Making Christmas Crackers (1910)

[Sheri451]

I had ro watch this for a few minutes to realize this is not about saltine crackers, but the kind you pulled and it made a popping sound and you got a surprise.

[yerk3]

@exposed97 That sounds bizarre. When was this supposed to have happened? Japan didn't have dictators, they've had an Emperor from before recorded history to the Present, they had a feudal period with various warlords from the 1300s to the 1600s, a shogunate from then until the 1870s, and a parliament and Prime Minister from then until the Present, but no dictators.

[KidKandyful]

This is Jagex 2001

[JADEAV]

9 years later my grandma was born and still alive at age of 92!!

[TheRuindragon]

@exposed97 That is very controvercial. Im interested in which war you're talking about. Also, how can you say the Japanese are superior? Do you have proof?

[futuristfood]

wow!!!

[lesorciercalifornien]

With outsourcing being the latest trend, I'd love to see a Christmas-cracker factory open up in, say, Tbilisi, inthe former Soviet republic of Georgia. They could ship the packages to england with the label "AUTHENTIC GEORGIA CRACKERS"

[TheRuindragon]

@lesorciercalifornien Clever.

[lesorciercalifornien]

As fascinating as this is, what we culturally-ignorant US types really need to know is, how has cracker technology evolved over the decades? Is the procedure automated now, or have they joined the 21st century and outsourced the labor to Asian sweat shops? The fast-paced world of Christmas-cracker construction demands intelligent and far-sighted business making decisions if the industry is to survive.

[ghostriderjoemomma]

this is sowe fuunytolookat

[Pauluk33]

@MaryOMackie i never thought of it like that and you are right, When film was invented it was the first time in mankinds history that would can looked back over 100 years with moving images. before that it was still photo and paintings. very good point. I run a film and music show called cinematic popcoen request show on radio station music world radio and going to mention this :)

[bearcub410]

THIS MAKES ME THINK OF MY GREAT GRANDPARENTS , THEY WORKED 6 DAYS A WEEK FROM 7 IN THE MORNING UNTIL 7 AT NIGHT HALF DAY SAT , NOT ONLY THAT THEY WALKED TO WORK EACH DAY A LONG WAY EVEN IN THE WINTER , PIECE WORK , AND JUST THINK THE WOMEN HAD TO GET UP AND GET THE FIRE GOING SERVER BREAKFAST ALL BEFORE SETTING OUT TO BE AT WORK AT 7 IN THE MORNING . GETTING UP TO A COLD HOUSE NO RUNNING WATER ,THEY WORKED LIKE DOGS , GOD BLESS THEM ALL , THEY WERE TOUCH AND DID NOT COMPLAIN

[bearcub410]

@bearcub410 OOPS TOUGH

[TheRuindragon]

@bearcub410 Yep. You have a point man. This is the clunky time between the old handcrafted days and the rising of industry. These people went through hell to feed their families. They were glad to know their children could have a better life. They are saints.

[Erictheirritated]

Not a guard or protective device in sight!

It gives me the grues.

[miamad]

Hey look! People used to actually WORK in England!

[greenisland75]

@miamad People still work in England you know. We are just stuck in offices these days doing rather boring admin jobs!

[19smokey19]

i bet 4 yrs later most were working in factorys making shells and bullets during ww1 maybe it was better money to ..

[fmazzar]

makes one wonder what we are here for.,..these people all living their lives and working and now they are long gone. Very interesting.

[greenisland75]

Just imagine doing that job day in day out. Its enough to drive anyone crackers. Chuckle Chuckle. 

[owtatowttowt]

I'm amazed. it's bloody amazing. wish there weren't so many ignorant arseholes on here, putting up stupid comments, though. like : 'why does such an such sound so retarded', or 'this is gay' wish that'd stop.

[greenisland75]

These workers had very repetitive jobs. It was a very hard life for people in those days - poor pay, long hours, poor conditions and uninspiring jobs.

[elenore9]

@greenisland75

and now we get people in third world nations to do it for us.

[greenisland75]

@elenore9 Its a rather sad state of affairs. We should be making a lot of these products ourselves rather than importing them from countries on the other side of the world. Its isn't good for our economy and isn't good for the environment.

[elenore9]

@greenisland75

yes, it's just exploitation. if you can't exploit your own poor, use someone elses. it's wrong on so many levels and as you say, does so much environmental damage in the bargain.

[mr1derful112]

im 35 live in Southern Oregon have my own landscaping business and typed in," 1910 movies" just want to know what it was like back then, imagine texting someone back then, lol.... God Bless

[TheRussellicious]

lmfao these crackers are rotten now

[cobsyboy]

i cant believe the length of that mans pipe near the end!

