#167： When Watching People Walk Was America's Favorite Spectator Sport
Episode Stats
Summary
In the late 19th century, walking was the most popular spectator sport in the United States, and people bet on who would be the first to finish a race 100 miles without dropping out of the race. This is the story of Pedestrianism, and it's a fascinating look at a lost bit of American history that kicked off the modern sport era.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well today
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sports is a multi-billion dollar industry football basketball soccer baseball i mean
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thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people come to watch these sports they watch them on
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television the athletes are making millions of dollars hundreds of millions of dollars their
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salary plus there's the endorsement deals that go along with it but here's the thing that this all
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started this whole mega sports industry that we have today started with the super exciting sport
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that happened in the 19th century of competitive walking yes i'm being serious my guest today
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dug up this long forgotten sport that really kicked off the modern sport era his name is matthew algeo
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he wrote a book called pedestrianism when watching people walk was america's favorite spectator sport
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and it's just a fascinating look at a lost bit of american history that has a wider influence on
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sport today everything that we know about sport today with the endorsement deals super high salaries
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super high payouts thousands of people watching a sport this all started with competitive walking
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which is really bizarre i mean it happened during the late 19th century during a time that's sort of
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that i like it's when you know boxing was coming to rise john l sullivan teddy roosevelt was coming to
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power you had the rise of mass media the rise of consumer culture and all these things came together
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around competitive walking well today on the podcast matthew algeo and i discuss this long
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forgotten sport and how it influences sport today uh so really fun interesting look into a forgotten
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bit of history so without further ado pedestrianism with matthew algeo
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matthew algeo welcome to the show thank you thank you for inviting me well you're welcome so the reason
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i invited you because i i forgot where i heard about your book but it's talking about this obscure
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sport that i knew nothing about even though like gilded age america is one of my favorite parts
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of american history right you have the rise of prize fighting you know we got john l sullivan
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on the the masthead of our website teddy roosevelt all this stuff but i had no idea that there's a sport
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called pedestrianism which is just basically walking was the most popular sport in america
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for about 40 years i'm curious how did you come across this bit of forgotten american history
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well uh yeah it's definitely been forgotten um i was actually researching a book uh about uh eight or
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nine years ago about the 1943 merger of the steelers and the eagles you might be aware of this they were the
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steegals for a season yeah because in 1943 during world war ii the teams were so short of players they
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had to merge two teams so they merged the steelers and the eagles so i was writing a book about the
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steegals and while i was researching that book i you know did some research on the history of spectator
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sports in the united states and i'm like you i'm a big fan of uh of the gilded age i i love the 1890s
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the 1880s and i was blown away to realize that uh when i was researching the history of spectator
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sports that in the 1880s and 1890s this sport of pedestrianism was the most popular spectator
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sport in the united states people thousands tens of thousands of people would fill arenas to watch
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guys walk around a dirt track for days at a time and this was just the most entrancing fascinating
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thing that was going on in the gilded age and people bet on this i mean it's funny right now we
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have all this controversy about uh you know uh fantasy sports and then that online betting with
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fantasy sports i mean this was the original fantasy sport people would bet on anything about these guys
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who would be the first to walk 100 miles who would be the first to drop out of the race it was
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just like the most amazing spectator sport in the united states for like you said a real short period
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of time but for that period of time in the 1880s and 1890s it ruled yeah and like newspapers were
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like the new york times would write about it uh the national police gazette uh we've talked about a bit
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about that on the the show on the website before they were loved they loved the the the the pedestrianism
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because it was like it was like a freak of nature i mean was what it really was what it came down to
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well i mean one of the one of the the most popular form of pedestrianism was the six-day race
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okay so guys would walk for six days beginning you couldn't because back then of course on sundays
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you couldn't have any entertainment yeah blue laws blue laws exactly and so uh the races would begin
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right after midnight monday morning and then continue right up until midnight saturday night
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so it was six days long and during this time you would have the newspapers uh covering the event
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they would be posting updates all over all over the city on billboards and uh and people would just
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be following it there would they would have extra editions of the newspapers published to show
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who was in front you know who was who was leading at that at that time of the day on monday morning on
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tuesday afternoon on wednesday afternoon and so it really was just an amazing cultural phenomenon at the
