Narrator somewhere, with someone on the job, everything we have is starting. Somewhere on some fertile acre, the plow knifes through soil that abounds in clumps. And the farmer, although he plows alone, is not alone. His life has tied in with the lives of many others, of all of us who depend on him and his mechanized labors, and he in turn depends on all of us. Somewhere on a lonely range, the earth trembles under the hooves of cattle on the move. And the man who rides the range alone, if he listens with vision , can hear in the rumble of the herd, the rumble of distant machinery in factories where people will finish the work he has begun. Somewhere, someone sets a blast to erupt rich ores of metal from stubborn rock, and sets men to and in mail and , and many interconnected people come to fashion the products of human inventiveness from all of the bounty of nature. Wheat. And to grow the wheat it takes a farmer from new york to michigan to nebraska to oregon and from the dakotas down through all of the great grain belt, 1000, 10,000, and 100,000 wheat farmers grow the finest wheat, raw material for industrial alcohols, for fine finishes. Sugar. And to grow sugar, the sugar farmer. In the bottomlands of mississippi and to the everglades of florida, on the country the Evangeline Rose the sugarcane, cane sugar, raw material. Kotten. And the farmer to grow the cotton. Raw material for fabrics and for lacquers and plastics. In the carolinas, georgia, tennessee, arkansas, alabama, throughout the old south and even in the deep south, cotton still is king. In texas too, and now in california, there is a great snow we harvest bail upon bail see far as the eye can cotton for fabrics and wool for , fabrics. On the slopes of the sierras, a sheepherder. He grazes his flock in the high, cool air that grows stronger and finer fleeces. Longhaired goats roamed the plains of arizona, texas and new mexico, where all the silk and fleece is tempered by baking days and toughened by freezing nights. Fine fleece of a sheep flock and long stable fleece of the goats , for fine upholstery. Tough hides for tough, durable leather, and it takes tough, durable men to ride the herds to grow those hides to harvest. Laramie,oxbow to the all along the red river and the , 1000, 10,000 out of herds with sun and wind, heat and cold, nature furnishes and strengthens hides on the planes, the plains,s on from dodge city to the foothills of the western mountains. Perhaps there are jobs you never thought of as being an important part of the Great American economy pattern, but every basic task is essential to the necessity and convenience of all in this blessed land of all of us. West or south, no matter where you go or what you are looking for, you will find somebody working, working as a part of the vast and intricate and interlocking network of production that leads raw material to finished product. The turpentine barrel in florida and in georgia is the first link in an endless Conveyor Belt that winds it way from south or east to west and north, from portland, maine to portland, oregon. In the oilfields of all america, there is a manmade tree that grows, a deeprooted tree that is to yield a strange assortment of fruits that will be soap and candles, paints and asphalts. From its roots, thousands of feet in the earth, the oilwell rig brings forth a harvest of precious sap that is to become a polish, lubricant, coloring, and a fuel. Test tubes and apparatus of the refineries, the oil crudes here are cracked and distilled. Here, are cleaned and purified, here, are separated into sorted into a hundred basic materials where 1000 interdependent industries and 1000 times 1000 independent engineers and workers. Onthejob, commanding great tools, from deep within the plentiful earth come the metal ores with which america is so richly blessed. Copper for batteries, copper for radiators and electrical systems, copper from utah and montana, from michigan and wyoming, from colorado and new and nevada, and again, more of the redgold metal from washington and oregon. This red, powdery earth is rust. Call it iron nor, call it the vermilion ranges, steel has its beginnings. The mother of steel is iron. There is more than a ton of iron and steel in the car you drive. Several kinds of iron and more and 100 kinds of steel, from the rusting earth, come the beginnings ofhe all the rich metals that are born of iron and sired by the coal that is mated with iron. Soft goal. Hard to coal. And the coke that comes from coal to bring steel into being. To purify and refined the steels, coal and coke. Harden steel for roller bearings and starter assemblies. Toughened steel and precision parts. To shape and polish precise mechanical parts, crystalline quartz. For alloy steels, stainless steel, for plating, bumpers, and ornamental trim, bright chromium. For the tiny filaments in electric light bulbs, tungsten. For storage batteries, radiator assemblies, and the metal in engine bearings, pure lead. Even the more famously precious metal, gold. Any metal can be more precious than gold if it is the one metal needed at the time. Each metal may depend