Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip from a black-and-white sponsored film shows 1930s footage of slum dwellings in Brisbane, including corrugated iron shacks and terrace houses with ‘rooms to let’ signs, a group of men queuing and jostling for food parcels and women donating and receiving clothes at the Brisbane City Mission. The voice-over narration sympathetically describes the plight of the poor while actively encouraging people to support and give to the Mission. The soundtrack includes orchestral music typical of 1930s movies.

Educational value points

• The Brisbane City Mission (now part of Mission Australia) was established in 1859 to care for the disadvantaged and poor. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, soup kitchens and food and clothing ‘handouts’ made up the bulk of the Mission’s work. Prior to the Australian Government’s introduction of unemployment and sickness benefits in 1944, these concerns were primarily the responsibility of state governments and charitable institutions.

• This clip is from a documentary sponsored by the Brisbane City Mission to educate about the effects of poverty and attract support for the work of the Mission. The film does this through the script, which argues that the causes and consequences of poverty are complex, and through the graphic footage of substandard housing, lines of people waiting passively for handouts and the gaunt faces and outstretched hands of men as they queue for food.

• The Mission’s desire to educate and promote social justice is presented in this clip through its compassionate portrayal of the poor, praise for the ‘heroic efforts’ of parents who raise children in an environment of extreme hardship and recognition of the negative results of unemployment on a family’s ability to survive and prosper in society. The clip presents the idea that crime may be a consequence of social and economic disadvantage.

• The script and voice-over narration in this clip may seem overly theatrical to a modern audience, but it was a not uncommon style in the 1930s. The emotive language, such as ‘pain, misery, unhappiness and despair rule the day and night’, is employed to connect the audience emotionally with the situation of those living in poverty and perhaps to counter a misconception that the unemployed were ‘bludgers’.

• The description of the Mission’s system of organising the donation of clothes conveys some of the social attitudes and concerns of the time. The narration emphasises the confidentiality and privacy afforded to the beneficiaries of the clothes, which highlights their shame at being unable to clothe themselves and their families and at wearing second-hand clothes. The donors are also reassured that their donations will only go to ‘deserving poor’.

• As this clip indicates, many people endured desperate poverty during the Great Depression. State government relief schemes kept many unemployed men and their families alive. Single men who could prove they were destitute were paid a sustenance wage (the 'susso’) to work on public works schemes. However, others had to rely on the charitable groups that ran soup kitchens and provided assistance through clothing and basic food rations.

• This clip shows the consequences of the Great Depression (1929–39) in Australia: high unemployment, desperate poverty and a housing shortage (tent cities sprang up around Brisbane and other cities). Unemployment was at 29 per cent in 1932. Although by 1937 the rate had dropped to just under 10 per cent, many families were still struggling financially. The working class were the hardest hit and many were left homeless and destitute.