This 1948 promotional film from the Seaboard Air Line Railroad highlights the economy of the American southeastern seaboard that the rail line services. The film opens with women in white dresses smelling flower blossoms. Viewers see statues and monuments and buildings dedicated to American history that proliferate the south, including the Cape Henry Memorial (01:45). A young boy sits amid harvested cotton. There is a montage of shots of the American southeastern seaboard, showing people and landscapes. Men and women walk to work at a factory. A man uses a saw at a construction site (03:10), and another man drives a tractor in a field. Viewers see aerial footage of a university campus (03:25). What appear to be oak barrels are hoisted onto a shipping barge. There is a shot of an orange orchard in Florida (04:47), and men pick the citrus fruit. Men load watermelon onto a train car. A man examines tobacco leaves in a tobacco field (05:23). A caller calls out prices at a tobacco auction house. A woman collects rolled cigarettes off a conveyer belt at a manufacturing plant. The film shows the region’s agriculture with shots of cattle, hogs, and cotton fields. People pick cotton in a field in what has the look of a sharecropper situation (06:55). Viewers see cotton bales moving on railcars. Iron-ore is hauled in train cars (07:30). At a limestone quarry, rock is hoisted by a crane. The film then shows a forest (08:10), where loggers use power saws to cut down trees and cut up the logs for transport. At a pulp mill, logs are moved on a conveyer belt. At a textile mill, rayon is made from wood fiber (09:13). Drums of turpentine are placed in rows in a yard (10:05). Trains move through the south. A “photobook” shows an old locomotive on the seaboard line. Trains move along tracks all throughout the southeastern seaboard. There is a shot of the downtown of a city (11:41), then viewers see a city’s central station. Trains haul freight, and viewers see Silver Meteor Seaboard cars (12:50). A man examines corn crops (13:40). Two men look over blueprints for a new building. Women work in a paper production facility (14:24). The film then highlights some of the recreation of the southeastern seaboard, featuring footage of people on a beach, people playing golf, horses racing around a track, and people swimming under water. People gather around “the Fountain of Youth” (presumably in Florida); a man waterskis behind a boat. A man works in a steel mill with molten ore (15:58). Women examine textiles at a factory. A man drives a tractor during harvest. The film concludes with shots of white sandy beaches (16:47), cities and towns in the region, trains moving along tracks, and an engine conductor sounding the engine’s horn.

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com