Breaker Boys1910
What Charles Dickens did with words for the underage toilers of London, Lewis Hine did with photographs for the youthful laborers in the United States. In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee was already campaigning to put the nation’s two million young workers back in school when the group hired Hine. The Wisconsin native traveled to half the states, capturing images of children working in mines, mills and on the streets. Here he has photographed “breaker boys,” whose job was to separate coal from slate, in South Pittston, Pa. Once again, pictures swayed the public in a way cold statistics had not, and the country enacted laws banning child labor.
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I am Joe Manning, an author and historian. I am conducting a nationally-known research project to track down the descendants of some of the child laborers that Lewis Hine photographed. I have been successful for over 100 photos. You can see all about it at www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/lewishine.html
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