on one or more of the others for success. Copper and aluminum are precious thesemselves, and all of ores from all of these many metals call for many men to pick them from the earth and bring them forth. Any natural lack or artificial shortage may stop the entire economic parade. You may be a lumberjack teamed up in washington or maine, in mississippi or in michigan, florida or georgia or east texas in paul bunyan country or , the empire of the pacific northwest. The trees you fell and the logs you drive make pulp for paper, blueprint for dreams that put 100,000 men to work on a new model and a new job. The way we do it in america takes a lot of different people working together in a lot of different places. Brooks flowets and to make the river, so all the wondrous products of forest and ranch, mine and farm work together. On highways of steel, the many materials move, contributions of every state in the union. On highways of concrete roll the basic supplies for the mills of industry. And on the high air links of the trackless skies fly products to the factories for processing. In the textile mills of pennsylvania, connecticut, and the carolinas, sheep wool are sheep wool and mohair the beginnings of more jobs for men and women. Spun by mechanical spiders, into gleaming strands, cotton, and sheep wool and mohair are woven by incredibly precise mechanical fingers into luxury fabrics. Corn, a Golden Treasure of farmers in iowa, indiana, and illinois, and corn of kansas, michigan, ohio, and nebraska. One way of changing corn into leather is on the subassembly line of the feeding lot, but a shorter way is through the magic of chemistry. Corn is now directly processed into the plastic ingredients of artificial leather. With these rich, glowing colors, the chemists improve on nature. Yard after endless yard of perfect and flawless material bears ingrained in its very structure the colors and designs that will enhance its beauty in the interior trim of the finest motorcars. The tire you ride on, born in a mississippi cotton patch, in a cane field in louisiana. Maybe it started when some of its strange, synthetic makings were pumped up from the ground in california or boiled up from the earth in texas. And in the factories of dayton and detroit, men weave and fashion the basic materials, cotton and rayon, sulfur and carbon, rubber from trees and rubber from oil wells. A gripping, springing, live thing, resiliently spry and untiringly useful. Sand and flame make glass, but it takes skilled men to grind and polish glass to optical clarity for safety vision. And seeing to all of it, and again seeing that the finished product is perfect for seeing, means yet another long chain of interdependent jobs, from sandpit through factory. The processes of refining ores into finer steels brings into play a range of facilities. The linkage of jobs to be done along the line is always and infinitely expanding, from come the basic forms to be forged and pressed, cut and ground and then polished into many thousands of interrelated but separate and individual parts in factories located along all the railways and highways of america. For the bumpers of your family car, steel from pittsburgh, pennsylvania and steel from pittsburgh, california joined , with chromium from texas for beauty combined with massive protection. They handiwork of men in the smelter men in the makes work for the men in the catching and dashed the casting and forging plants. Cast into the cylinder block of the valve engine here in gray , iron are the tough settings for the bone structure of the finest transportation for all of us on all our roads and boulevards. What we harvest, what we dig, and what we produce, rolled into the workdays and paydays and play days of all of us. Here, gleaming and precise. A differential opinion a pinion. Tial it took a miner to get it from the ground and a railroad man to carry it to the docks. It took chemists and andllurgists to alloy temper it into shape. To design and build of Machine Tools to make machines, it took men in other plants. To build these intricate and wonderful machine themselves took other skillful men in other factories. To guide and use the machines takes more men with hands that are skilled and finally and finely productive. Behind each such job is the mighty panorama of men at other jobs, all of us making a living and making a fine product for others and ourselves and our families. For all of us who run machines and for all of us who sell other things to other men who run , gauges to increase the powers of vision 1000 times, to make the sense of touch so delicate it can weigh a puff of smoke, to magnify the inch 1000 fold, gauges that extend the senses of men in the countless comparisons, inspections and tests that finalize the perfection of each working part. It takes supreme precision to give us the smooth and effortless driving that all of us want, but men and women and only men and women have the judgment to tell right from wrong, to separate the best from anything less than the best, making sure we have done right by all of the finest Materials America can supply calls for