HOW WE GET SUGAR

Year Published: 1920s

Format: 16mm

Description: Presented by Fox Studio founder William Fox, this rare, silent educational film "Everyday Geography" was one of a series of non-fiction movies released under the title "The Fox Hour". This episode "How We Get Sugar" likely dates to the late 1920s/early 1930s. This episode shows viewers the process with which we get different types of sugar, including cane sugar, beet sugar and maple sugar (:34). The scene opens with a child at a breakfast table eating cereal (:50). She is pictured adding heaps of white sugar to her cereal (:59). The sugar used is derived from sugar cane (1:18). The cane, once ripened is cut down (1:47). Black or African American field workers use machetes to hack at the cane stalks (1:59). Stalks are moved into wagons which are pulled by oxen in order to transport it to the railroad (2:05). The cane is drug up by a crane (2:44) to be loaded into a railcar. The train is pictured as it transports the cargo to a sugar cane factory (3:14). The rail cars are emptied here (3:30). Within the factory the cane is cut and crushed (4:11). Other machines within the factory produce brown sugar (4:49). The remaining portion which doesn’t turn into sugar is molasses (5:30). The brown sugar is packed into bags to be shipped out (5:44). Large stacks of brown sugar are seen which will be shipped to a sugar refinery in order to be bleached into white sugar (6:18). The sugar packs are unloaded from the train (6:49). White sugar can also be derived from beets (7:11) as horses pull a plow through a beet field. Field workers cut off the tops of the beets (7:50). The beets are heaved into a cart which will take them to the railroad (8:16). These are shown being dumped into the rail cars (8:45). The rail cars then head for the factory (9:04). Within the factory, the beets are washed and cut up (9:19). The machine showed removes the juice from the beets in order to make sugar (9:44). A third supplier of sugar is the sap of the sugar maple tree (10:24). Holes are first made into the trees (10:37). Spouts are set within the hole to drain the sap (10:55). Pails are set below the tap and once these are full they are added to large vats (11:22). Civilians rush the scene to sample the sap (11:42). These vats are transported to the sugar house (12:04). In order to save time, pipes are often run from the trees to the sugar house (12:35). The juice is then boiled into syrup (13:14). Three young children are pictured pouring out the syrup around a breakfast table (13:37). A man feeds a bear pancakes with syrup (13:57). If the syrup is boiled for longer, it becomes maple sugar (14:20).

Complete Record: