The United States had a large amount of child labor at the turn of the 20th Century. Many children worked long hours in mines and cotton mills, far from the school rooms where the National Child Labor Committee wanted them to be. The U.S. coal industry was mainly labor-intensive. The impurities were removed by hand, usually by breaker boys between eight and twelve.
The use of breaker boys began around 1866. The breaker boys would pick slate and other impurities from coal for 10 hours a day, six days a week, perched over chutes and conveyor belts. By shoving their boots into the stream of fuel flowing beneath them, breaker boys stopped the coal, picked out the impurities, and then passed the coal on to the next breaker boy for further processing. Some diverted coal into a horizontal chute in which they sat and cleaned the fuel before allowing it to flow into bins for “clean” coal. They were forced to work without gloves so that they could better handle the slick coal. The slate, however, was sharp, and many breaker boys would leave work with cut and bleeding fingers. The rapidly moving conveyor belts sometimes also amputated the fingers.
Several workers were injured as they walked among the machinery and were caught under conveyor belts and gears. Supervisors retrieved their bodies only at the end of the working day from the gears of the machinery, causing many to die. Others were crushed to death or smothered by the rush of coal. There was so much dust in dry coal mines that breaker boys had to wear lamps to see, and asthma and black lung disease were common. Sulfuric acid was created when coal was washed to remove impurities. The acid burned breaker boys’ hands. During the 1910s, the number of breaker boys had declined due to improvements in technology, stricter child labor laws, and the passage of compulsory education laws.
The practise of employing children in coal breakers ended in the 1920s. The National Child Labor Committee hired Lewis Hine, a sociologist, and photographer. He photographed the child miners in the United States.
