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Harvest Of The Years

Shows mass production of Ford cars in an assembly line; the research necessary to carry on the work; materials that go into the making of the Ford.


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Production Company: Ford Motor Company
Audio/Visual: sound, B&W
Keywords: need keyword

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: longfade - - July 16, 2010
Subject: Ford - not really a good guy.
Mr. Raygun is talking out of his ass, as usual, but Ford did have an interesting and fairly progressive model for management back then. He paid his workers extremely well, with the (hardly ingenious) understanding that hiring the best men and keeping them would increase productivity and efficiency. He also seemed self-defeatingly obstinate about resisting new ideas, which is strange considering his track record as an inventor. GM's extreme popularity in the mid-20s finally convinced H. Ford to introduce a new model and new features, of course it was almost too late by then.

We all know that he hated unions, and he spent ludicrous amounts of money on company police and thugs to spy on, harass, and intimidate union organizers at his plants. His strong anti-semitic stance and dubious relationship with Hitler are also fairly well known.

What Raygun thinks is so 'great' about America back then is the typical superficial, nostalgic, idealized view most people have about the past when they don't bother to do than watch these propaganda films.

Most big corporations (granted, Ford was a bit of an exception) reaped huge benefits from the plentiful cheap labor that a starving, desperate depression-era workforce provided. Assembly lines assured that skilled labor was no longer necessary, so anyone who didn't fall in line and take their less-than-livable pittance of a salary would be replaced immediately. They were usually paid 'piece rate', not hourly or daily, so their earnings were strictly governed by their output. Working at the fastest possible rate of speed
was essential not only to a survivable wage, but to continued employment. When sales slowed or inventory increased for any reason, the slowest workers were the first released.
Worse still, as workers pushed themselves harder and harder to increase their productivity and pay, management reduced the pay per piece.

All of that great "American Industry, Progress, and Productivity" came at a huge cost to the laborer who had absolutely NO rights whatsoever.

Reviewer: Ron Raygun - - May 9, 2010
Subject: America "Was" Great and so was Henry
An interesting 1937 film showing how mass production and the ownership of supply resources kept productivity high, quality high, and all at low cost. A previous post by an obvious Big Liberal, Big Union man, mentions how Ford fought the unionization of the company through some service company. Fortunately, this was never mentioned in the film. Looking back 73 years when the film was made, it shows how great America was before the "Collective Bludgeoning" of organized labor took place, and why America has priced itself out of the world markets do to the organized labor thugs and gangsters taking their cut.

Reviewer: marty600 - - March 15, 2010
Subject: Rouge tour...
Went through last summer, highly recommended...They do a lot of apologizing for the beating of Bennett, BTW...in a movie you will watch. But first, watch this one, worth the download !

Reviewer: donwert - - March 7, 2010
Subject: There's A Ford In YOUR Future!
A Ford Motor company film about the Rouge plant--the greatest industrial plant in the world-- extolling the virtues of integrated manufacturing (iron ore in one end; finished cars out the other). The Rouge plant was, indeed, a modern wonder of organization. According to the film, "enlightened industrial management" is constantly alert to ways to make the workers' jobs easier to do. This would no doubt come as a surprise to Ford workers who, the year this film was made, were engaged in a bitter fight to organize, opposed by Ford's private police force and internal spies. Anyone
thought to be trying to organize a union was fired on the spot and many were beaten by Ford thugs. These activities were managed by the enlightened Harry Bennett who led an office with the Orwellian name of the "Service Department".
The cause of the unrest was the Ford practice of speeding up assembly lines a little every week until workers were exhausted. Odd that none of this is mentioned!

Reviewer: Spuzz - - September 25, 2003
Subject: Eveen shakier then it's shock absorbers.
In this film which takes forever to start and get centered (which it really doesnt) the many different parts of the Ford company is shown, from it's own manufacture of rubber, coke and steel, to the assembly of the cars, to hell, even the tours that they have at the plant, the film seems to go all over the place. While sometimes that can be fine in a film as this some of the time, the film seemed to not be centralized in my opinion, and just seemed jumpy.