James Latimer Allen at a photo studio in United States. He puts plate at camera and a small pump in his hand. He shows a woman photos in an album.
An African American artist mixes paints in United States. Silhouette view of a man painting. Students sculpting, sitting on chairs. A man instructs.
African American students at a workshop learn painting and sculpture artwork techniques in the United States. Young students paint on various sculptures. Students do clay modeling. A boy works at a sculpture. William Ellisworth Artis does clay modeling.
Documentary depicts the end of the 1920s good times in the U.S. ("Roaring 20s"), leading into the Great Depression. Mildred Unger, age 10, performs a wing walker charleston dance while out on the wing of a JN-4 "Jenny" airplane in flight over Los Angeles in 1926. Four girls dancing on the top of a building higher than those around it, in Boston, Massachusetts. Amusement park patrons riding a roller coaster. People out driving through a park in their automobiles. Patrons enjoying themselves at the Steeplechase amusement park in Coney Island, New York. A crane piling old cars in a heap at a junk yard. But following the Wall Street crash (stock market crash) of 1929, conditions change in America. Group of men, women, and children standing together, looking sad and dejected, poor and desperate, due to conditions of the Great Depression affecting families. Still photo of group of people receiving food assistance or food relief in a bread line in a city. A man, woman, and baby, in a tent (probably migrant workers). The famous 1936 photo, "Migrant Mother" by Dorothea Lange, of migrant worker, Florence Owens Thompson, with two of her children in California. Men receiving food from a city soup kitchen. Dejected unemployed men.
Labor unrest and stone throwing during Republic Steel Strike. Debris on a partially barricaded road. An American flag strung across the road. Several demonstrators standing next to sign reading: "Republic Steel Strike." They, and cohorts on the opposite side of the road, throw objects at cars carrying workers to a factory. Police intervene with tear gas.
Newsreel titled 'European inventor perfects machine for typing music' shows women typing musical notes on a new typewriter invented by a European. The typewriter, a Rundstatler- GMBH music typewriter, turns out a clear copy of typed musical notes.