Another steamboat news reel clip

[Jim Herron]

This is also on Criticalpast.com:

Mules plow a field,cotton picking and shipping activities in the Mississippi river in the United States

It covers the building of levees on the Mississippi river plus cotton production with several steamboats shown.

-Jim Herron

[Alan Bates]

Those mule teams were building a levee using slip shovels. They were fairly efficient because they packed the earth as it was delivered.
Slip shovels dug the path for the concrete-paved portion of Beargrass Creek. I do not remember the extra man to tip them over for uinloading. The mule-driver did that around here. A gang of slip shovels was noisy with braying and shouting to the hard-headed mules and the equally hard-headed men who drove them.
The announcer sounds an awful lot like Lorne Greene.
Where did the Assiniboine run?

[Ted Guillaum]

Steamboat Round teh Bend Scenes?

The last two scenes showing the California boats look suspiciously like the race scenes from "Steamboat Round the Bend" with Will Rogers.

[Tom Schiffer]

Alan: I never thought about the tiny feet of the mules compacting the soil as it was laid down. In my experience, "mule and scoop" were only used for excavation as in digging foundations for houses. As an equally hard-headed five year old who was the "bosses son", I would ride the overturned scoop back to the "dig". Imprecations re the mules kicking what little brains I had out notwithstanding! And, there was no extra man to assist turning over the scoop at the spoil site. It was a sight to see onstruction methods in those days. Iron workers often had a rivet forge chained to an upright beam mebbe 100 feet in the air and would throw red hot rivets with a pair of tongs to riveters mebbe that far away and more. The rivets were caught in a bucket and driven home by a riveter and his bucker with a pneumatic hammer...a better show than a major league ball game. I'm sure the rivets missed the buckets once in a while but I never saw it happen! OSHA would shut that operation down today before the first rivet was thrown. Cap'n Walnut

[Lexie Palmore]

This is part of a longer film of which I have a copy somewhere. I think it delves into the consequences of misusing the land. There is a great shot of a tree falling complete with drum roll and cymbal crash, a little sense of humor there in the sound dept. I think it's in the same film, and someone else will have to cough up the name. Been a while sense I saw it.

[Frank X. Prudent]

This is part of a longer film of which I have a copy somewhere. I think it delves into the consequences of misusing the land. There is a great shot of a tree falling complete with drum roll and cymbal crash, a little sense of humor there in the sound dept. I think it's in the same film, and someone else will have to cough up the name. Been a while sense I saw it.

I believe that it is footage from the WPA film "The River." Yes, Lexie, you are right it is about the misuse of the land and how it help to lead to the Great Lower Mississippi River Flood during the 20's.

Ted, you're right too. That "race" is film from "Steamboat Round the Bend." Other boats that I see are the CHRIS GREENE, TENNESSEE BELLE, and OUACHITA, which later became the Greene Lines's barge STOGIE WHITE.

[Carl Jones]

In my youth 1952 or 53 I dug a pond with one of those slip shovels. The easy part was to dump the slip. The hard part was to fill it without digging to deep because the slip would dump while you were trying to dig and if you didn't tip the handles up enough you didn't get a full load. That was in up state New York.

The only Assinibine I found was An American Fur Company built in 1833 in Cincinnati and and lost in a fire at the head of Sibley Island, North Dakota i June 1835. With the lost of boat and cargo placed at 70,000 to 80,000 dollars and no insurance. There may have been a second < un-documented Assiniboine in the late 1840's that got froze in in the upper Missouri and was broken up in the ice.