This colorized picture, taken by Lewis Wickes Hines, captures a group of breaker boys who worked in the coal mine in 1911 in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The smallest boy is Sam Belloma.
Source: (Library of Congress, colorized).
Although the mines occasionally employed elderly coal miners who were no longer able to work in the mines because of their age, disease, or accident, as breaker boys, these positions were primarily filled by young boys. The practice began in the mid-1860s and lasted until the 1920s.
Coal Use Has A Long History
Source: (Library of Congress).
Coal has been used around the world for centuries; there is evidence that the ancient Greeks and Romans used it, Hopi Indians used it, and Marco Polo reported its use in China in the 13th Century. In England, the widespread use of coal started in the 1590s after Charles I of England banned harvesting wood so that it could be used by the Royal Navy. With an expanding middle class, and the invention of the development of casting methods to create iron objects such as cannons, they needed a fuel source; coal provided it.
Making It Ready To Be Used
Source: (Wikimedia, colorized).
Before 1830 in the US, the main coal which was mined was anthracite coal. Anthracite is hard coal, which has a very high carbon content and has the fewest impurities of any type of coal. Because of its purity, it did not have to go through very much processing before it was sold. As they mined the coal, the miner himself used a sledgehammer to break up the coal, picking out the larger pieces to send them to the surface, where it was sold primarily to ironworks and smithies, who used it to create wrought iron. Once they sent the larger pieces to the surface, the small lumps of coal were left behind.
Changes To The Process
Around 1830, the surface processing of coal began. “Breakers” hammered the coal on perforated cast iron plates until the coal was broken into pieces small enough to fall through and land on a second screen. In 1844, the modern coal breaker was invented. It had two cast iron rollers: one to crush it with “teeth” and one with holes to take in the coal. The coal rolled down a chute, through a cylindrical screen. As larger chunks of coal fell in the cylinder, they eventually broke into smaller pieces as it rotated, eventually passing through the screen. Then the coal was sorted. The “broken and screened” coal that remained was valuable because it combusted more easily.
By 1866, the coal processing machines took on their modern form, and by 1890, steam-powered shaking screens were in use, and in 1892, steam-powered coal washers were installed. In 1866, they began to use breaker boys, who were between the ages of 8 and 12, to remove all the impurities from the coal. The breaker boys worked for 10 hours each day, six days a week. The boys sat on wooden seats over chutes and conveyor belts, removing impurities such as slate from the coal. Sometimes the boys were only 5 or 6 years old; according to a law in Pennsylvania passed in 1885, they could not be younger than 12, but the law was not enforced, and both employers and parents forged documents to get around the law. Unfortunately, some families needed the extra income, although the children were only paid 40 to 50 cents a day. Because they were working all day, they did not attend school. Some went to night school, but many of them could not read or write.
Dangers Of Being A Breaker Boy
Source: (Reddit, colorized).
They were not allowed to wear gloves to pick out the pieces of coal, and their fingers were often cut. They also developed a condition called red tips because their fingers were coming into contact with the sulfuric acid which was created when the coal was washed. The machinery posed a risk as they could lose a limb or even their lives if they were caught in the gears or trapped under the conveyor belts. They also ran the risk of being ground into pieces by the coal crusher.
There were other hazards as well; the air was so thick with coal dust that they sometimes wore headlamps to see. To cope with the dust, they breathed through handkerchiefs and took to chewing tobacco; this did not stop them from developing black lung disease and asthma. The constant loud noise caused hearing loss, and the fact that they were hunched over all day twisted their bodies. This work toughened them; they rejected adult authority, forming and joining trade unions, and helped to precipitate strikes, one of which culminated in the Lattimer Massacre and the Coal Strike of 1902.
Photography Helped To Bring Change
When Lewis Hines made his pictures public, like the colorized image, the public outcry began to spur changes. In 1916, the first child labor law was passed, but the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. In the 1920s, improvements in technology helped to end the use of the breaker boys, as it wasn’t until 1938 that the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act brought change.
