1920's Freedom of Transportation Term Paper

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1920s transportation changes. Specifically it will discuss how the growth of the automobile industry in the 1920's changed the world and what positive and negative influences it had on society. By the 1920s, automobiles were much more common, and American society was becoming more accepting of them. They changed the way Americans viewed transportation, and really altered society in many different ways.

The automobile was firmly established by the 1920s. More people could afford them due to mass production and competition between manufacturers, and that meant people had greater freedom and mobility. Previously, the only methods of transportation where horse and buggy or carriage, train, or public transportation like streetcars. However, by the 1920s, this was not the case. Editors at the Smithsonian Institution note, "By the time this photo was taken in the 1920s, automobiles had changed the city streetscape, and the carriage was becoming a rarity" ("America on the Move"). This gave people much more freedom in their schedules and in their recreation. They no longer had to rely on the schedules of public transportation; they could make their own schedules and travel independently. This was a major change in American society.

The automobile also affected education, especially rural education. Before the automobile, most rural children attended small, local schools that were near their homes. When school buses became common, they could attend larger, better-equipped schools that were farther from their homes, so they received a better education. An author notes, "But with the school bus, rural communities could transport youngsters to a consolidated school and combine resources in order to better outfit it" (Sandler 34). That is just one of the more surprising ways the automobile began to shift American culture and society during the 1920s.

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The automobile allowed people to live farther away from where they worked, too, so the automobile actually had a hand in creating the common suburbs that surround just about every city in the country today. People could live in areas that are more desirable and still commute to their jobs in the city, so the automobile changed the way people looked at where they could live and where they worked. It also allowed them to travel farther away during their vacations, allowing them greater mobility and the freedom to travel to places they might not have been able to see from other modes of transportation.

The road system of the country had to change due to all the cars on the road by the 1920s. A Web site notes, "Roads (including wooden roads) had to be redesigned and rebuilt to accommodate the automobile, new road rules had to be introduced, standardized road signs erected, and methods of controlling traffic (like traffic lights) implemented in densely populated areas" ("1920s Automobiles"). They had to develop traffic lights and other traffic controls, and they had to build gas stations to fuel them. The roads had to be redesigned….....

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