# Conquer by the Clock

Encourages American wartime workers to "keep their sleeves rolled up." Describes the volume of industrial and agricultural production that can be accomplished in a single day: enough rifles for a battalion, 1000 acres of corn converted to 30,000 bushels of food." Calls tired workers, in effect, "saboteurs". Narration admonishes workers for the death of soldiers through inadequate equipment or supplies. Utterly melodramatic. Urges workers to move production forward relentlessly. Says that "the clock" is what will win the war. "The clock on the wall -- on the 7th day of December, 1941, it struck the eleventh hour. Every hour after that has been, will be, zero hour." Patriotic discourse today tends to speak in generalities. It asks the public for its mind, rather than its commitment. But the world of Conquer by the Clock is a world at war. Patriotism requires universal, compulsory mobilization of bodies and time. Here allegiance means work rather than words. In this world time and distance have collapsed. Clocks and long-distance communication networks regulate the world according to a single beat. This is a globalist film, an uncanny precursor both of postwar one-worlder consciousness and the international workplace of the Nineties. "Sunrise over Republic Steel. High noon at Willow Run. Sunfall on the Electric Boat Company. Midnight at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Dawn to dusk, and back to dawn again. Three eight-hour shifts. One day. So much can be done in a day if Americans will…

- Kind: Film
- Year: 1943
- By: RKO-Pathe
- Genres: Industrial and advertising
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/0331_Conquer_by_the_Clock_09_00_55_00)
- Licence or status: none stated by the archive
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/0331_Conquer_by_the_Clock_09_00_55_00?play=1)