Ezra Klein on Our Broken--and Getting Worse--Washington DC Press Corps
Today's Must-Must-Read: Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels: Robots at Work

**Today's Economic History: Sometimes I am really sorry that Josh Marshall is proprietor of Talking Points Memo rather than holding an american history chair at some university...

Josh Marshall**: Breaker Boys: "'Breaker boys' were young boys, usually between the ages of 8 and 12 years old...

...employed in breaking stage of coal mining, breaking mined coal into relatively uniform sized pieces by hand and separating out impurities such as rock, slate, sulphur, clay and soil. While increasing public pressure in the late 19th century led to a series of reforms regulating the minimum age of boys hired as breakers, enforcement was lax at best. Yet breaker boys were far from passive figures in the often tumultuous and sometimes violent world of late 19th and early 20th century mining. They were known for precocious labor militancy and a rejection of adult authority.

Lewis Wickes Hine, working on behalf of the National Child Labor Committee, took these photos at the Pennsylvania Coal Company facilities in South Pittston, Pennsylvania in February 1911.

Breaker Boys

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