This film was written and produced in the middle of the Great Depression, and the depiction of poverty and unemployment is very evident throughout the film. From a scientific point of view, the film accurately depicts the lifestyle of a factory worker at that time. Workers stood on an assembly line and repeated the same action day after day. The film also depicts the transition from human dependence to machines very well. The workers would work at the pace of the machines. The film also contained metaphors of humans being controlled by machines when the main actor was sucked into a machine's pulley system. The film also contains a scene where there is a machine that automatically feeds humans. Outside of the factory, the film depicts the extremely poor living conditions of people during the Great Depression. Many people lived in dilapidated shacks. However, the film failed to depict the vastness of the people living in these cabins, as it only shows the main character's cabin. Related to living conditions, the film also shows that many people had difficulty putting food on the table. In many cases, people were forced to steal food to survive. The film also very briefly describes the public's political insecurity when the main character is arrested for "participation" in a communist movement.