St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-08-11

Sy 7, p0I liSiG ID d ululllUuQe OF small
er things equally illustrative. The
shoe peg has almost disappeared be-
fore the application of Howe's sew
ing machine to shoemaking. The eye
let has surrendered half it's field to
the loop. The individual shoemaker
IS but a thirtieth of one now. The
bicycle is a good illustration. 1t is
small, but prolific 7tone. It began
putting things to risk from the day
that some inventive genius contrived
the pendant pedals that drive the
sprocket gear that quadruples
and quintuples the speed of
the feet. The seed he scat
tered terminated fast. The effects
run out from his central idea as the
spokes radiate from the hubs of his
wheels. There may be tire some
where that will put a final limit to
these effects, but it is not yet in sight.
The first thing put to risk was the
big-wheeled bike" with it's trailer
Wheel. 1t was completely routed
and driven from the field, and the
capital put into it's manufacture
was largely lost. Then the solid
rubber cushion tire, that had created
diversion in the rubber industry,
had to give way to the pneumatic
tire, and the earlier of these rapidly
disappeared before constant improve
ments. And the end is not yet
reached, for there looms up across
the ocean the leather tire, coming
to put at risk the capital invested
and the labor employed in making
millions of pneumatics.
Another ramification, another eff
feet spoke, was the decreased use,
the falling demand and the lowering
price Of the horse, an effect reaching
out onto the farms where the bicycle
is unknown. Liverymen sit in their
stables and look glum as the young
men and women dash by on their
wheels instead of ordering the rig
as of yore. The wheel has brought
risks to these old, and apparently
solid vocations. Doctors find their
professional activities easing up I'M
der the decrease and disappearance
of those ills of the flesh that come
from want of exercise. Appatites,
once languid, are sharpened, and the
butcher and baker and grocer find
their sales perceptibly increased
The maker of shoes and the cobbler
look askance at the new method of
locomotion that saves leather from
the abrasion of the streets. In an
other direction an effect ramifies.
No one can witness the contest going
on between the skirt and the bifur-
Gated trouser, without wondering
whether the wheel has not come
to bring about a revolution in the
costumes of the women. Whether
the divided skirt will mark
the limit of the change or
whether the knickerbocker will
gradually shrink it's voluminous legs
to something near the size of the
trousers of men, and whether the
movement will stop even there, is all
pure speculation.
Another effect, yet hardly percepti-
bic, but under way and gathering
momentum, is the Improvement of
the roads of the country. Already
we have good roads clubs, the prod
uct of the wheel, which have their
literature and their committees be-
sieging legislatures, councils and
town boards. AS the wheel invades
the farming regions there will grow
there a demand for better roads from
the boys and girls, and this will be
augmented by the keepers of the
wayside inns, restored to their estate
of the old staging DAYS, who will
find their profit in the good roads
that allure the cyclists. The Cen
fury runs" of the clubs are carrying
the good road movement far into the
interior. Lastly, because of space
limits, not of topics, is the effect on
character. How can we estimate the
effect on the character, especially
of the girls, of the achievement of
daring the difficult mount and bal
ancing on the wheel. It seems on
trial the most impossible of feats to I
even get a balance. Getting it means
persistent effort; gotten, it means a
vast increase in, self-reliance; using
it means a growth in independence.
The boy or the girl who has learned
to mount and use the bicycle has &C
quired with it confidence in his own
powers that will thereafter carry him
over many an obstacle in life.