5. The Gilded Age included America’s first bicycle craze in the 1890s
In 1895 an editor for the New York Tribune wrote, “The discovery and progressive improvement of the bicycle is of more importance to mankind than all the victories and defeats of Napoleon…” The 1890s was the decade in which the newly developed safety bicycle took over the hearts and minds of Americans. Though it lasted only about five years, petering out by the end of the decade, the demand was so great for bicycles that over 300 manufacturers of the machines were in place at the turn of the twentieth century, among them the Wright brothers in Dayton, Ohio, who were already experimenting with a flying machine.
Bicycles seized the public’s imagination for several reasons, as they still do, which included exercise, the ability to move about on one’s own schedule, and the ability to travel longer distances in shorter time. Bicycle clubs opened in American cities and towns, many still in existence. The clubs lobbied for the creation of special lanes for bicycles at the end of the nineteenth century, an activity which would be repeated a century later in many communities. Women’s fashions featured slightly shorter skirts to protect them from chains and the pavement when riding. During the bicycle craze of the Gilded Age the majority of riders were adults, rather than children, in large part because bicycles were relatively expensive for the time, as few were mass produced.