BREAKER BOYS - PENNSYLVANIA COAL MINE 1911 POSTER

Around lunch time at the Ewen Breaker Room at the Pennsylvania Coal Company near Pittston. Based upon a Lewis Hine photograph. Breaker boys separated impurities from coal by bare hand in a mine coal breaker facility, 10 hours a day and 6 days per week. Coal breakers broke coal into pieces and sorted into uniform size, a process known as breaking. But coal is often mixed with impurities such as rock, slate, sulfur, ash, one, clay, or soil. Thus, the second function of a coal breaker is to remove as many impurities as possible. The boys were not allowed to wear gloves so their small dexterious fingers could sort and break sharp-edged slate and slick coal to a fine degree. Breaker boys left work with fingers cut, bleeding, or amputated by the rapidly moving conveyor belts. Others lost feet, hands, arms, and legs as they moved among the machinery and became caught under conveyor belts or in machine gears. Many crushed to death, their bodies retrieved from the gears of the machinery by supervisors only at the end of the working day. Others were caught in the rush of coal and crushed to death or smothered. Dry coal would kick up so much dust that breaker boys sometimes wore lamps on their heads to see. Asthma and black lung disease were common as the black coal dust worked its way into the deepest sacks of the lungs. Coal was often washed to remove impurities, which created sulfuric acid that burned hands and seared lungs. In Pennsylvania alone, nearly 100,000 boys worked as breakers during coals golden era of 1860 to 1920. But this photograph by Lewis Hines and public outcry brought the hiring of boys to an end after 1920.