Germs Love Crowds

By Tom Ewing

December 4, 2025

A century ago, growing awareness of transmission of communicable diseases produced ad campaigns on the theme of germs and bicycles. One advertisement from the Ogden Standard (Februar 14, 1920, p. openly proclaimed the health benefits of bicycling: “Germs love crowds . Why be crushed and trampled night and morning and pay for the privilege? On a Columbia or Mocarch Bicycle there is always room. The air you breathe as you ride is clean, not burdened with infection. Ride to school or work on one of these bicycles.” The same text appeared with a different illustration in the Great Falls Daily Tribune three days later.

An advertisement in the Wilmington Evening Journal on June 2, 1920  echoed similar themes: “Why squeeze in with the germs? Man! If you only realized the pleasure of riding a Bicycle to and from your work, to say nothing of the time saved, you’d never again jam yourself into a crowded car, but you would be in this store early Monday and when you left you would be the owner of a Bicycle.” One year later, the Richmond News Leader on April 19, 1922 used the same tag line, “Why squeeze in with the germs” and illustration but with slightly different text: “Every day the same old jam in the cars. Ride a bicycle to work. It costs less. Saves time. Is real fun and mighty healthful.”

These advertisements promoting bicycling as a way to avoid germs on crowded streetcars built on earlier arguments for the health benefits of this form of exercise. While both streetcars and bicycles would gradually be displaced by the expanded use of automobiles in the decades that followed, the link between health and bicycling resurfaced in the 1970s and shaped efforts to promote the Bikecentennial. An April 4, 1976 article in Newsday (Suffolk County, New York) about the Bikecentennial included this statement: “Bicycling is cheap, fun, healthy, and pollution-free,” thus echoing the themes of the advertisements from a century ago.