A Bloomington-Normal historian says bicycles were once a top export from the state of Illinois with manufacturing centers in the state, including Peoria and Chicago, making two-thirds of all bicycles sold in the country in 1898.
Chris Sweet, a librarian and professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, said that changed a lot in a series of ups and downs over many decades.
His new book, "A History of Bicycling in Illinois: 160 Years of Booms and Busts," is out early next month from the University of Illinois Press.
Sweet said in the 1890s, bicycling was a national activity second only to baseball. It was brought on by the entry of so-called safety bikes, with two wheels about the same size instead of the previous "big wheel," or "high wheel"’ era that began in the 1870s.
The design change allowed children and women to ride more stable bicycles, leading to a decade of growth — followed by a crash in popularity about 1900.
Sweet said the easy answer for why the craze faded is the arrival of the automobile, though he said the ebb in popularity comes before auto plants began pumping out large numbers of cars.
“My opinion, based on evidence, is it became no longer the socially cool, popular thing to do once it fell out of favor with that social elite crowd, and the bikes became cheaper. Anybody could get on one. It kind of lost its allure for some, and they moved on to the next fad, which was motorcycles, then automobiles,” said Sweet.
The drop in price was significant. In the early 1890s, a bicycle cost about $100. When Sears and Montgomery Ward entered the marketplace and began selling by mail, the price declined to $20 by 1900.
Sweet said the hub of Chicago, access to rail, and to raw materials such as iron from Michigan and Wisconsin allowed bicycle makers to take up a large part of the market.
“Chicago is already a manufacturing center," he said. "They were very good at building all sorts of things. Factories could flip in a matter of a month and move from making like an agricultural implement to making bikes. And some did choose to do that."
He said the topography of Illinois favored single-gear bicycles that were more difficult to pedal up hillier regions.
Central Illinois
Peoria had some of the same advantages as Chicago. It was the second largest Illinois city and a manufacturing center. In at least one case, bicycles became a side business for a watch company, said Sweet.
“One of the interesting [things] that Peoria was known for is what was called "high art" bicycles. This was a way to distinguish from everything that was coming out of Chicago. ... They went after the high end of the market. Think about very intricate filigree work on the bicycle lugs, the pieces that connect the frames together, some really interesting crank designs, lots of nickel plating on the bikes, as a way to kind of stand out,” said Sweet.
Luthy bikes and Rouse, Hazard and Company were two prominent Peoria bike manufacturers. Luthy bikes made the upper end bikes. Rouse, Hazard was a wholesale parts seller, and an importer. Sweet said they made their profit from volume.
“Rouse and Hazard also got a license to then build replicas of certain English bikes. For a time English bikes were more in demand than bikes made in the United States. They were seen as higher quality. That view kind of started to change during the 1890s so Rouse built a great business, wholesaling, selling direct to customers through like mail order,” said Sweet.
Bloomington did have its own bicycle maker as well, early in the era.
“The shop was called Matern's in Downtown Bloomington, and they had an indoor bicycling rink," said Sweet. "This is where people could pay money to learn to ride these velocipedes. This was very big business for a while, and they were neck and neck with Chicago for the one of the first ones [velodromes] in the state, which I think is a little interesting claim to fame for Bloomington-Normal.”
Bicycles and society
For most of the 1800s, roads were not a function of government. Especially in rural areas, upkeep fell on nearby farmers. Deep ruts developed. They became impassable in the spring.
Sweet said bicycle advocates were a key part of what was called the “Good Road” movement. They allied with farm interests to improve the transportation infrastructure.
“Cyclists were so passionate about getting out there and getting people to be able to ride into some of these rural areas, they started lobbying both the federal government and state governments to build better roads. Cyclists really led this charge, and the bicycle companies invested in this. They lobbied Congress in order to have the first Highway Administration,” said Sweet.
That good road movement later benefited motorcycles and autos.
“Chicago did a lot of wood block roads, early types of asphalt, and that made the riding experience better,” said Sweet.
The bicycle boom inflected several societal changes as well, among them women and gender issues. It came at the same time as the progressive era, suffragist struggles, and temperance.
“Women really embrace the bicycle as a means of emancipation. ... But you know what doesn't work very well when you're trying to ride a bicycle? These big Victorian skirts, right?” said Sweet. “This drove dress reform. The bloomer style of dress is a split skirt, essentially. It allowed women to ride and to hopefully keep the dresses out of the out of the chains.”
Bicycles also held a mirror to other issues in which technological change introduced tension, religion for instance. Sweet said some factions lined up against bicycles, calling them the work of the devil. The Rev. Dwight Moody of the Moody Bible Institute was vehemently opposed to cycling, saying it corrupted youth.
