Point of view shot out the front of a steam locomotive railroad train as it speeds along a track in western United States. Men stacking wood lumber for boat shipment beside a canal in the early 1900s. The mill and stacks of lumber seen across the canal. Miners at a coal mine ride an open car full of coal as it emerges from a mine in West Virginia, as seen from camera riding on same coal car. Glimpse, from a passing train, of a steel mill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Immigrants to the United States, from various European countries, at work in industrial production jobs. Men in factories; working at a power forge in a steel mill; Lumber operations: Men cutting down large trees with hand axes and sawing logs for timber in a forest, using large 2-man saws; Butchers moving sides of beef in a meat packing company. Women working in a metal parts factory (appears to be a sink faucet manufacturing company); women working in a textile spinning mill operation and stacking moving machine shelves with spools. A hose set up from a fire hydrant spraying water in a city street and children in bathing suits running underneath to play and cool off in hot summer weather. Montage of various still and moving images: Immigrant children in classrooms and in school yards. A woman instructing new adult immigrants in an English language instruction class. Immigrant workers engaged in skyscraper construction, high in the air without safety equipment. An iron worker perched atop a vertical steel beam with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. A woman posing on a horizontal bar. Men and women posing in the surf at a beach. People at beach watching as a group of men create a human pyramid on the sand. A little girl with her feet in the surf. Boys in a classroom, with two of them dirty from work and another boy sleeping with his head on his desk. Mothers and fathers at home asking about what the children learned in school. A young girl leading a group of school children in reciting the pledge of allegiance (pre-1950s version of the Pledge of Allegiance is heard recited by a group of children, without the "Under God" wording that was added in 1954). Still image of a young girl employed in a fabric mill (child labor).
United Garment workers (UGW) Union members discuss plan for 1914 convention in Nashville Tennessee. View from railroad locomotive traveling on a straight train track. A steam locomotive pulling a passenger train. Trainman on rail car waving a lantern. Views of the convention, October 12, 1914, in Nashville, headed by UGW President Thomas A. Rickert of Chicago. Labor union locals from New York, Boston, Rochester, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, were deemed in arrears on dues (although they had been on strike) and not allowed to participate. They walked out, with the Chicago delegation too. View of Telegram sent from Nashville, by the dissidents, to Sidney Hillman in New York, October, 1914, asking him to head a rival union. Photo of Hillman taking telephone call. A special convention at Webster Hall, in New York City, where dissidents join with Journeyman Tailors union and form the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, with Sidney Hillman as President. Key members of the new union are seen standing in front of a car. Sidney Hillman in his office dictating to his secretary. Copies of the new union's House organs in various languages. Amalgamated Clothing Workers holding signs in various languages. Workers pose on a truck by a sign reading:"A Fair Deal, A Chance to Live, Arbitration is all we ask." Workers in cars. Girls on roller skates wearing sashes reading: "Don't Be A Scab." A man in a barrel with sign reading: "Can't afford to wear pants. Pa works in an open shop." Women pose in sandwich boards that spell out: "Closed Shop." Philadelphia garment worker ostensibly writing letter to Sidney Hillman. Shop owners examine sewn item and shop records while man works at sewing machine.
Film titled 'Me and Mr. Marshall' depicts developments of coal mines in Germany and aid to other European nations affected by World War II. German coal miners dig deep in a coal mine soon after the end of World War 2. Volunteers awarded at a ceremony. Volunteers board a train and proceed for work at coal mines. Volunteers eat food, give their shoe size, under go training on mine machinery. Miners on lift move underground. Miners at end of the day walk out tired and blackened by coal dust, from a mine. Miners take hot showers after work and get clean clothing hung high on ropes. Salary given to workers for a day's work. Headlines of German newspapers about Marshall Plan. General George C. Marshall speaks his plans at a meeting in Washington DC, America. Aerial views of ruined buildings and factories, wrecked harbor, refugees in tenements in Europe after World War II. Buildings, monuments and bridges in London and Eiffel Tower and other buildings and civilians on roads in Paris, and view of Kremlin in Moscow, Soviet Union. Map shows countries under Marshall recovery plan. View of meeting in progress of Conference for European Economic Cooperation in July 1947, in the Grand Dining Room of the French Foreign Office. Meetings of leaders of nations adopting Marshall plan. Ruins of industries of Germany. Ruins on the ground after war in London, with Big Ben in the far distance. Workers at a factory. Miners take a horse inside a coal mine. Empty coal cars at a German coal mine. Men push coal cars full with mined coal out from mine, on rails. Views of buyers in suits at a German trade show and conference, promoting German products and industries to potential buyers in other countries, a few years after the end of World War 2. U.S. Congress and President Harry Truman in Washington DC approve the Marshall Plan and provide monetary aid to other European countries. Scenes in Germany as it recovers economically after the war: Workers in a factory. Harbor, fruit and vegetable market; customers in a bakery; coal cars and machinery at a coal mine under normal operation under the plan.
Documentary titled 'Challenge to Democracy' depicts relocation of Japanese Americans and people of Japanese ancestry due to perceived security reasons, in United States during World War II. People of Japanese origin moved by railroad train to a relocation house in Arkansas and at Heart Mountains, Wyoming (internment camps). Japanese civilians walk out of the railroad train at a station, carrying their luggage. Houses, barracks and Quonset huts at the relocation center. A military police guard with rifle on duty. A Japanese family enters its compartment and finds fully furnished comfortable house inside. A Japanese worker works on lumber. A small family inside a house. People dine together at a large mess hall. A car moves in the desert to plan a site for relocation center. Workers clear bush, level soil and do plantation using tractors. Farmers produce vegetables and fruits. Tractors plow farmlands. Farmers hoe crops and collect harvest. Harvest loaded in trucks and sent to mess of relocation house. Japanese mechanic repairs truck, lumbers at work. Workers paid for their work done at relocation house at an office. People inside a Community Enterprise Business Store.
As World War II heats up, 16,500,000 men between ages 21 to 36 register themselves throughout the United States, signing up during the first peacetime conscription in U.S. history. (This was triggered by passage of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke-Wadsworth Act, the genesis of "Selective Service.") Opening scene shows men lining up to register for the draft before the United States entered World War 2. Views of men filing out their registration forms. At 00:22 famous prize fighter, Barney Ross, is being registered. (He jokes that the registrar shaking his hand has too strong a grip.) At 00:34 Hollywood cowboy Gene Autry is seen registering. Close up view of street signs at Chinatown intersection of Bayard Street and Mott Street in New York City. Sign below it notes "School Street. Drive Slowly. Make no unnecessary noise." Line of many registrants of Chinese-American descent waiting in line, and processing paperwork. Scene changes to another area of the city, where a line of mostly African American men wait outside a registration building. Some cheer and wave for the camera. A police officer at the entrance hustles them inside, pulling some of them along. View of the exterior of the White House in Washington DC. United States President Franklin D Roosevelt addresses the nation's men of draft age, telling them that the call up of 800,000 men for training in year one, and less than one million men in each subsequent year, is a program of defensive preparation only. Roosevelt says to the registrants that "Democracy is your cause. The cause of youth." ( Note: clip is silent except for President Roosevelt speaking at the end.)
Nisei, the Japanese Americans of second generation, at relocation centers (internment camps) during World War II. Helmets of football picked up by players. Children play football in a dusty ground as parents watch sitting on stands. Players during a baseball match, during a basketball match in court and an athlete practices weightlifting at the relocation center. Children dive in a pond near relocation center during swimming classes. Girls in uniform walk out of a training center. Children undergo fine arts training on piano, painting, and mud sculpture. A man feeds scorpions. Free press office.
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