What two ideas does Macy synthesize to create a new understanding in this excerpt? For decades, Willard, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and many others, had been working toward increased political and economic rights for women. Now the bicycle brought a taste of independence to women on a very personal level, and some of them took the opportunity to express their discontent with old traditions and expectations. In August 1895, a cyclist named Ann Strong caused a stir when she compared the value of a bicycle to that of a husband in the Minneapolis Tribune. "I can't see but that a wheel is just as good company as most husbands," she declared. "I would as life [sic] talk to one inanimate object as another; and I'd a great deal rather talk to one that can't answer than one that won't."