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time yeah so you said uh it was a high stakes game like lots of money was we'll talk about how much
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the pride the purses were for these competitions it was insane um but the gambling that was involved
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like what's funny about pedestrianism is that it got started on a bet is tell us a little bit about the
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story of how pedestrianism got its start sure um it was the 1860 presidential election and of course
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abraham lincoln was the republican candidate in 1860 and uh there were about three other three other
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candidates the democratic party was split but there was a guy in uh boston a guy named edward
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payson weston and he bet a friend that lincoln would lose the election in 1860 and of course lincoln wins
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the election in 1860 uh the terms of the bet though were unusual weston had to walk from boston
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to washington uh in time to see the election in time to see the inauguration of lincoln in march of 1861
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and uh so weston did this walk it's the middle of winter he's walking from boston to washington
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and it really caught the nation's attention uh he became a very popular figure in the in the media the
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newspapers covered this walk would would pick would uh weston make it to washington in time to see
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lincoln's inauguration uh weston actually was about four hours late to the inauguration he didn't win
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the bet um well he he lost the bet he didn't he didn't fulfill the wager but he became such a
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sensation that people all over the country uh wanted to see weston walk i mean it blows your mind but
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people came out you know just to see him walk through their town when he was doing this walk from
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boston to washington and he figured well there's got to be a way i can monetize this and so uh he
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started taking his act on the road and he walked indoors and roller skating rinks he tried to walk
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100 miles in 24 hours that sort of thing and that's how he became a very famous pedestrian he started the
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whole idea of competitive walking in the united states and he he was actually a showman uh which i thought
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was really interesting he wasn't really much of an i guess he was an athlete he was able to do these
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things but he he brought a bit of showmanship into into the sport i like to say he was the uh he was
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the abraham lincoln he was the muhammad ali of the 1870s he he understood just instinctively
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the connection between entertainment and sports so he would say for instance he would walk 100 miles
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in 24 hours which is really an incredible feat um it's it's hard to do even today but when he did it
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he wore long velvet coats and he always carried a cane and he wore a top hat and he always had a you know
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he wore a necktie or a cravat he understood that you had to play to the crowd he really had i mean it was
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almost ahead of its time in the way he understood that you really had to entertain at the same time
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that you were performing an athletic feat like i say it's it's it's it's a lot like muhammad ali
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yeah this was the uh during the gilded days this is really when mass media was starting and i guess
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he was one of those first people who intuitively understood the power of mass media i think teddy
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roosevelt was like a president the first president that really understood the power of mass media
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i guess weston was the first athlete who understood the power of mass media to catapult him to fame and
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riches yeah and it's funny i'm i'm actually i'm working on a book about roosevelt right now and how
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he played the media uh and uh weston really he played the media so well and i don't mean that in a
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negative way he he he knew that the picture on the front page of the paper was more dramatic if he was
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wearing a long flowing coat and carrying his you know gold topped cane i mean he he really understood
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how uh entertainment worked how uh sports worked how business worked i mean he was one of the first
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athletes to really become uh interested invested in his own business he he he he you know negotiated his
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own contracts i mean this was unheard of at the time most athletes were uh sort of led along by
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guys who took advantage of them but weston wasn't like that he was kind of the first generation of
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athletes who really uh you know knew how to capitalize on their fame so how did it transition how did it
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start from uh you know weston doing this bet basically to walk to all the way to washington dc
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and transform into this thing where it was there was competitive leagues like there were matches
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and and money was at stake how did that transition happen and here's the other like why did it why
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did it happen what sort of cultural forces were going on at the time that allowed pedestrianism to
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be the most popular spectator sport in america well uh uh really one of the things was that
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roller skating became very popular and the roller skate was invented the kind we know today with the
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four wheels on the bottom that you can lean and turn and roller skating rinks popped up all over the
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country and these were really kind of the first enclosed public spaces uh and so there were these venues
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that were sitting there with uh nothing to do except roller skating and weston who had just walked
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from boston to washington realized that all these people wanted to watch him walk and all these
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roller skating rinks were out there and so he would go to a roller skating rink and he'd set up a track
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and it might be 50 laps to a mile i mean these were tiny little roller skating rinks but he he would go in
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there and he would charge people 10 cents to go watch him walk 100 miles in 20 uh in 24 hours that sort
