These old films are priceless.

Fascinating film. Who would have thought a 27 minute documentary about lead could be interesting!

I’ve worked some tuff jobs but I can’t imagine doing this work. Much respect for these men.

These old school films are always something else.  Great to know they're being preserved

End credits: Beautiful smoky sunset over tailings heap w/dead tree.  priceless.                                              I'm going to name my daughter Galena.

These films were the only alternative to hours of reading to learn new information. I loved them growing up, and learning everything I possibly could about anything. Before the internet, we had to do a little work to find new sources of information. I spent many hours searching libraries.

These old films are the best source of raw information and anytime I hear this voice I know I'm fixing to learn something as I live in Missouri and have never heard of the lead belt but I have heard of the rust belt so it all makes sense.

Always great respect and prayers for any miners... regardless of country and era. A dangerous and necessary job.

I grew up in SW MO, near Springfield.  There was an abandoned lead mine near us.  My dad and I used to go there often.  There was a deep mine shaft that was unprotected by any fences or warnings in those days.  We used to throw rocks in it to see how long we could hear it as it bounced down the shaft.  I had crystal sets (for those who even know what that is) that used a broken chunk of lead (it is shiny on the inside) for the crystal.

The voice in this film is Joe Slattery, who became a Chicago based network announcer for ABC Radio in the 1960s.  Prior to Chicago, he was at KWTO radio in Springfield, MO for several years.  He was also the announcer for the ABC-TV network country music show, The Ozark Jubilee, which was in Springfield from 1955 to 1960 (called Jubilee USA in the late 50s).

Thankyou to all the great men that busted their tails off to build our great nation. You aren't forgotten.

I think my factory job is hard work, its only when you see these old films that you realise what a hard (and dangerous) days work really was.

Thank you for sharing this video to us as to make sure that history is never forgotten

Almost 800K views since this was posted 9 years ago. In the 65 years between, maybe a small fraction of those people ever saw this film on reel-to-reel, Super 8, U-Matic, Betamax, and VHS.   The strange, peculiar, always awesome power of the YouTube Algorithm

Don't you just hate it when your lead is contaminated with silver?

I worked in a Lead Blast Furnace as a furnaceman for many years. I cannot believe the workers on this film are not using respirators, hard hats, face shields etc...
When guys got leaded down in the blast furnaces (lead count of 80) they got transferred out of the Lead area. My Lead count hovered at 65. I slept 12 to 14 hours per day & my joints became extremely arthritic. It's terrible to be leaded.

So much brilliance and Hardwork that brings us everything we use

Every school aged child should be made to watch films like these.

The safe number of men allowed in the cage also just happens to be the as many as we can cram in at one time.

Seems like a lot of work goes into smelting lead.The next time I put a sinker on my fishing line I’ll think of all the work it took and every direction lead exploded into over the decades even poisonous,well staring at this sinker I will remember this little documentary and say wow that’s a lot of hard work those guys did.

Lol, the narrator sounded so disappointed when he said the actual blast cannot be photographed.