have an even greater stake in international law. the affair in iran will be remembered primarily or a lesson to be learned, that as there must be within nations a system of law to maintain order so must the world affirm and support an effective legal system for dealing with the concept of nations. >> watch the entire program on real america. here on american history tv. next, american artifacts visits the san francisco archives to learn about the archives produced from the 1920's through the 1960's. the collection was acquired by

the library of congress in 2002 in the first of the two-part program looks primarily at educational films. >> i'm rick prelinger. i'm founder of the prelinger archives, which is a large collection of this archive of films in san francisco. and also a nonprofit internet library. and this morning, we're sitting in the middle of the offices of internet archives. i began collecting film in 1982. i was working as a researcher on a documentary project, and this project involved searching for a lot of material that wasn't in conventional collections, specifically, material about everyday life in the post world war ii period, so i became very interested in industrial advertising and educational films. these were considered trivial and useful and at that point in time in the early '80s, hardly collected. but i began collecting and quite

quickly, this collection grew extremely large and people began to ask me for access to the material and suddenly, even though i was still an unschooled film collector with no archival training, i had started something which was, by default, an archive. the united states is the most media-rich nation on earth. i thought we throw away more median than other countries create. the '80s was a time of media transition in this country in the same way we're moving from physical to digital media, in those days we were moving from film to video, so there were these huge collections of film that were dropped on the market, that were difficult for the institutions or the companies that owned them. so i began by going to high school and college media libraries. i ultimately started to go to production companies, many of

whom were out of business already. many of them were good. they valued their work, the artistry, not to mention the money that went into making this stuff nobody wanted. and i went to some film laboratories as well, so that in a comparatively short amount of time, i had, gosh --well, ultimately, the collection was about 200,000 items. >> it wasn't so long ago in the history of man's world, that ships were carrying eager passengers towards the shores of the new nation that was just in the building. our forefathers were constructing the foundation of this nation by interlocking inseparably the blocks of our political and economic freedom. >> when you walk the cap back through the 20th century and get

a sense of the films produced, and i call them ephemeral films. they were created for specific purposes and specific times, they were not meant to be kept in the long run. but it appears that the total ephemeral film production between the '20s and '80s is between 4-500,000 items. we ended up collecting about 16% of the total production, which is not bad. it's a pretty decent cross-section. so i collected actively. but in 2002, we reached an agreement for our collection up to that date to be acquired by the library of congress. so everything that was in our collection prior to the summer of 2002 is now stored at the library of congress, in the audio-visual archives facility in virginia. and where they are beginning to

open this up for public access, and it's available for research use. it's an extremely large collection, so it will take the good people at the library a long, long time to process it. film takes a lot of special handling. it's quite difficult. subsequent to the library of congress acquisition, i continued to collect a little more selectively. i no longer tried to collect everything in these genres to collect works of special merit. at the beginning of the film, they were mobilized to educate. one of the things that's kind of a little funny to think about today is that teachers who wanted to use film in their classroom were radicals. they were really --that was quite far out, you know, to say that text books weren't the most efficient or the most vivid way of imparting knowledge, that was a wild thing to say.

>> the lights are admitted, the projector is running. the classroom has become a setting for use of a very effective teaching tool, for classroom film. yet what these young people learn and how well they learn it rests largely with how the film is used. >> it gradually took hold, and there were many, many educational films in the '20s and '30s, the catalytic event was world war ii, because world war ii saw film use as training effectively and on a broad scale. >> distance training, hard work, and working together. this way, the capital is prepared for the difficult road ahead. one, two, three, four, five, six, all right, enough with that.

>> and i thought i was in position. >> there were a thousand details. special students, athletes, military, all used the captain's files. >> and after the war, they would all be projected, that went to the schools in the u.s., and so suddenly, there was an infrastructure. i think in the neighborhood of around 200,000 educational films was produced in the united states. and they range from works of art, consciously produced as films with, you know, some sort of special production value and creativity to, you know, put out films about how to ask for dates. the value of educational films today is that they're a tremendous documentation of how they wanted young americans to turn out.

they show us what we were supposed to be, and the history of the 20th century which is, of course, the media-dominated century, is very much the history of media messaging and what we saw in school and what we were supposed to internalize, is a really important and fascinating story. >> bob is hungry and the soup looks good. he is using his company manners, but we see he is doing at least three things wrong. now that the soup is served, the crackers are passed. he passes the crackers first before he helps himself. should he have helped himself first or not? bob is eating before the others. what about that? >> think about gender roles. the films in the '40s and '50s lay out quite specific ways boys and girls, young men and women were supposed to behave.

