Ultimately breaker boys lost their place in the mines by the 1920s – thanks to compulsory education laws (that the labor movement pushed for), a national campaign against child labor in dangerous workplaces (that the National Child Labor Committee coordinated) and last, but not least, technological changes: Machines that broke, sorted, and purified coal without the added bother of children. Susan Campbell Bartoletti mined the riches of newspapers, magazines, business records, crumbling photographs, and interviews to tell the story of 19th-century coal miners in northeastern Pennsylvania. There was nothing for us to do but go home for the day” – and go to the circus! Growing Up in Coal Country > Susan Campbell Bartoletti. When the boss tried to start the machinery up, it would not turn. Their fingers would fly, telling all their friends about the dances and everything they were doing.”īreaker boys also knew how to get their way, if they needed to: “Once, when the bosses insisted on us working, some of the boys sneaked in at six-thirty in the morning on circus day and cut the main belt. “They had a sign for every letter and they would make words. The boy who worked was their favorite.”ĭespite the danger and the monotony of the work, breaker boys managed to carve out their own space on the job: “The boys made an alphabet with their fingers,” a former breaker boy explained. Even the parents took this attitude toward schooling. All the regular fellows got jobs in the breaker picking slate or in the mines nippin’. Another recalled how he took for granted that ten year olds went to work: “It was a disgrace to go to school.
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