A Job at Ford's
Using archive footage, eye-witness interviews and contemporary popular music,
Henry Hampton 's new seven-part series is a history of the United
States in the 1930s, a turbulent era that began with the Wall
Street Crash of 1929andsaw massive unemployment and poverty, before President Franklin D Roosevelt 's subsequent reshaping of the nation through his "New Deal".
Tonight's first episode tells how the promise of Henry Ford's booming Detroit car industry fell foul of the Depression, and how the American Dream of high wages for hard work turned into a nightmare of machine-gun-toting guards patrolling the factories and company spies infiltrating the unions. Producer Jon Else
(A A short season of films about the Depression opens at 11.30pm with Ironweed)