>> you may wonder what to talk about all evening on a date, but +about all evening on a date, but the secret of easy conversation is getting off to a good start and here, the girl can often take the lead. >> hi, did i ever have a time at the hair dresser today. care --oh, it was so funny. >> if you think this was good stuff? hardly. what would bob know about hair dressing problems? >> and you begin to think about how that changed in the '60s, free to be you and me. and when films were made in new york and berkley instead of los angeles, there's a florescence of different kinds of behavior are no longer bad. so educational films track that story. >> hi, i'm jan, and this is my class. wait until you meet our teacher.

she's nice. students enjoy themselves. oh, it's more than that. we're learning all kinds of things, and how to get along with each other, you know? >> i used to be a clown, and then i learned history. -- and that i learned to listen. >> and history taught over time, how did that change from the '20s to '30s to the world war ii period, and then the cold war. there's fascinating stories there to tease out. >> what were the freedoms these men were fighting for? freedom to govern themselves. freedom to elect representatives. will let their taxes. personal liberty. nar freedom and the driving urge

to build and grow. in nearly 200 years since the colonies began, a new united states was a long, thin country with a long continent at the back. but then that driving urge came welling up. and the heavy air of freedom could not be contained. >> the thing i find gratifies about my lifelong archival project is that we now see scholarship building up around these films. for years, educational industrial films were considered symptomatic, you know, documents that didn't have primary research value, and now people are realizing these are actually tremendously important to understanding the history of ideas, the history of persuasion, the history of who we are. >> cathy, do you recall the problem about the plane theory that we discussed yesterday?

>> well, there was constant fighting between ranchers and farmers over the land so neither of them could become really prosperous, and we decided that this situation kept many people away who might have otherwise come and settled the great land. the end. >> very good summer, cathy. in this film, we'll learn about other problems that faced these people and what they finally did about them. afterwards, i want you to be able to identify and discuss the problems, and to describe how the eventual solution of these problems affected our country's history. let's have the film. >> it wasn't like the days when cowboys fought indians. between cattlemen and farmers, nobody had what could make a difference. both had six-shooters and both could use them. finding a cheap and practical fence. some tried authority hedge. others, yarn for fencing, and it

was pig-tied, horse-high, and bold strong. but it took four years and more to grow. others tried just plain-old wire. but cattle shoved right through it. and the search continued. the search for a fence that would combine the low cost of wire with the thorns of a hedge. in 1874, joseph barwell glinton, a 60-year-old farmer was credited for creating the first barbed fence wire. the following year, jacob hash received a patent for his barbed wire. both were practical and inexpensive. the west got its fencing. >> who can give me reasons why the invention of barbed wire was so important to the development of the great plains? jimmy. >> well, the barbed wire helped more farmers and cattlemen because they could keep the

cattle where they were supposed to be and the farmers could do more farming and less fighting. >> yes, and this is the only kind of wire fencing ever invented that could do the job, wasn't it? >> i'm especially fond of the series of films that was made by a company called centron in lawrence, kansas. lawrence, kansas is a very special town in kansas. it was an abolition town. it's a university town. and centron was a company started by two men, and then helped by a woman named margaret trudy kravitz, who wrote some of most interesting and unusual films i've ever seen. there was a series titled "the snob", "the bully", "the procrastinator." "the outsider". these were films teenagers could talk about, different things that were troubling. one of the greatest things about these films is they have no answer. at the end they say, what do you

think? and a giant question mark, you know, filled the screen. >> how would you answer? -- how will you ask? do you think they answered the problem in the right way? really, how do you think? >> and this is a very democratic attitude to take that, you know, kids could think this through and talk this through, and come up with some kind of an opinion. you don't see that enough in the '40s and '50s are about --the educational films tend to tell you how to behave. but the fact that they left it up to the students was quite great. >> you might as well have a party over at my house. >> you bring the meat, and we'll bring the records. >> okay. well, i've got to go to class now. so long, bye. >> bye. >> susan, susan jane, w'e

matter with you? why is everyone else having such a good time when you are not? why do they always leave you out? do you look different? is it some way you act? what makes you the outsider? the outsider. the one nobody asks. >> that team at centron made a film in 1951 at the height of the cold war called "bay of thanksgiving." and it's a film about a family who finds themselves too poor to buy a thanksgiving turkey so they sit around talking with one another about what they feel thankful for. >> hello, everybody. >> hi. >> mother, vick, susan. what's been going on around here? what's the matter with everybody, anyway?

