Twas literally out of sight.

But John had hitched his sturdy steeds.

His sturdy steeds and true

That often ’mid such urgent needs.

Had boldly struggled through.

And John had sworn a big round oath

With deep and bated breath,

He’d rather brave the deep, forsooth,

Thrice o’er than starve to death.

For visions of the flour bin,

’Twas empty he could see,

And for a week no sugar in

His coffee cup had he.

And so amid the sea of mire.

Those steeds right valiant reel,

While turbid waves creep higher, higher,

Upon the wagon wheel.

Oh! help ye powers that rule the wave,

Wherever ye may be;

Reach down and this poor mortal save

From out the turbid sea.

They sink, now just the horses’ ears

Still struggling through the flood;

Now nothing but John’s hat appears

Above that sea of mud.

The rich black loam of Illinois

Above that outfit met;

And since our roads are bottomless,

They may be sinking yet.

Thus was the propaganda for better roads spread during the last decade of the nineteenth century. And this is not all the country owes to the enthusiastic wheelman of that period. Their efforts had resulted in a stirring of the whole populace. True, some were opposed to spending money for highfalutin highways, but many of the best thinkers of the country caught the true spirit of the wave and did all they could to continue the good work. In many states organizations were formed and good roads meetings called. In Des Moines, August 16, 1892,[129] more than 300 delegates representing boards of trade, boards of supervisors, county road conventions, 88 counties and 130 cities met in an enthusiastic convention of two days’ duration with Judge E. H. Thayer of Clinton as presiding officer. On the programme were such men as Horace Boies, Governor of the state, Judge Peter A. Day, Railway Commissioner, and Charles A. Schaeffer, President of the State University. The resolutions adopted among other things recommend that, until further legislation can be had, the following steps by county associations be taken: “(1) To set on foot a movement in every township in the respective counties looking to the consolidation of road districts...; (2) to impress on boards of supervisors the duty of levying the county fund tax...; (3) where it is apparent that the public interests will be best subserved by a larger immediate expenditure ... to urge ... the propriety of submitting to the people the voting of a higher levy or the issuance of bonds ... to agitate in cities and towns the question of the propriety of expending money beyond their limits in improving highways leading thereto....”

GOOD ROADS DAY IN JACKSON CO., MO.

While this convention was in session a similar one was meeting in Missouri; in fact practically all the states in the Union were getting “in the band wagon.”

The League stopped not here, but were interesting the political men of the country in the issue. They visited the president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, at Washington in July,[130] at which time he turned to Colonel Charles L. Burdet, head of the League, and said: “One thing; if wheelmen secure us good roads for which they are so zealously working, your body deserves a medal in recognition of its philanthropy.”

The great World’s Fair was coming off at Chicago in 1893, and “good roads boosters” were extremely anxious that a suitable exhibition be made there. General Roy Stone framed a bill which was favorably reported by the Senate Committee July 23, 1892. It was a bill to create a National Highway Commission and prescribe its duties, “composed of two Senators and five members of the House of Representatives, and five citizens appointed by the president” for the purpose of a general inquiry into the condition of highways in the United States and means for their improvement, and especially the best method of securing a proper exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exhibition of approved appliances for road making, and of providing for public instruction in the art during the exhibition.[131]

Colonel Albert A. Pope, of Boston, a zealous road worker, secured the opinions of hundreds of prominent men, which he presented to the members of congress. Only a few extracts can be made here.[132]

A want of understanding and system has resulted in a nearly useless expenditure of enough labor and money to have furnished the settled portions of our country with good substantial roads. —President Benjamin Harrison.

Looking at it from a postal standpoint enlarged free delivery or anything like universal free delivery will have to be postponed until there are better facilities of communication through the rural and sparsely settled districts. The experiments that we have made in the smaller towns and villages have proved the practicability of greater extended free delivery, but without good roads it must necessarily be limited to the small towns. —John Wanamaker, Postmaster General.

