Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white silent clip from a 1926 Australian government-sponsored documentary shows various stages in the processing of canned peaches at the Leeton State Canning Factory in New South Wales. Mechanised processes are featured along with the labour-intensive tasks of employees, mainly women, working at production lines. Elevated camera shots show the factory floor and a grading machine. A federal government inspector inspects cans for export. Some male workers tend the machines. Intertitles are used to explain each scene.

Educational value points

• This clip shows the introduction of increased mechanisation in the Leeton canning factory after the First World War, but also demonstrates that manual labour was still an important part of the manufacturing process. Two examples of specialised mechanisation are shown – a grading machine that sorts peaches by size and a machine to transport cans into the steamers. The conveyor belts mainly transport the fruit from one manual processing step to the next.

• Most of the footage depicts the types of work women performed in the food-processing industry at a time when labour was cheap and the range of available work for women was limited. Large numbers of women stand in rows performing repetitive tasks by hand, cutting, sorting and packing the fruit into cans. While their hair is covered and they wear aprons, it is worth noting that they cut and handle the fruit with their bare hands.

• The division of labour between men and women seen in this clip reflects attitudes to gender that were common in the 1920s – the women performed the bulk of the manual tasks while men supervised. The majority of workers seen here are women who stand at workspaces performing tasks by hand that require both dexterity and speed. Of the five men who appear, four seem to supervise the machinery and the other one is a government inspector.

• The Canned Fruits Export Control Board set up in 1926 introduced government inspectors, such as the one seen in the clip, to ensure quality control for canned fruit exports. The Bruce-Page governments (1923–29) sought to increase economic development partly though investment in industry and partly through the development of overseas markets.

• While the film techniques used in this clip are somewhat limited, it nevertheless provides an invaluable historical record of food processing in the 1920s. The scenes in the clip are typical of the silent industrial documentary film genre in which intertitles briefly introduce a particular process in a factual manner while the images carry the weight of the description.

• The Leeton State Canning Factory seen here was one of two factories built in 1914 by the state government to support its irrigation and food production projects. The government also built the town of Leeton and a government nursery to assist fruit growers. A collapse in the international market for canned fruit in the 1930s contributed to the factory’s decline and takeover by a local growers’ cooperative in 1935.