Our Productive Industry (1955)

[Music] in the beginning America was a raw land of forests from which homes could be built and people kept warm of rivers and lakes which could be traversed for exploration and of soil which could be cultivated for food and dug into for mineral wealth such were the natural resources with which we started as a nation less than 200 years ago in this relatively short portion of civilized time we have become the most extensively developed industrial nation in the world our people have accomplished this because of several important factors they learned to use machines to relieve human drudgery they were ambitious to work and save money and invest in businesses their methods resulted in the most things for the most people the highest standard of living of Any Nation since earliest times our people have always wanted and needed did a lot of things just like they do today and people were anxious to go into business and make something to satisfy human wants and needs but making things slowly by hand like this Old Clock Was Made wasn't fast enough the need for a better method was [Music] apparent before 1798 guns were all slowly handmade one at a time and it was rarely that any of the parts would fit any other similar gun in those days large quantities of muskets were urgently needed by our young government Eli Whitney the inventor realized that large quantities of each of the parts should be made all exactly alike so he contracted to produce in that manner and quickly assembled 10,000 muskets like like this one the parts of all of them fit and were interchangeable Whitney's method established a pattern for mass production our first Industries had grown up from simple Beginnings early settlers used the natural resource of water power to run Grist Mills and saw mills soon larger Mills and factories were built along the Riverbanks all using flowing water for their power there was one great disadvantage the power could be used only as far away as belts could reach from the water wheel steam engines to run factory machines were a step in developing Industries but steam power was also limited for a time to use at only one location but Thomas a Edison designed the First Central Electric generating plant using steam to create electric power and send it out to users as far as a mile away today large quantities of electric power are created in central steam generating plants and by Falling Water at hydroelectric powerhouses the power is now sent out long distances to turn the machines in thousands of manufacturing plants in all parts of the nation with plenty of power power available our processing plants Mills and factories now turn out quickly and in large quantities the thousands of things that people need and [Music] use our system of manufacturing and assembly follows that pioneered by Eli Whitney for example this modern machine contains many parts and each part is produced in large quantities all precise in size and shape thus the Assembly of many complete machines is [Music] simplified our automotive industry building cars and trucks by the millions each year is typical of how mass production has developed to a highly efficient system our first cars and trucks reduced in the early part of this century were all practically handmade based on the value of money at the time they were very expensive and only a few people could have [Music] [Music] them Henry Ford's first car was mostly a handmade job created one piece at a time but Ford soon started a production line assembling cars faster from quantities of all the parts on hand a modern assembly line draws on other factories and many sections of the nation for the multitude of parts of a car or truck the engine itself contains many parts and these parts come from several other manufact facturing plants many farmers are growing cotton and some of it will make the cords in the tires elsewhere a petroleum Refinery is producing the basic material which goes into the paint another plant is turning out miles of copper wire a great deal of which will be wound into generators and starters out of the process in another Factory comes the glass for Windows and Doors in other plants machine tools that perform many operations turn out huge quantities of the nuts and bolts that will hold the other parts [Music] together engines and other parts are joined onto the frames on an assembly line until finally complete cars emerge [Music] thus the cars and trucks represent a cross-section of American Industries the circle of production widens as many large and small suppliers depend upon each other and contribute to the whole finished [Music] product mass production and mass distribution of the products of Industry were able to advance because of our outstanding transportation system which developed alongside of the Nationwide spread of [Music] manufacturing at the time when muskets and cast iron plows were shipped out west by wagon the pace was too slow for American industry early canals served for a time but their areas of service were limited railroads finally spanned the continent and were a great impetus to [Music] trade then a network of good highways brought farms and raw material resources and industries still closer together and enabled them to work together we are using our rails our waterways highways and airplane runways at their full capacity the foods and fibers and manufactured goods of America are increasingly on the move and our Industries constantly widen Americans live under a political system conducive to ambition and progress this helps our Industries to expand and Advance our great leaders of government have all realized the need of encouraging and protecting the efforts of individuals so our scientists and inventors have the incentive to keep finding new ways to make use of our resources of raw materials they think of new products to make and improvements on the familiar ones they constantly improve the tools and methods of manufacturing to produce useful Goods easier and of better quality in such ways Americans make this country a Land of [Music] Plenty