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of thing so was it was this weird convergence of indoor spaces and the uh and and weston people like
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him seeing how they could capitalize on these indoor public spaces for the first time and you also have
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to remember at the time we're talking about after the civil war for the first time people have a little
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extra money in their pockets uh you see industrialization coming in people have a little extra time on their
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hands extra time extra money these indoor roller skating rinks edward pace and weston traveling
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around the country walking 100 miles in 24 hours all over the all over the country and so all these
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things came together and sort of turned what was this weird bet that he could walk from boston to
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washington uh into a professional sport yeah and i guess at the time baseball was just getting started
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so that wasn't a factor they weren't competing with baseball uh prize fighting was around but that was
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an underground sport and looked down upon so right walking you also have to you have to remember like
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baseball baseball uh sort of had a sold a bad reputation uh boxing of course had a bad reputation
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pedestrianism was a wholesome sport it was walking what could be more wholesome than walking
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and so really it was this void that weston filled when he started going around the country
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staging these walking exhibitions that said uh you know you could bring the family it was family
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entertainment five or ten cents a person and uh you could take the family to go see it you would
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never take the family to go see john l sullivan and even baseball at the time had a bad reputation
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and so it really was the first family entertainment uh mass entertainment in the united states in the
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1870s 1880s 1890s so uh besides having these expeditions where people would pay to watch uh it
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evolved to becoming a a sport where there's like belts like they created a belt system right like prize
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fighting um right can you talk a little about what i thought was just mind-boggling was the amount of
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money uh the the purses that these uh these walkers these pedestrians could win can you talk a little
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about some of the the prizes that were won by some of these athletes right so uh so you got weston and
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he's going out he's walking these exhibitions and of course people see how much money he's making and
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competitors arise naturally and the biggest competitor was a guy named daniel o'leary he was an irish
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immigrant and uh he figured well if weston can walk 100 miles in 24 hours i can walk 105 miles in 24
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hours and eventually they met in a race and it was a six-day race as we mentioned earlier that was as
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long as you could race uh and uh the first big race was in chicago but this sort of morphed into these
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six-day races involving all sorts of competitors from the united states and from great britain
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and uh as you mentioned that the the the uh the the the payouts on these races were tremendous
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because think about it it's a six-day race uh you're at the first madison square garden
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um they might have 10 000 seats but it's continuous it's for six days and so people are coming and going
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constantly so you could have 500 000 people maybe come and see this race over the course of a week
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because you might come in and see it for five minutes and leave and so everybody was paying
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50 cents or a dollar a ticket the winner of the race might receive 25 30 40 thousand dollars which
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today is a million dollars i mean this is for six days work whoever won would get a million dollars for
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six days work this actually stands up to what you see for professional athletes today yeah you know
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because a million dollars for a week is 50 million for a year that's a pretty good that's a pretty good
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baseball player right there even today and besides the the payouts did some of these athletes get
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sponsorship deals like modern athletes do yeah um what was interesting you mentioned the police gazette
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before uh you guys know all about the police gazette yeah um but they were one of the big sponsors
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because they covered the races people people who subscribed to the police gazette loved pedestrianism
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and so uh they had a guy that they paid uh i think two thousand dollars to wear the wear a shirt that
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just had the police gazette logo on it during a race and so you had uh yeah you know i mentioned dan
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o'leary earlier uh he was the spokesperson for a brand of salt
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you know my when i need to when i need to re-salt i use tiger salt yeah you know um so these guys
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they were some of the first uh uh athlete spokesmen in in the united states it was really uh
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is the beginning of this whole sports industrial complex yeah and they were also the first on
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um sports cards right like the cigarette cards yeah yeah yeah yeah um cigarette cards really came out
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started beginning in the 1870s and 1880s and uh i've got a couple of them uh the some of the first
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athletes featured on these sporting cards were pedestrians uh and uh frank hart uh who was actually
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one of the first famous black athletes in the united states he was an african-american who won
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a couple major pedestrian events he's probably the first african-american ever featured on a trading
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card in the united states um all these guys are forgotten now nobody remembers them um that's probably
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not why nobody's buying my book but uh but uh but i i really think that they they were they were
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a huge part of american sports history and i really think they need to be remembered yeah
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tell us a little more about frank hart because i thought this was really interesting i mean this was
