18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, May 16, 1913: Doing nothing of any account.
Why The Motorcycle Keeps Boys on the Farm
Don’t expect your boy to be happy on the farm if the summer season brings only work. When the day’s works is over don’t tell him, the horses are too tired for road work, because it is this tying to the farm, this inability to join his chums in their pastimes or to seek his own pleasures that often makes farm life distasteful to him. Get him a
HARLEY-DAVIDSON
It will let down the bars and take him where he wishes in a fraction of the time he would use by team. It will open up a thousand and one pleasures heretofore denied him. You will find he will return at bed time, happy, contented and satisfied with his lot in life. But when you buy him a motorcycle, be sure that you obtain one that is economical, reliable and durable. Buy him a Harley-Davidson, because
It is the Most Economical
The Harley-Davidson holds the world’s official record for economy.
It is the Most Reliable
The Harley-Davidson is the only machine which has ever been awarded a diamond medal and a thousand plus five score in an endurance contest. The plus five was for its super-excellent performance. These awards were made by the National Federation of American Motorcycles.
It is the Most Durable
The first Harley-Davidson made, over eleven years ago, has covered now over one hundred thousand miles and is still giving satisfaction and today retains even its original bearings.
Seven departments of the U.S. Government use a total of nearly 4000 of these machines.
Over 3000 R.F. D. Carriers daily cover their routes on a Harley-Davidson, a fitting tribute to the reliability of this machine.
Call on our nearest dealer for demonstration or write for catalog.
Harley-Davidson Motor Company
PRODUCERS OF HIGH GRADE MOTORCYCLES FOR OVER ELEVEN YEARS
776 A Street MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma wrote little, but probably was working very hard.—doing housecleaning, cooking, farm chores, etc.
The sons of farmers also worked hard—and this June 15, 1913 advertisement in Kimball’s Dairy Farmer magazine played on the fear that they might leave the farm for the city.
You also might enjoy these previous posts that contained other ads that played on similar fears.
A Hundred Years Ago 
Isn’t that funny, reading about Harley’s being around for a whole eleven years! I wonder if they ever imagined how popular they would still be, 100 years on.
I bet that they never thought that far out into the future.
Very interesting. A toy for your boy!
I wonder what were the “toys for your girls” back then.
Yes, I wonder! A few years later than 1913 my grandfather had a motorbike with a side car. My grandmother and their first born used to travel in that. It looked like fun but probably wasn’t.
I was going to write the same comment Joanne did! Eleven whole years! I saved the picture of that ad to show to my husband and some of his friends. They’ll find it interesting. Thanks for sharing!
(And I’m sure Grandma was still busy with housecleaning when she wrote this entry!)
She was hard-working!
What a marketing ploy too! Targeting farmers. Interesting.
The targeting seems to obvious by today’s standards, but apparently ads were less subtle back then .
Exactly what Laura said. This makes a lot of sense for NH too. We have long had the problem of younger residents leaving the farm, or the state entirely, so the HD marketing would be a good argument here. We’ve had a bike rally in Laconia for about 90 years, and it keeps expanding. When I lived up north in the Lakes Region (Bike Week is all around Lake Winnepesaukee–largest lake in New England) there was one year when I was living just a block away from a major crossroads in Meredith, which is right on the water and very close to Laconia. All during bike week, no matter how late or early in the night or day, I could hear (yes, “hear!”) when the lights were changing at the intersection by the distinctive sound of the Harley engines. I was working 4 jobs that summer, and bike week was a miserable exercise in patience to get from my home to work or job-to-job. I LOVE the Lakes Region, but vowed I will never live there again until I can actually just kick back and enjoy Bike Week instead of cursing it because I have to be somewhere and half a million biker tourists are clogging the roads for the better part of (these days) TWO WEEKS.
But I still love the freedom all those bikes represent…just don’t think the parents of those farm boys in 1913 could have imagined the culture (and sometimes crude “show us your…” attitude) it would spawn!
Kind of like the internet :).
I enjoyed reading the history of this event–and how your feelings towards it have evolved over the years. It’s amazing how many years this rally has continued–and how it has grown.
Again an ad with lots of words – so different from today! But they’re selling more than the Harley, they’re selling a guarantee that the man won’t leave and a freedom for the man that exceeds anything that can be accomplished with a whole team of horses! I love it!
What more could a parent ask? 🙂
I know! Seems they’ve given up on parents buying Harleys for their boys now a days….
Now it’s the big boys buying them for themselves! And plenty of women buying them too…
I love summer and one of the reasons is that you can hear the rumble of Harleys driving down the main drag. I love how they set off the alarms on parked cars! 🙂
Love this ad!
It’s great!
From my research for farmers, in Kansas at least, the ones that could afford to buy the motorcycles owned the land and the ones that did the actual farming didn’t make enough to buy anything extra. My great-grandparents bought 3 cycles about 1925 for their 3 sons and when I was interviewing individuals about my aunt’s murder some 85 years later, they still talked about those bikes. They told stories of how their parents complained of the noise and how the bikes tore up the streets, scared the horses and on and on.
It’s amazing that your relatives still talked about the motorcycles 85 years later. It must have been a really big deal when your great-grandparents bought the motorcycles.
Sheryl – It was a big deal because no one else had the money to buy a simple luxury of any kind and my great-grandparents flaunted their money. They were not nice people.
Thanks for explaining. I understand now.
I didn’t know Harley Davidsons had been around that long.
It’s amazing how some brands last for more than a hundred years–while others come and go.
YEAH! Caught up, finally! Now let’s see if I KEEP up.
Yeah! Congratulations! You’ve done a lot of reading over the past few days. 🙂
Sheryl, may I share this entry on my Dakota Yankee Research Facebook page?
You’re welcome to share it. Thanks for checking. Just indicate that it came from this site. It’s wonderful that you enjoyed this post enough to want to share it.
Thanks Sheryl. It may be a day or two but this is too good not to share. I will let you know when it is posted.
😀
Oh wow, those would be worth a pretty penny now. I was watching American Pickers and they were always finding old motorbikes and parts out on farms in piles.
Yes, they’d probably be worth a fortune. Interesting how this makes a topic for a TV show.