Figure 1.--This is a 1930s Greyhound Bus ad. People at the time coimmonly dressed up for travel. The ad depicts more stylishly dressed than was common, but men and boys did wear suits when travling and women and girls nice dresses.

American children increasingly wore more casual styles during the 1930s, although dressing up was still much more common than is the case today. Most boys had suits and wore them on various occassions. One of those occassion was when traveling. This was very common for both train and bus travel. Rail travel was the primary way that Americans traveled long distances in the 1930s. Bus travel was also important, often for shorter distances, often for towns without rail connection. Air travel was not yet very common. Many period photographs show boys dressed up in suits for travel. Girls wore nice dresses. We see both family snap shot and travel ads. We see a range of short pants, knicker, and long pants suits, depending on boys ages and social class. Few parents would dress boys in suit for travel, but this was very common in the 1930s. And generally poor roads outside cities meant that traveling long distances was not yet very common, except perhaps for the migrants fleeing the dust bowl and they obviously did not dress up. Mamy Amerian, unlike Europeans, howeverm had cars. Inexpeniveve cars thanks to Henry Ford were avibke nd american wages were higher thn in Europe. The Germans were building Autobahns, but this would only begin in America after world War II in the 1940s. Even so, traveling by family car was not unknown and we see motels sprining up all over the country.