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uh before uh i guess plessy v ferguson um yes and you know people always have this idea that that
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sports and it was has always been segregated segregated but there was a time right before
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plessy v ferguson uh when separate um but equal was the law of the land where you had black athletes
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who were competing and doing really well uh in competitive sports in america can you tell us a
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little bit more about frank hart yeah and there were even black athletes there were black baseball
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players in the in the 1880s and 1890s you're right plessy v ferguson ended everything it ended it
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ended any kind of integration that was going on the beauty of pedestrianism was that anybody who could
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walk could do it and almost everybody can walk black people can walk chinese people can walk white people
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can walk it was amazing the variety of people you had in pedestrian events because anybody who could
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walk could take part and it didn't matter what your race was what your color was and this was a
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people tend to forget this that that in the gilded age you had this weird period between reconstruction
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and plessy v ferguson as you mentioned where there was a wide open field really i mean i i make the
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argument in the book that things were a lot better for african-american athletes between reconstruction
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and plessy versus ferguson than they were between plessy and you know jackie robinson i mean black
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black people could take part in sporting events with white people and frank hart was one of those
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people an african-american who took part in these events and uh he won several six-day races his picture
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was on the front page of the new york newspapers i mean it was amazing for an african-american at that time
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uh to do what he did and it's a shame that uh he couldn't you know that it it really ended with
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plessy versus ferguson yeah and he won a lot of money too um and these guys won so much money um
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you really don't appreciate but like uh you know winning 12 15 000 in 1889 was like we need half a
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million dollars today yeah and really for six days work you could take half a million dollars home if
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these guys want two races a year they want a million dollars a year i mean it was amazing yeah
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well i guess something we haven't really talked about is uh how these races actually went down so
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a lot of more six-day races but they weren't walking continuously for six days um how how did the
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the whole walking match occur and what were some of the rules that uh govern these um events
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okay for a walking match strictly uh one foot had to be on the ground at all times heel toe heel toe
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just like today for you know you have these walking uh in the olympics you have uh 10 50 kilometer
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walking matches um so you see the way people walk that sort of funny swiveling their hips
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kind of walk that's how people walked um but the match will begin as i mentioned earlier right after
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midnight on monday morning uh typically it would continue right up until uh midnight on saturday
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night there would be tents erected in the middle of the middle of the track there'd be a dirt track on
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the floor it'd be maybe an eighth or a seventh of a mile around it'd be inside an arena almost
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always these were indoor events and uh whoever walked the most miles over those six days would
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be the winner you could you could stop whenever you wanted you could go rest in your tent
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most people ate while they walked they might eat some greasy eel broth or something like that it wasn't
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really the kind of you know nutrition that that people take today uh but whoever walked the most
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miles in six days was the winner that was the most common race the six-day race
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gotcha yeah i thought it was really interesting how they uh uh kept themselves you know some of the
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things they did you know you mentioned the greasy eel broth but i guess champagne was like a really
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popular drink yeah to keep you going they thought uh they thought alcohol was a stimulant
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and so a lot of guys would drink a lot of alcohol and then sometimes literally fall off the track
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it was just amazing that it it took them a while to figure out that you probably shouldn't be drinking
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during the race but the guys who who took it most seriously really they did training i mean we i you
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know i tend to you know make fun of them or whatever but the guys who are very serious about it uh they
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did a lot of training they did a lot of running a lot of jogging that sort of thing i mean they were
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athletes on a par with the athletes of today well speaking of how pedestrianism really laid the
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foundation of modern sport in america you talk about how pedestrianism had america's first doping
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scandal not that this was really funny too so yeah um well uh edward payson weston who we had
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mentioned earlier he took part in a in a race in the uk uh and uh it was discovered that he was uh
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chewing coca leaves and uh this was of course a stimulant uh but at the time there were no rules i
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mean this was one of the problems with pedestrianism and one of the reasons it died is that there was no
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governing body of pedestrianism there was no commissioner of pedestrianism there was you know not nobody to
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really to take control of the sport and so when weston was found to be chewing these coca leaves uh
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uh there was nobody to enforce any rule to say it was wrong there's nobody to uh tell him that uh
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he should be expelled from the sport that sort of thing and so it really sort of just went it just
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went it just went by that uh weston got away with this he he later insisted that it gave him no
