Life after WWI

     After World War One, the world was in shambles because of the immense trauma and pain it caused. A few changes, made evident by modernist magazines such as Scribner's Vol. 65 No. 1 and The Little Review Vol. 6 No. 1, were the rise of women workers and the beginning of prohibition.

     In Scribner's, there is an article by W. Gilman Thompson titled "Women and Heavy War Work," which highlights how women had to work because all of the men were out fighting the war. Women were starting to become more respected as a part of the workforce because the war proved that "women can do men's heavy work" just as effectively as men (Thompson 116). The fact that the war required women to work caused a progression in the societal perspective of them because it proved they were capable of working, which also aided the women's suffrage movement. 

     As well as furthering the women's movement, the aftermath of the war brought prohibition to the United States. In The Little Review, John Butler Yeats argues that prohibition will hinder people's artistic expression. Because they have been so traumatized by the war, people need some substance to ease the pain and reality in order to create art, which Yeats believes is alcohol. Prohibition began in 1920, so Yeats foreshadows the incoming threat to conservation in his argument.