Dramatization showing days of prosperity as a result of post-civil war industrialization in America. A barbershop quartet performing songs of the era. A stage show in a club or dinner theatre environment. Patrons throw streamers and watch the performers on stage. Reenactment as the great Chicago fire of 1871 takes place. Firefighters race to the scene and battle flames with buckets and hoses. Reconstruction takes place in Chicago and much of the city is rebuilt. Actual still photos of the city of Chicago during reconstruction after the fire.
Industrialization and the rise of capitalism and organized labor in 20th Century United States. Stockyards, factories and farms in Chicago area. Elevated view over Chicago stockyards as cattle move through the stockyards. Mass production takes place in factories leading to rise of capitalism in United States. Views inside a rubber goods factory as rubber is shaped, heated, formed, nad then passed on to a sewing room. A room full of mostly young men is seen at belt-driven mechanical sewing machines working on the rubber goods which resemble rubber hats. A more advanced mechanized reaper or wheat processing machine in use on a farm. Scene changes to a man standing in front of giant tall chalk boards, perhaps at an commodity exchange or shipment scheduling and tracking company of some kind. Boards are marked "Liverpool" and "New Orleans Jobs" and "New Orleans" and "New York." Formation of American Federation of Labor by Samuel Gompers and efforts of Jack London to safeguard the rights of laborers in America. Two labor workers hold picket signs and protest.
Film opens with illustrations showing development of culture and the arts as America developed from earliest centuries. A crowded theatre scene and a lead woman opera singer on stage in a long dress during her performance, with sympony in the background. The audience applauds. Images of writers James Fenimore Cooper; Edgar Allan Poe; Ralph Waldoe Emerson; Nathaniel Hawthorne; and Mark Twain are shown. Children in a school yard, some wearing straw hats, are seen returning to the school house. Boy and girl children entering a one room school house in a rural area of America in the early 1900s. Views of early school rooms, students, and teachers.
Depiction of 1889 Oklahoma land rush with a mass of claim seekers racing across land on horseback and in covered wagons to claim land. Reenactment of frontier claim seekers submitting their claim papers to a clerk in an office. Actual footage of pedestrians and traffic on a busy city street in the very early 1900s. Reenacted scene of early horse drawn trolley or street car. A man and woman riding on a tandem bicycle built for two. Early but reenacted footage of people on a bicycle built for four riders. Actual footage of a very early automobile race in the 1910s or 1920s. Views of a Ford automobile assembly line with new vehicles being assembled. The body of a new car is lowered into position on the chassis. Wheel rims run down a track into place on an assembly line. A car operating on a street.
Mix of dramatized and actual footage. Invention of telephone leads to an era of urbanization, industrialization, mass production, capitalism and more employment in United States. Dynamite explosion at a hillside making way for telephone wire network expansion in America. Workers employed in electric bulb and telephone manufacturing plants. Views of networks of telephone polls. Early telephone switchboard operators in an operations center. People in homes using early two piece telephones.
Rise of America as a nation and President Theodore Roosevelt's efforts to the cause. President Roosevelt addresses a large gathering (This appears to be at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson, Kansas on September 22, 1912, during his campaign for the Bull Moose Party nomination.) Narrator describes Roosevelt's programs for conservation of natural resources. Scenes of logging and forestry operations. Men chopping trees with axes. Timber felled. Logs in a waterway being readied for saw mill.
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