Lights and Shadows in a City of a Million

Here's an industrial film produced by the Ford Motor Company to bring awareness to the efforts of the Community Fund, a group of local charities. Ford, unlike, say General Motors, had its own film production unit for industrial films touting Ford products. Occasionally they lent their expertise to other groups.

If this looks odd because of Henry Ford's Scrooge-like reputation as a capitalist, and the charitable nature of this short.... well, bear in mind that modern labels don't really apply to other times and places. Ford was actually a progressive for the era, believing in the perfectibility of human beings -- by which is always meant a state closer to the individual you're talking to. Ford raised his workers wages, originally with the proviso that they would permit his inspectors to make sure their homes and children were well maintained. Unions changed his mind on the subject: the money was fine, but that was the limit.