Much of the financing for the film was provided by The Sloan Foundation, set up by Alfred P. Sloan, an industrialist and president of General Motors. When he saw the finished film he didn't like what he believed to be its pro-union stance (which he saw as subversive) and its "avant-garde" style (which confused him) and ordered major edits and deletions to be made by the film's distributor, New York University's Educational Film Institute. The film as seen today is quite a bit different than the film that premiered in 1940.