[Speakers on "Prison Special" tour, San Francisco, 1919.]

The automobile was first invented and perfected in Germany and France in the late 1890s. Americans quickly came to dominate the automotive industry after WWI. Throughout this initial era, the development of automotive technology was rapid. Hundreds of small manufacturers competing to gain the world's attention. Key developments included the electric ignition system, independent suspension, and four-wheel brakes. Transmissions and throttle controls were widely adopted and safety glass also made its debut. Henry Ford perfected mass-production techniques, and Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler emerged as the “Big Three” auto companies by the 1920s. Car manufacturers received enormous orders from the military during World War II, and afterward automobile production in the United States, Europe, and Japan soared.

Suffragettes Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the late 1800s, women worked for broad-based economic and political equality and for social reforms, and sought to change voting laws in order to allow them to vote. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts to gain voting rights, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (founded in 1904, Berlin, Germany), and also worked for equal civil rights for women. Women who owned property gained the right to vote in the Isle of Man in 1881, and in 1893, the British colony of New Zealand granted all women the right to vote. Most independent countries enacted women's suffrage in the interwar era, including Canada in 1917; Britain, Germany, Poland in 1918; Austria and the Netherlands in 1919; and the United States in 1920. Leslie Hume argues that the First World War changed the popular mood: "The women's contribution to the war effort challenged the notion of women's physical and mental inferiority and made it more difficult to maintain that women were, both by constitution and temperament, unfit to vote. If women could work in munitions factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the polling booth. But the vote was much more than simply a reward for war work; the point was that women's participation in the war helped to dispel the fears that surrounded women's entry into the public arena..."

After the end of World War I and until 1929, the onset of the Great Depression, the victorious countries-the United States, Great Britain, and France-entered an era of economic and political prosperity. A mood of optimism and faith in a prosperous future prevailed. World War I led to radical changes in virtually every sphere of life, including fashion. The most important phenomenon of the period is the emancipation of women, made possible by the long struggle of women for their rights, as well as the heavy demographic impact of the war and the Spanish pandemic. Women were gradually integrated into the economy, gaining political rights and the ability to provide for themselves, as a consequence of which women's fashion underwent radical changes to fit the new way of life. Women's clothing became simpler, more comfortable, and the layering of lingerie and corsets was abandoned. Elements that had previously been considered traditionally masculine, such as pantsuits and sportswear, are entering women's fashion.

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