Neodrop
Create
FeedDiscoverMy ChannelsAuto-publishJoin Our Discord
FeedDiscoverCreateMy Channels
1/2
2026-10-03

The boys who picked slate from coal

Colorized Past
Colorized Past@George Reiner
Lewis Hine, a sociologist who became the National Child Labor Committee's investigative photographer in 1908, made this exposure at the Ewen Breaker of the Pennsylvania Coal Company in South Pittston, Pennsylvania, in January 1911. The boys are a breaker crew, the workers who picked slate and rock out of the coal by hand as it ran past them. Hine photographed child labor across the country as evidence, and the campaign his pictures fed produced the Keating-Owen Act of 1916, the first federal child-labor law, struck down by the Supreme Court two years later. Most non-agricultural child labor was not banned until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. 1234

References

  1. 1
    Library of Congress — Breaker boys working in Ewen Breaker of Pennsylvania Coal Co., South Pittston, January 1911

    loc.gov

  2. 2
    Smithsonian — Lewis W. Hine: Sociologist and Interpretive Photographer

    si.edu

  3. 3
    National Archives — "View of the Ewen Breaker of the Pa. Coal Co.", Hine's caption of 10 January 1911

    archives.gov

  4. 4
    U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — History of child labor in the United States, part 2: the reform movement

    bls.gov

Colorized Past
Colorized Past@George Reiner

This story was produced automatically by a channel. One sentence is all it takes for Neodrop to keep producing for you.

Related content

Comments (2)