Eugene Debs Really Liked Bicycles

One of the joys of research is coming across unexpected, often hilarious, nuggets. That happened just now, and I thought I had to share.

Here is Eugene Debs in 1895, still in jail for leading the Pullman Strike, gushing about the wonders of the bicycle. Lol.

The mission of the bicycle is greatly underrated. Human ingenuity, in evolving the bicycle, has given man a mighty boon. It is to play a great part in the world’s affairs. It is to liberate millions from the thralldom of foul atmosphere, squalid and filthy apartments, and all the multiplicity of debauching and demoralizing conditions that make the lives of workingmen and women in manufacturing and commercial centers a continuous curse. It is to be an important factor in depopulating cities and building up the country.

It will be a mighty leveler upward and downward. The bicycle will attack the fabulous value of city real estate, distribute population, lower rent, close up the tenement den, and extinguish the sweatshop hell. It will free the inhabitants of cities from the fetid odors their overcrowded conditions generate and pour a perpetual flood of fresh air upon the race. As a matter of course working people will have them and the man who trudges to his daily toil will be an object for a relief commission.

The limits of an interview will admit only the merest glimpse of the possibilities of the bicycle. The great health-giving advantages of fresh air and exercise, will by the fiat of the bicycle, be the heritage of the race. The bicycle, not the medical profession, will triumph over disease. The wheel is on the trail of Consumption and will overtake and vanquish the remorseless destroyer. Men and women and children will all ride the bicycle and the enrapturing panorama of nature will no longer be forbidden glories to most of the race.

Of course, the bicycle is yet in embryo. The wheel of the future will revolve to suit man’s fancy and the variety, design, and capacity will be practically without limit. And when monopoly and special privilege are abolished, the bicycle may be purchased for a song and will be within the reach of all. The world will yet revolve on wheels.

Bicycles — truly the revolutionary mode of transit.

Update: Historian and Debs Foundation secretary Micki Morahn (who is working on a biography of Eugene’s wife, Kate) sent me this after reading the post:

Bicycling was a big sport in Terre Haute, so this isn't surprising. Gene's brother-in-law, Charlie Baur, was a founder of the Terre Haute Wheelmen Bicycling club in 1882. This group included the grandfather of Tony Hulman of Indianapolis Motor Speedway fame, and they participated in races and rides throughout the Wabash Valley. Charlie became a dealer of Columbia bicycles and attended the national convention of the American Wheelmen in Chicago in 1882. 

Charlie lived in the Terre Haute House hotel, which he managed. It also hosted the "clubhouse" of the TH Wheelmen. Gene probably bought his first bicycle from Charlie, as the Baur family was very close to Gene and Kate. 

Micki tells me she has an article on Kate’s family coming out at the end of the month in an Indiana Historical Society journal. I’ll post a link when it’s up!