>> mom says we aren't going to have any thanksgiving, no turkey, no good things. >> what we're going to have to be thankful for. >> i don't think you kids really mean that. >> we do too. we've always had turkey for thanksgiving. >> yes, and everybody else on the block is going to have it this year, same as always. >> yes, we've always had turkey, just as a lot of americans have had it, and we'll keep on having it. turkey on thanksgiving is a great american tradition. but what you kids are saying makes it sound as if the turkey is the only thing we have to be thankful for. >> oh, gee, whiz, no, dad, it's not that at all. >> i know, dick. with turkey, it's easy to lose is sight of what thanksgiving really means. >> don't make any excuses just because we don't have any turkey this year. it will mean a lot more to it the next time we do have it. >> and you know, it's a little bit quirky and a little bit kind of gendered in the way we think

about these things today. but what's interesting is that it's completely nonmaterialistic. they don't equate patriotism with prosperity. they don't equate happiness with buying things. and it's a film that i think really moves on a higher level, and it's a deceptively simple film that masks, sophisticated, smart and good ideas. >> i am thankful for getting to eat all the time, with extras that count, like cookies and milk at the school. like mom says, i'm hungry all the time anyway, and if i didn't live in a town where there was plenty to go around, golly! and i'm thankful for the free public library where i can get books about adventures. jack london, richard halliburton. gee, the way they tell a story is as good as being there yourself, and it's free, with only a library card.

>> i am thankful that my children have the privilege of being born safely and are growing up healthy and strong. i'm thankful that i have the privilege of guiding them as they become youthful men and women. and i'm thankful for all the things our american system makes possible for the smiths and the browns and the thompsons. the washing machines. hot water out of a tap. and the telephone to call the doctor when one of the family is sick. a car to get dad to work. yes, i'm thankful for all the things free people working together can produce. i'm thankful that when my neighbor drops in to borrow a cup of flour, we've got the right to talk about anything we want to. the parent-teacher project, the new mayor or jane joan's hat.

and last of all, i'm truly thankful for the peace of mind that dad's job brings, for knowing that even though there are lots of luxuries we can't afford, there still will always be enough to go around for the things we have to have. i'm thankful that there are evenings and sundays and vacations, where we can all be together. >> there's many, many different little things on the educational film about health, health and hygiene. some of those are pretty funny. although, a lot of those, they have a core of truth in those films as well. >> this is joan getting ready for school. joan learned at school that it's important to choose the right clothes on a cold day. the temperature is 40, too cold for just a coat. she will need her snow suit if

she wishes to keep had for the dutch festival. and this is jim, joan's brother. they choose wraps to keep all of their body warm. jim's friend george is eating an apple as he waits for them. that is a wise no thank you, joan. never share another's food. george has forgotten something, something that helps keep him clean. it's lucky for george that joan has an extra tissue to lend him. some children learn to jump over go around puddles. but george wades right into trouble, because he forgot his go lashes. >> it's a social guidance film. that's a whole story. we could do a whole program trying to understand that, but basically what happened is that during world war ii, the american families fragmented. men worked late or they were

sent overseas. women quite often, you know, worked outside their home often at night. kids were largely unsupervised, and they got a little wild. so-called juvenile delinquency rates went up. they were sexually active in ways that was quite threatening to the power structure, and there was anxiety. there always is. everybody talks about, you know, the end of literacy and kids spending too much time on facebook and all of this kind of, so we have our mild panics now but the mild panics then, margaret, frankly, was afraid marriage was obsolete and kids would no longer feel the need to have prominent partners, kind of the same we have now, the same-sex marriage debate, the fact that we would lose monog -- monogamy and as part of this

cluster of anxiety, educational companies would partner with the scholars, the clergy, educators, psychologists, even anthropologists like margaret mede, and made about 200 guidance films, and it was to train kids how to be kids again, how to save a generation from being lost. >> high-school dropouts, boys in men's jobs. not good jobs, of course, but jobs with pay checks that will pay for a car or its gas, or cover a big tab on a saturday night. for they're not bad boys, these dropouts, not delinquents, not hoods, not yet, that is. they may not even be stupid or back ward or lazy. this is pete, a nice boy, as a matter of fact, just one of almost a million american youngers who makes the grades in high school.