[ziggycat999]

That's the way I want MY employees work........Dammit!

[nodnops]

i`ll bet and the same wages as well ziggy lol.............

[vielsu]

I had no idea that christmas cracker manufacture was this complicated!

[XmasFLIX]

Wonderful!

[mogul1265]

most of the chicks in that movie were doable.

[bgarr99]

I bet that factory was a butcher shop of lost fingers in all that machinery.

[clapdeeclap]

families were great back then. unfortunately everyone is dead in the video, even the babies are like 300 years old.

[Maivysan]

Whoa, I love the ending.

[92RedRevolver]

Did they really work that fast, or is that just the jerkiness of the film?

[26highstreet]

the gold ole days were great if you were well off and if you were poor you worked from dawn to dusk for a crust of bread and an ounce of shag, rough cut of coarse. you were also happy that the lord gave you a pupose in life and said your prayers everynight...Now these long forgotten souls are here as a stark reminder of the way we use to live, a facinating windows back in time.

[katievhoneychurch]

something so sad abt the invention of machines.

[Diva93jm]

q antiguooo

[MaryOMackie]

All these people are long dead. Ghosts from the past,

I don't think people grasp how utterly astounding it is we get to peer in so casually on these people who were our ancestors. Never before in the history of mankind was anything like this possible.

[MaryOMackie]

Look, they have seven children. Big beautiful families back then....

[ThePeaceableKingdom]

@MaryOMackie Yes! Exactly! The same with cylinder recordings and early phonograph records. Written history has been around for several thousand years, but we truly stand at The *Begining* of Recorded History. I'm astounded that more people are not amazed by that...

[AaranAardvark]

@MaryOMackie Absolutely I couldn't agree more, the evolution of the moving image is what fundamentally separates us from past generations and gives us the opportunity to look over the shoulder of our great grandmother at work. As you say it is astounding!

[baddacoodoo]

wow .. those days seem such a world away now.. I think i would have preferred to live in that world than the one we live in today..!

[anyname666]

Baddacoodoo

yeah you would have loved it

back then no one cared if you took drugs

they were easy to get

and  everyone drank

just your kinda place

[baddacoodoo]

fuk off u numpty.. what do u know ..after all u cant even think of a name for yourself..asshole

[anyname666]

numpty? English twit. You guys dont even know which side of the road to drive on let alone to be allowed making up names like BAD DO COO DOO.. I didnt even know there was such thing as coo DOO! But I am sure it is very very BAD and it DO smell even worse. Hope you wipe your hands before you eat. Are ye a haggas man yerself laddie??

[baddacoodoo]

quite clearly you have discovered that baddacoodoo is hindu for large genitalia..! Now stop trying to chat me up you raving butt plug sniffer.!

[anyname666]

who ever would want to chat you up?? I think you must be using your own genitalia as a plug. So then..... you plug yourself then - right?? must be fun.

If your are a big bad Indian why are you not on some telephone taking service calls from the rest of the world??

[baddacoodoo]

There you go again ..Is that your chat up line.. get down to the local gay bar my friend quite clearly you r a butt chuffer..!

[anyname666]

takes one to know one

[GrenadeChick99]

666, you ARE TRULY A LUNATIC. This guy goes all over Youtube and insults/baits others. THEN he attempts to get them to email back and forth to "argue" some more, all the time simply insulting others. DO NOT take this one seriously. He is an impotent, relationship-starved sicko. He is probably 900 pounds and never leaves his bed and laptop. "Mommie! MORE eggs'n'lard!" Hey at least insulting and baiting others is more fun than television!

[anyname666]

HELP!!!!!

MOMMIE HELP ME

some one took the gag off GrenadeChick and she is doing her thing.

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[matrags]

I imagine the romantic notion of that era is far greater than the reality of it.

[MaryOMackie]

Like every era, it's only nice when you have money.......

[trupodur]

Not true for the USSR!

[heymoe64]

i wonder if they made this film to figure out how to futher mechanize the process?

[babywu48]

wonder how much they made an hour then or was it piece work?

[Crecybowman]

@babywu48 I reckon it would have been piece work. No way would a factory owner potentially pay someone for not doing their share...

[jdmars02]

Interesting. Currently, it's Chinese women doing the same today...Ahhh the beat goes on...slave to the rhythm

[youtuuberoxx]

ahhh...old world craftsmanship...er craftswomanship

[80stimeagain]

Awesome. Made me think of the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. I love this old footage. Things were made so primitively back then.

