# Big Idea

Pro–free enterprise parable sponsored by the large meatpacker as part of a widespread “economic education” campaign. In the dramatization, a woman reporter from an iron curtain country and an American newspaperman, a “fellow traveler,” tour a Swift plant and visit workers’ homes. Together they come to realize that capitalism is the system that provides the greatest degree of worker freedom. Note: The cast included an estimated 130 Swift employees. Some 28,000 workers and friends attended four screenings at Chicago’s International Amphitheater. Thirty- and 28-minute versions were released for noncommercial screening and broadcast. In the first two years of release, Big Idea reached 3.5 million moviegoers and 13 million television viewers.

- Kind: Film
- Year: 1951
- By: Wilding Picture Productions
- Genres: Industrial and advertising
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/big-idea-1951)
- Licence or status: [Public Domain Mark 1.0](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

Not offered: its uploader marks it public domain, and the US Copyright Office's records do not settle that it is (a record that may be another film's, a film first published abroad, a year when renewal was automatic, or a country they do not name). Unclear is not offered.