There is no doubt that the diffusion of knowledge in regard to the good construction of roads will be of immense benefit to all the people. —John A. Noble, Secretary of the Interior.

I think the people of the United States are taking more interest in the improvement of good roads than in any other non-political matter. —O. H. Platt, Senator from Connecticut.

I have often thought that the people, speaking of them generally, have never yet understood the value of good roads. They are not only matters of convenience, but they are really matters of great economy in every community. The farmer with one team of two horses is able to move on a good road more than he could move with four horses and a wagon of much greater strength on a poor road. This I have tested personally many times. Farmers are constantly in need of the use of highways to transport their property and to move themselves from place to place. The average farmer is five miles distant from the nearest railway station and his surplus produce must be moved that distance year after year. If he were to compute the saving that he and his neighbors would have by reason of first-class roadways, they would discover that it would amount to more than the expense of putting the roads in good condition and keeping them so. Our road system is miserably deficient. —William A. Peffer, Senator from Kansas (Populist).

Aside from the benefits that good roads bring to the people in times of peace I do not know of a great city in this country that is provided with such highways as would admit of the expeditions marching of a great army in times of war. Washington City is a fair example in this regard. The highways leading to this city through Maryland and Virginia are both narrow and crooked. There is not a single public outlet or inlet that can be called a great national highway. —H. C. Hansbrough, Senator from North Dakota.

In the old Roman days all roads led to Rome, and they were good roads. They built roads for military and commercial purposes, and the wisdom of their enterprise was apparent even in that early day. European nations to-day regard road-making as one of their economic questions, and it does seem that our Government in its honest endeavor to benefit the agricultural classes, should have thought of good roads long ago. We want and must have splendid highways, owned not by corporations but by the people. They will be an economical investment, and an untold comfort to the traveler. —James H. Kyle, Senator from South Dakota.

The country could spend no money so economically and enlist no genius so usefully as in making better roads for communications between one neighborhood and another. —John W. Daniel, Senator from Virginia.

I esteem good roads throughout the country to be as necessary as railroads. —Francis E. Warren, Senator from Wyoming.

The prosperity of our country depends so largely on the prosperity of our farmers that everything possible should be done to render life in the rural districts agreeable as well as profitable and nothing could conduce more to the comfort and happiness of our people than the improvement of the roads. —Joseph Wheeler, Representative from Alabama.

That good roads in good condition are always of great value in a military point of view is plain enough; for any section of active operations the prompt transportation of material and the moving of an army would demand it. —Major General Oliver O. Howard, United States Army.

The importance of good roads has been brought to my attention most forcibly on many occasions when my wagon trains have been forced to move at a snail’s pace over almost impassable roads, and when every hour’s delay might mean untold disaster. The expenditure of animal force on such occasions was fearful. In times of peace good roads are no less important; the general condition of country roads is a very good index of the civilization and prosperity of the community. It is not difficult to show by mathematical deduction that money expended in constructing good roads is economy from a financial standpoint, while from a social standpoint the benefits are incalculable.

We have splendid railroads traversing the whole country in every direction and we have in most cities very creditable means of rapid transit, but the country roads in most parts of the United States are really deplorable. This condition of affairs is something like putting a boy at work on Latin and Greek before he has mastered the alphabet of his own language. —Brig. Gen. D. K. Stanley, United States Army.

The above are only a small portion of the letters from which they were extracted, but they serve to show that the League of American Wheelmen and such men as Colonel Pope were very active in spreading the gospel of good roads. The arguments in these and hundreds of other letters, from men of all classes and professions, of all political parties from all parts of the nation, cover a very wide range and the effect has been lasting.

About this time, also, Senator Charles F. Manderson, of Nebraska, introduced a concurrent resolution in the Senate to print a lot of consular reports relating to streets and highways in foreign countries and distribute them in bulletin form. The edition consisted of 30,000 and served to show how the United States was lagging behind other countries in the matter of road building.[133]