R2078 Carting paper to the stores
Description
This is an excerpt from a 1910 silent documentary film, 'The Sydney Morning Herald'. It shows men on a wharf in Sydney, New South Wales, in the process of rolling large cylinders of paper up a ladder-like ramp onto a dray. Once loaded, the horses and drays are shown carting the paper through Sydney streets to the stores of John Fairfax and Sons, publishers of the 'Sydney Morning Herald' in Ultimo, a distance of approximately 2 kilometres. The footage is introduced by the intertitle 'CARTING TO THE STORES'. Two more intertitles, 'HERALD PAPER STORES' and 'CAPACITY: 6 MONTHS’ SUPPLY', are interspersed into the footage.
Acknowledgements: Reproduced courtesy of National Film and Sound Archive.
- Educational value
- This asset indicates that paper supplies were infrequent and that John Fairfax and Sons, publishers of the 'Sydney Morning Herald', needed to ensure that a large supply of newsprint was kept in store to meet their daily publishing needs.
- It shows that transporting goods in that era required a great deal of manual labour and that the simplest of technology - the ramp - was used to assist men in their work.
- It shows that heavy loads were still carted by horse and dray and that teams of two or three Clydesdale horses were used in preference to trucks as a means of transporting goods of substantial weight - each dray is carrying eight huge cylinders of paper.
- It indicates that scant attention was given to safe work practices at that time - men are loading heavy loads onto the drays without securing the load in place; possibly the unsecured load is so heavy that it stays in place over the short distance to the newspaper's stores.
- It shows that the drivers were both involved in the labour of loading the drays and skilled in driving the two- or three-horse drays through the streets of Sydney.
- It shows some small factories and the buildings in the industrial region of Sydney at that time and shows that the roads were not tarred.
- It shows electric lampposts in the streets - electrical lighting was first switched on in Sydney's inner city streets in 1904 with the electricity generated from a power station at Pyrmont near the wharves.
- It shows a small group of boys watching the delivery - one boy dressed in a shorts suit with a boater hat and pushing a small cart is possibly a paper boy who sold papers at street corners.
- It provides an interesting camera shot from behind the men loading the paper cylinders onto the drays - this gives an indication of how heavy the rolls were and how dangerous the work was.
- It uses intertitles between scenes - these help the audience to place the images in context and helps them to make sense of the visual information that follows.
- It indicates that the film was shot on celluloid nitrate, which deteriorates over time - the black spots in the intertitles are typical signs of nitrate deterioration.
- Year level
- 0; 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 12
- Topics
- Horsedrawn vehicles
- Manual labour
- Newspapers
- Printing industry
- Learning area
- History
- Studies of society and environment
- Strand
- History/Historical knowledge and understandings
- Studies of society and environment/Time, continuity and change
- Rights
- © Education Services Australia Ltd and National Film and Sound Archive, 2011, except where indicated under Acknowledgements
