Chapter 27

After the war many people tried to settle back into their pre-war ways.  Women however had gotten a sense of what it felt like to work outside of the home, and many craved to be able to continue to do so.  It was also a time of unease, where many feared an economic depression postwar, so the GI Bill was enacted to help prevent the feared recession by helping to ease the veterans back into the workforce, and help ease their new fear of female competition. The veterans really benefited from this bill, which I believe was a great thing that our government did for them. The return of these veterans also spurred the baby boom, my parents being a part of this generation. This post war era was a time of much change and advancement in both urbanization and industrialization. We suddenly found ourselves in a time of computers and development of suburbs. It’s sad to think that American medicine always seem to be one step behind the industrial world, here the United States was using things like fertilizers and pesticides and just spraying the crops including the workers in them, not realizing how horrible the side effects were for humans. Of course now we understand that but back then it’s sad to think how many industrial steps forward we took before we took a step forward with medicine.

            During this time the Highway Act was initiated which provided the United States with its first national highway system. It provided transportation across the country for the first time, which allowed people to more easily move and navigate the states. This was also a time when televisions started becoming a regular appearance in people’s homes. I remember my dad telling me when he was little how they would (as a family) all gather around the radio after dinner and listen to their favorite shows after dinner. He also, on several occasions, would recount the time when his family was finally able to afford a television and what a wonder he thought it was. He describes how all the shows were in black and white and how interesting it was to see faces of the characters to which he use to imagine. It’s even interesting to me know because my dad will point out old shows that they’ve added color to in the more recent years, it just makes me realize how far televisions have come within the last 40-50 years or so. On top of television and computers we also advanced by launching a satellite. This post World War II era was a major time of advancement in many aspects.