American Harvest (1955)

• 80%
• 1955
• Documentary

Shows the interdependence of all workers, jobs, and mechanization in the manufacturing process from raw materials to finished product, focusing on the automobile industry, and argues that this interdependence leads to greater personal independence and freedom of life. All products in general, and the automobile in particular, are "harvested" from the raw materials of nature--such as wheat, corn, sugar, cotton, livestock, lumber, oil, and metal ores--through a variety of tasks and types of workers. For example, a single product from the steel manufacturing process requires the cooperative labor of farmers, miners, transportation workers, chemists, engineers, and factory workers. In turn, these workers depend on machinery for continually increasing efficiency and precision, as illustrated by assembly-line production in automobile factories. The resulting product--the automobile--creates a new freedom of movement, and the consumer thus joins the "great orchestra of interdependence." The products of the farmer's field, the mine and the forest are followed through manifold manufacturing operations right through to the finished product. The men and materials which make possible a differential pinion gear in Detroit or an auto tire in Akron are pictured in both outdoor and plant sequences.