“This one I had no idea about right before I started writing. I kept finding these references to churches and parishes being absolutely split over cycling, whether or not teens and children and parishioners should be allowed to ride,” said Sweet.
Others made room for them, creating bicycle valet parking in church basements. Some found bicycles useful in evangelism.
“The Salvation Army had a bicycle course that used bikes to spread the good word,” said Sweet.
Public institutions dabbled in bicycle use. Some have persisted, like bicycle police units, and bicycle messengers. Others did not, such as a bicycle ambulance in which a stretcher hung on springs between two bicycles.
“How good of an idea this was, I'm still not sure there are varying accounts. The argument was a bicycle ambulance could get out to people faster than hitching up a horse and carriage. It could make it through narrower passages, move around traffic,” said Sweet. “They said the patient can be taken in comfort to the nearest emergency room. That seems like maybe a little bit of marketing overstatement there.”
Bikes and the auto
Sweet writes there is an intimate connection between bicycles and the development of the automobile.
“The number of car companies that were started by bicyclists is really impressive,” said Sweet.
Among them were the Duryea brothers, Charles and Frank, of Peoria and Canton, Illinois. Charles had a number of patents. They had a bicycle company in Peoria. And they were the first to mass produce autos, though Henry Ford later perfected the assembly line.
“Some of the technologies are very straight transfers from bikes to cars. Ball bearings were developed for bicycles," said Sweet. "Differential gearing was developed by bicycle manufacturers. Some manufacturing processes, if they weren't developed, they were perfected. Industrial stamping, using great big presses and drills to do mass production of pieces of bicycles. That was what led directly to some of the early assembly lines for automobiles. ... Pneumatic tires that give some cushioning and traction that was developed by bicyclists.”
Some early autos even used the same tires as bicycle makers.
Illinois firsts
The U.S. census of manufacturers allows comparisons to other states.
“It was able to document that rise in manufacturing in Illinois and show that we were indeed the first and the biggest as far as manufacturing bicycles,” said Sweet.
Illinois had the first banked bicycle tracks. Illinois came up with the pneumatic tire. The first six-day bicycle race took place in Chicago.
“This was high entertainment. People would place bets. They would do what's called prems during the day ... Say, the next person to the fastest mile, they're going to get 20 bucks,” said Sweet.
Chicago’s Pullman Race was the largest in the country and drew 200,000 spectators. Chicago had the first bikes with multiple gears.
“In this case, it was a two-speed bicycle company that had a gear box mounted underneath the cranks. It also gave you the ability to coast,” said Sweet.
Illinois made more models of bicycle than any other state — 900. There were more than 500 bicycle companies in Illinois in the 1890s, said Sweet.
Other booms and busts
That first 1890s bicycle boom faded, though Illinois maintained its manufacturing advantage through most of the 20th century thanks to the firm founded in Chicago by Ignaz Schwinn. There were boomlets in the 1930s, 1940s, 1970s, often tied to economic or national conditions.
“Some are tied to the world wars," said Sweet. "Bicycling went up because it was seen and promoted as a patriotic thing to do. Don't use gasoline. Don't buy new cars ... There were victory bicycles, the same as Victory Gardens.”
Some small booms came with innovations in bicycle design, heavy duty swoopy chrome-filled bikes that mimicked the autos of an era.
“Later on, the Schwinn Stingray created a big boom before BMX became popular,” said Sweet.
The Arab oil embargo in the 1970s drove another conservation motivated surge in biking. BMX and mountain bikes also had their moments.
“People got excited about bikes again. Here's a new way to ride bikes. We can take them off road,” said Sweet.
The most recent boom came during the COVID-19 pandemic when getting out of doors was a safe way to see other people.
Sweet said it’s too early to see how big an effect the E-bike trend will have.
And some things just take time. The first instances of U.S. bicycle commuting happened in the 1890s.
“I stumbled across newspaper accounts where they did bicycle commuter head counts going in and out of downtown Chicago. ... Astounding! Bigger than anything you can find today, if you think of big commuting countries, a lot of Scandinavia, the Netherlands, where everybody rides. Chicago at the time based on those counts [had a] much higher density of bicycle commuters."
That influenced urban planning. There were plans for Chicago-to-Milwaukee and Chicago-to-Minneapolis bike roads.
They had plans. They had budgets. They would be lighted with places to stop for snacks and food along the way.
“The bicycle boom petered out before that one ever happened. There were a lot of infrastructure plans. Some of them were grand,” said Sweet.
There also were ideas for elevated bicycle trails. Some of those actually became real in Chicago, more than 100 years later.
“They dreamed of it. It just took us that long to get to where we actually have those things now,” said Sweet.