a whole new category of excellence in service. Vigilance and devotion apply to the idea of seeing that only the best passes inspection. In the factories, locally built, giving local employment in every great area of the nation, each factory with its system of , communications and er communications, intercommunications, is in itself a part and portion of other factories, which begin where it ends or end where it starts to fabricate and finish the fine products of the thousands of suppliers, and the thousands of suppliers who supply those suppliers with all of the parts, of all of the components that make up the complete automobile. Todays product of the superbly equipped plants is the life story of 10,000 engineers. With hundreds of supporting departments and thousands of supporting suppliers, completed by the master hands of a million factory men who inscribe all of their ideas in metal, the careful and meticulous attention to every detail of quality and perfection has resulted in constantly improved performance, efficiency and stamina through the years. That is the story told in the rhythm of the wondrously precise machines, as they dance to the mastery of the workers hand. Each of more than 17,000 parts must fit smoothly, accurately, rightly with some other part. And the men on the Assembly Lines know that each party will be there when it is needed, because someone plans at that way and manages it that way. The men on the Assembly Lines know that each material will be fitting and each part will fit , because someone built it that way, and someone checks it to make sure that it is that way. And so it is that in a finished motorcar, 17,000 separate and individual parts are so welldesigned and so well combined, all to give us the qualities we demand in our finest of transportation. The beauty and comfort and the fine, long life performance, with fine economy. But all the designs and all the plans, all the materials from all theprocesses, and parts made by all of the skills of all of the men and all of the magic of all of the machines move through all of the pageant , of production in a great orchestration of interdependence, one upon another and another into a fine, climactic assembly of the finest products of all of us, for all ands, for early farms cities and towns of all our land. And the men who inspect the final product know that each part must be perfection certified, quality first to last. The harvest of americas finest automobiles keeps rolling off the Assembly Lines year after year, every year finer and finer. The face of america has been changed. A factory is built out in the and quickly, a great city arises around it. Over broad highways made by and for vehicles, where what america has produced comes back to serve americans. So it is we can live in the country, work in the city. Life in america has changed. So it is that we can make our living on a farm and have a home in town. So it is that we can live where we want to. Shopping centers now come out to meet us. The ever expanding involvement of people takes on a new dimension, the great new dimension of interrelated use, a new individual transportation means new freedom of movement to all of us, the dispelling of distance, and for country dwellers as for city dwellers, a new and far and wide range of life. New businesses, large and small have developed from doing , america on wheels. It has created more jobs for more people, all interdependent on each other, and all continue to profit from it in ever new ways in each new generation of youth. Putting americas children on wheels has changed americas schools. It has made possible better education, better training for tomorrow and all will profit from it in health, wealth, and recreation. Putting americas workers on wheels now means there is more work within ready reach, more work for men to do, and more ways to get to the work and make more money. On the money somebody else makes, all of us are dependent for harvest of money we make. In all america, the money we make on any job changes hands every time itd changes hands, it benefits all , the minor hand the farmer and the rancher all producing the finest materials, the worker and the machine all using the do finelyrocesses to by those finest materials, building the finest lowcost cars and trucks for everyone to haul anything anywhere and haul anyone, including ourselves. And so it is that all of us in interdependence live independently on wheels. And all this farreaching interdependence is the great secret of why it is possible to put americas automobile within , andeach of so many people all america, all its rock bound beauty, all its pleasant vistas, all its historic tribes, and all its ways of living, all its sports and recreations, all its scenic grandeur, along all its farflung highways, within the reach of all. You are watching American History tv, all weekend every weekend on cspan three. Produced by vocational guidance films, the dairy industry as part of the your life work series, short, educational films from the 1940s meant to inspire Young Workers in the wake of the Great Depression this film details dairy