First 1:30 of film is Youngstown, OH. Starts looking northwest towards Republic Steel coke works with Center Street bridge about a mile in the distance running left to right behind the plant. Then as camera pans right you see the Youngstown Sheet & Tube plant on other side of the Mahoning River. This plant continued about 3 miles to the right (southeast). It was huge. Oh what a mighty region we were until the 60s-70s.
I liked the music because it fit the film. What we watched was discordant, Man forcing the earth to bend to his will. Extracting material and creating industry!! Leaving the earth to sob quietly, gritty and alone in the weeds.. ok, ok, I'm no poet, it is a film that I enjoyed watching despite the fact that the pollution was rampant. Try to figure that out,,as most people I despise pollution. The might of the steam trains versus the little insects that control them. Thanks for this upload, as you see it evoked much in me.
That would be a handful switching with a steam loco. It looks like they insure that it has full steam all the time judging by the relief valve constantly blowing off excess steam. It's weird to think that our 1931 2 ton Studebaker truck was almost brand new when this was filmed, and would have been hauling wheat somewhere in Nebraska. It's like stepping into a time machine for sure. I know a farm in Nebraska that has a collection of abandoned Massey Harris "Grain Brigade" combines left behind from the war effort. It would be neat to see if any footage of that exists.
If that's a 2-story crossing shanty at 3:27 (with a crooked smokejack), I wonder if that's the Milwaukee Road. Milwaukee, WI, had several of these unusual structures. Boy, while watching that 0-8-0 moving that cut of cars with a string of boxcars, in the last couple of minutes, I really got a sense of their _weight!_ Also, if that string of side-by-side gables in the background means a long row of company houses, you have to wonder how the housewives ever managed to get their families' clothes clean.
I love these Speed Graphic Films; they're a "time capsule" of our past. Did you notice the man digging thru the dump at 4:30? This era looked pretty grimy around heavy industry. But it was a small price to pay for a job during the Depression.
It's not my style, but there was a movement of atonality in music, after the World Wars. It was an interesting time for the arts and for how people tried to express themselves.