[anyname666]

how about that lady making Clue Cluck Clan hats????

[effyleven]

"Watch what you're doing with that long-stem pipe.... He'll have somebody's eye out, y'know!"

[francepourmoi]

Isnt it great that films like this have been preserved for generations to come. Something good has come from the computer age.

[Travisab1]

Great film to be saved all these years. Wonder if T. Eddison had anything to do with the making of this film. Great find. Women have almost always been in the work force one way or another. Men didn't like their wives working away from home. Kinda screws up the lives of their children and home life. Few men want to be Mr. Mom butttt, that's quickly coming to an end. Who really gives a damn about their kids welfare these days??? The Government of course. Kids make them money! Lots of it!!!

[DottyDotDitto]

Women have always worked... (No, I'm not about to launch into a rant on how housework is a job.)

I mean women have always worked in the 'workforce' (or the time's equivalent)

There were fish-wives and maids and so on.

Whats changed is what women are allowed to work AS.

As for when womens rights came along...

It depends on the right to what?

If its work, then they were already, what to work as came slowly and still isn't finished.

(Female soldiers still aren't allowed on the font line after all.)

[anyname666]

Dorthy

No one forced anyone to work

These women applied for an open position

Got the position

Did the work

And got paid what they had agreed upon.

Compared to todays wages it seems little but then the price of eggs and milk back then was relatively little.

If you ask ANY worker today the will say they dont pay me enough for this job waaaa waaaa waaaa

FYI a female has been allowed to pilot a $2,000,000,000 stealth bomber in combat

[DottyDotDitto]

What did that have to do with my comment?

[LaCosaNostra132]

this isnt America. your right it wasnt till the 20's. but this is in London. I think their womens rights came earlier but im not sure.

[lifesbandit]

During the early 1900's and WWI. It became more common during WWII but it did occur during WWI.

[palehorsepalerider]

youre all a bunch of lazy spoiled pencil pushers . These people built our civilization, now youre partying to its death.

[Soul0125]

they probrably got paid like 12 cents an hour for doing all this crap...

[psp785]

they got alot less then that

[bcgrote]

Wonderful film from nearly a century ago! As fun and funny as the last scene was, the woman sewing the stockings was hypnotic to watch.

Piecework. I wonder what she got paid - a penny a hundred? I would hope a bit more than that!

[yourfakeplasticlove]

as unsafe as it was to work in places like that...the manufactoring process was relatively new then and im sure people had a lot of respect for the machinery they use and may have been a bit intimidated by it...nowadays we are so free and think nothing would ever happen to us that we need modern safety practices to protect us..great film :)

[SemainedeBonte]

Hooray pre "Night before Christmas" Santas.

The factory is like an OSHA nightmare... and where did the flimsy stockings end up? :)

[fishpreacher]

Thank God they have sweat shops now-a-days. I wouldn't want to work in that dangerous place.

[Jeff98177]

This was a fun little film to watch. :-)

[babybambambumkin]

I'm sure people lost limbs and digits in those days.

[TimeLord222]

When Santa appeared at 5:48 I was shocked.

[chris3443]

I know, I didn't think he was real either.

[LanguorousLass]

Just a warning to other viewers: the "introduction" lasts more than five minutes (out of a 6:19 film). The charming family sequence doesn't begin until 5:08. Still a film worth watching, if you understand that it's largely an industrial documentary with a very brief fantasy sequence at the end.

[anemar1ew]

I noticed how many times the workers licked their fingers during manufacturing process. Shipping a lot of communicable diseases for the little kiddies holiday fun!

[lilninandbeat]

wonderful. To think those girls would be making war ammunition in a few years, not crackers. You could almost hear the laughter at the end.The crackers looked so different.

Loved it.

[DADRENO]

Health & Safety!!!!

[lauriebooth]

Great film,I will now show off my knowledge Xmas day explaining "Tum-Tums" Loved the end scene with Father Xmas. Was that pipe real that the old man has?

[deepvaidyaa]

great one! a gud industrial docu of dat time

[muscleco]

...all that work in the factory, Gladys, and then you have to fight Jack the RIpper on your way back to the Barking tram.... Gawd luvvus!

[hwame]

Thanks BFI, a great little film. I never realised that bandsaws and guillotines were in use a 100 years ago.

[terryvision42]

Im surprised the man working on the saw still has all his own fingers,Health and Safety wouldn't allow that today.Anyhow great stuff BFI.

[PZK12]

Thank God someone thought to film those people doing those jobs. No one films manufacturing processes anymore. No one in a hundred years will know what it was like to work in a factory in 2008.