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competitive advantage but of course that's what everybody says when they uh chew coca leaves
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when they get caught right yeah um so i mean you mentioned okay there was a lack of organ uh an
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organizing body that led to the decline but what other factors led to the decline of pedestrianism and
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why was it forgotten from american history wow well you know baseball really uh
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you know i mentioned that pedestrianism had no commissioner well baseball in 1876 uh the owners of
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baseball teams organized the national league and baseball really became the american pastime within
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10 20 years of that uh they had a commissioner they could uh oversee the sport they could wipe out
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gambling uh they could maintain the integrity of the sport pedestrian and pedestrianism had nothing like
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that uh also the invention of the bicycle remember the old time 19th century bicycle is that kind with the
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big huge front wheel yeah and that hipsters drive around yeah exactly i saw that on gawker recently but
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anyway yes so the hipsters who drive these big bicycles around but those were very hard to race they
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weren't very nimble the invention of the safety bicycle in the 1880s that's the bicycle we drive today
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with the two same size wheels in the drive chain well that was much more interesting to watch race for
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six days than people walking around a track and so the combination of baseball and the bicycle really
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eliminated pedestrianism from from the you know sporting scene in the united states people uh just
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stopped watching it moved on to other sports moved on to more interesting things as for why they're
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forgotten um i don't know i mean why would you remember who people you know why why would you
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remember people who walked i don't know but i thought it was excuse me i thought it was interesting too
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towards the end of its heyday uh it like moral crusaders started going after pedestrianism much in the
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same way they went after prize fighting or bullfighting or cockfighting well one of the one of the most
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entertaining things about watching a six-day race was going in to watch day number five or six because
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people the competitors would be so bedraggled they would be so worn out they'd almost be dead on their feet
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i mean that was the exciting thing was to go watch these people after five or six days of continuously
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walking uh what they would look like how they would behave and so there were crusaders morality crusaders
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and they were aligned with the temperance movement who came in and said uh this is uh you know making
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fun of these people this is it's like a it's like a exhibitionism uh it's it's it's uh immoral to watch
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these people after five or six days and so there was a the weight of this crusade came down on
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pedestrianism and uh it really had a hard time recovering from that yeah so we we forgot about
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pedestrianism um but it did lay the groundwork for modern sports as far as its connection to mass media
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its connection to gambling uh the connection to you know athletic sponsorships but i'm curious i mean
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i think you mentioned olympic walking is that a remnant of pedestrianism
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it is um walking is one of the very few sports that has been in the olympics continuously since the
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very first olympics in what was it 1896 i forget um um but i think really you see and i don't think
00:28:40.940
it's stretched to say pedestrianism really you see it more in even major league baseball or nfl where
00:28:49.740
the idea of capitalizing on an athletic event uh pedestrianism was one of the first
00:28:57.500
sports to figure out a way to monetize itself um there were sponsorships uh there was there were
00:29:10.440
championships um there were all sorts of different ways to make money and that's all what sports is
00:29:18.520
about today it's making money and uh pedestrianism was the first sport i really think you know because
00:29:25.480
the other sports were sort of under the radar boxing and and uh baseball i mean uh they were kind
00:29:32.600
of either for gentlemen or for ruffians but pedestrianism was the first sport that was for the general
00:29:38.780
populace and they figured out a way to make money that's i'm curious did writing this book like did you
00:29:44.820
start walking more because they're like i'm gonna i'm gonna try doing one of those feats or did
00:29:49.680
like did you start walking more because it's like after reading i was like i'm gonna start walking more
00:29:52.940
i encourage you to attempt a 24-hour race i actually did a 24-hour race uh people came up to me and said
00:30:05.140
have you ever done this no no no no no no so uh actually last year in uh october i did a uh 24-hour
00:30:13.620
race in new jersey and i walked it just walk for 24 hours see how far you go and uh i did 51 miles
00:30:26.860
after all that i was uh i was inspired to to uh to attempt a 24-hour race
00:30:34.900
very good i'm gonna i'm gonna give that a try i'm gonna do it
00:30:41.400
of what weston did or o'leary did or frank hart did
00:30:49.100
and so you know i mean your basic walking speed is about four miles an hour
00:30:56.620
so just go walk but not stop for 24 hours and you're not at 100 miles so
00:31:04.200
all right well i'm gonna give it a try and i'm gonna challenge everyone out there who's listening
00:31:08.820
to to go try this too uh we're gonna get some some records on here so we can beat weston
00:31:15.180
the races are a lot of fun there's um it's really cool that you know uh ultra marathons
00:31:24.580
are not for regular people but 24-hour races those those kinds of races a regular person can do it
00:31:33.000
because there's no did not finish yeah everybody finishes yeah so it's really it's really a lot of fun
00:31:42.280
very good well matthew algeo thank you so much for your time this has been an absolute pleasure
00:31:46.700
oh brad i really enjoyed it thank you for inviting me
00:31:49.720
thank you my guest today was matthew algeo he's the author of the book pedestrianism and you can find
00:31:54.780
that on amazon.com go get it it's a fun quick little read and you're going to find out a bit
00:31:59.420
about american history that a lot of people don't know about
00:32:02.200
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:32:09.900
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com and if you enjoy
00:32:13.700
this podcast i'd really appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher or whatever it is
00:32:17.480
you use to listen to the podcast or tell a friend about the show i'd really appreciate that until next
00:32:22.180
time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly