Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [39]
What’s more, people didn’t have to worry that the robber baron in control of the trolley lines might decide to change the line or suspend service or raise rates. Each person was his (or her) own (wo)man, just the same as William Whitney.
Bicycles set up the expectation among urban Americans that transportation could be freewheeling and fun, selfish and impulsive. Like their rural cousins or parents, who could choose to ride their horses whenever they pleased, they could take the bike out for a spin at any time. These two-wheeled fun machines made a new activity accessible to the inner-city population: touring the countryside. Urban Americans in the increasingly coal-polluted cities of the Northeast discovered that they could purchase a bike for about a month’s salary and ride it right out of town into an agrarian world that was much more like 1800 than 1900, at least as far as they were concerned.33 It’s no wonder that bicycles were all the rage! And they were getting cheaper by the minute.34
Revenue poured into the coffers of bicycle makers like Pope, who decided to reinvest some of the funds not just in traditional advertising but also in supporting civic lobbying groups dedicated to improving America’s roads with taxpayer money. Pope founded the League of American Wheelmen and financially supported its agitation for what the group simply called “Good Roads.” Sure, they engaged in silliness like racing and bicycle polo, but the group was also a potent, progressive social force. By 1896 the Wheelmen pressured sixteen states to appropriate money for the paving and improvement of roads.35 By the turn of the century its ranks had swelled to one million members.
The bicycle adherents were paving the way for automobiles in a lot of subtle ways, too. Texas A&M historian Peter Hugill writes,
The League of American Wheelmen not only agitated for good roads but also published touring maps and guides, erected road signs, and identified inns and hotels that provided appropriate accommodations for middle-class and upper-middle-class urban tourists who were seeking the pleasures of the American countryside. That level of organization and the emphasis on the conveniences of touring formed the groundwork for the automobile owners when the automobile superceded the bicycle as the means to see the United States.36
This transformation of the road from a multi-use strip of dirt into a place for individual (and eventually high-speed) vehicles began with the bicyclists, too. The rules of the road, long established by tradition as much as law, began to transform. States began to require bicyclists to register bikes and equip them with bells. Riding on the sidewalk was prohibited. States passed statutes requiring people in an accident to exchange names and addresses. Pedestrians learned that people with wheeled vehicles could kill them, as a new column, “Death by Wheel,” popped up in newspapers.37 It was into this tradition—fun, individualistic, and dangerous—that Americans eventually slotted gasoline-powered cars, though at first they resented that the rich were having all the fun.
In the early years of the twentieth century, cars—fast cars—were becoming a must-have plaything among the children of the robber barons, particularly their sons. In fact, they were “arrogance of wealth” put on wheels and driven right through the center of what had been the public commons.38 Early films of American cities show enormous variation in the use of the road. Hand carts, horses, horse-drawn carriages, and pedestrians all shared the same ribbons of dirt. Bicycles required some adjustments on behalf of other road occupants, but gasoline-powered cars were fast and heavy enough that they required (and still require) thoroughfares all to themselves, lest they kill or maim anything too slow to keep up. Gasoline-powered cars required changing the definition of a road from a community space into a car-only lane. Woodrow