Studs Terkel plays reenacted excerpts of interviews of various people from his book "Working." These interviews include people in a number of occupations including a car hiker, newspaper delivery boy, farm worker, homemaker, and waitress.

Living in Montana in the early 20th century had many hardships, as covered in Jonathan Raban's book, "Bad Land: An American Romance". Raban said people were looking for new lives in the west but they encountered prairie fires, hail storms and grasshopper plagues.