-- who didn't make the grades in high school last year. what makes a school casualty? this is harder work than bill might be doing in a classroom right now. what makes him trade english, math, history, science, for a broom at 1.10 an hour? why is the dropout? school people in many american cities have been asking this question checking cases like this one, doing research, thinking hard about so terrible a waste of youth, so big a leak in our manpower reserve, so great a failure in our educational system. >> and i think some of the artifacts that we see the most of today, and they're certainly tremendously popular on our site, you know, social sex, attitudes in adolescence, dating dos and don'ts, going steady. and, of course, you can imagine what they say, the of course is, no. >> i do wish you'd try going out

with some of the other boys as well as jeff. >> why? but i like jeff a lot. >> i know, i like him too. but after all, there are other boys. >> if there are, i wish one of them would call. >> now, would you date with one if he did call? >> oh, i don't know. i'd rather go out with jeff. but i wish the others wouldn't ignore me so. oh, mother that's the whole trouble. jeff doesn't ask me. he just shows up. he knows i'll be waiting for him, so he doesn't call. neither does anyone else. >> sarah, there's advantages to going steady. >> going steady? yes, i guess i have been going steady with jeff. we never talked about it. but then, we did it regularly for quite a while. but it's not serious, really, it

isn't. >> why, i hope jeff doesn't feel that he has the right to -- >> oh, mother. he wants me to come over and make some fudge with him. but i guess i'll go anyway. >> some great films were made as part of that movement. the marriage for matters series, including films such as choosing for happiness, this charming couple, made by famous documentarians like lord van dyke, and alexander hammons, people who were kind of the humanistic left wing documentician. documentaries that left a lot of imagination up to the audience and to ask the audience what was wrong with this relationship. why wasn't this marriage going to succeed. similar, you have your kind of well-end hokie stuff and then you have really beautifully crafted film that is as good as anything anybody's made since.

>> if he thinks i'm going to sit home and cry my eyes out, he's heard the door slam, well, so have i. i can make my own living just as well as he can make his. he ought to be glad i'm working. just because he can't stand competition, he wants me to quit. my work isn't important enough. i'm only a woman. but he is the man and boss. he'd like me to be a slave to the house. look at this mess. the way he throws his clothes around. it wouldn't hurt him to pick up the house. i am the one who's married but he can act as if he was single.

>> jenny, i didn't marry you so you'd mire me and laugh at my jokes. you've got a mind of your own, and you've got to use it. it's about time i accepted you as you really are. >> how much you're saying, i've got a wonderful present. i feel like, i don't know. >> well, here's my (indiscernible). -- padded shoulder. >> most people think of film as stories that you see in theater, and the truth is is that film is in a much broader category and the movies you see in theater are really only a small part of the total of national and world production of films and when you begin to broaden out and look at these poorly remembered films like you can see on the internet archive, you're able to get a

much broader sense of what our country's history is and, once more, you can actually download the stuff and edit it. you can make your own synthesis. you can make your own historical film, whether you're a student wanting to show stuff in a classroom or a teacher wanting to show some films to kids or a maker, there is so much there and then, you know, my interest is in creating millions of new people who are authors, who are creators, with moving images, and one thing that you can do is give them stuff to work with. give them material to add it, and so that's what our activity has been all about. >> you can explore the prelinger archives and view thousands of films at the internet archives at archives.org. >> i have been watching the

campaign this year it's more interesting to look at the republicans than the democratic side. that may have something to do with why there is more interest in these candidates and their books. , a nonfictiont book that discusses books written by the 2016 presidential candidate. >> everyone has interesting stories. politicians for soap single minded in his pursuit of power and ideology could have interesting ones. but when they put out these memoirs, they are sanitized. they are vetted. they are therefore minimum controversy. >> sundagh