About the only concession to worker safety were the soft hats some of the men wore. These had a high crown and a kind of floppy appearance. These were hats made of asbestos fabric to protect the wearers from molten metal splashes and hot sparks.
In the first sequences, the workers on top of the blast furnace are working around the "double bell", a device for charging ore, coke, limestone and similar into a running blast furnace. The caption notes the presence of poisonous gasses, but it is apparent that even with the "double bell" mechanism, plenty of gasses and smoke from the blast furnace do escape onto the platform where the workers are. By the era that the film was made, blast furnaces were most generally charged with skip cars, which were hoisted under power to the charging level, and automatically dumped into the double bells. This is shown in the film, yet workers are also up at that level pushing wagons filled with materials to be charged into the blast furnace.
With the coke ovens, blast furnaces, converters and all else belching smoke and gasses, the workers in those mills probably suffered from a variety of occupational diseases, and certainly had respiratory problems. As if the converter was not bad enough for emissions into the air, it looked like they started the blast with the converter inside the building. Once it was in blast, it was tilted so it discharged outside the building. Chances are between the working conditions with unguarded machinery, molten steel and hot steel all around, and the air laden with smoke, particulates, and various gasses, the workers did not live too long. With or without WWI going on, conditions in those mills were going to exact a heavy toll in human lives.
The wire mill was quite a show, with the red hot wire stock being caught and looped back through the roll stands by the workers. One worker is standing inside the "bight" of the red hot wire as it loops through the roll stands, a sure way to lose a leg if things went awry.
Kind of an odd ending to the film, with an "flyer alarm", meaning an air raid. Probably staged, but the workers on the shipping platform scramble into an air raid shelter and appear to be a disorganized herd, with the boss seemingly shoving them along. In WWI, bombs dropped from aircraft were not too large or powerful, so taking refuge under the shipping platform loaded with steel I sections is probably as safe a place as any. The steel on the shipping platform appears to be some kind of light I section, maybe destined for use in shipbuilding for frames and longitudinals in ship hulls. In the sequence with the core making and making of the molds for casting of shells, it looks like in addition to the women, there are young boys working as molders. The turning of the cast steel shells looks kind of crude, with hand filing being done while the shell is in the lathe. The fellow running the press to expand the copper guide band into the grooves on the shells looks like he is a bit too familiar with the press and apt to lose a hand at the rate he is going.
I enjoyed seeing this film, and it was a window into the working in conditions in the German steel mills and shops during WWI. The film is said to have been shot in the Ruhr, a steel and coal producing region in Germany. For mills and shops that are as extensive as what the film shows, and being in the Ruhr, chances are these were some of Krupp's mills. The mills were swarming with activity, and small steam tank locomotives are constantly moving ladles or carloads of materials, ingots, ingot molds, and much else through the mills. Those tank engines were little workhorses, and if one or two of them survived into this day and age, they'd be restored and pulling tourist or historic trains. Back then, those little locomotives were taken for granted. So were the lives of the workers, and a worker had to have excellent "situational awareness" and probably a guardian angel or two to survive any time in those mills.
I imagine that when those workers came off shift, life in their homes was pretty grim as well. They probably considered themselves lucky not to be at the fighting front in the trenches. I also imagine those workers were apt to put a way a few liters of beer, maybe after finishing a shift if they had the money and the bars had any beer to sell. For the most part, I would think that life for those workers was hard and grim whether in the mills or at home, kind of scraping by. As WWI wore on, there were food shortages for the civilian population in Germany, and trying to do a hard day's work in those mills on short rations and ersatz (meaning substitute) foods was an unrelenting thing. The film was intended to showcase Germany's industrial might to produce steel and munitions during WWI. The workers, when the camera pans on them, particularly the women, appear to be happy and enthusiastic. In reality, if the camera were not there, or if a glimpse into the actual living conditions were had, it would be a much grimmer picture. A person did not have to be at the fighting front to be gassed, it was happening on the job in those mills.
