Snapshots of the Past

Coal breaker boys – Vintage Wall Art

Coal breaker boys, [between 1890 and 1910] — historic photograph
Coal breaker boys, [between 1890 and 1910]. Historic photograph from the Detroit Publishing Company collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

This historic photograph of Coal breaker boys brings a moment of history to your wall. Sourced directly from the Library of Congress, it represents an authentic piece of documented history.

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Coal breaker boys

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Few subjects in the Detroit Publishing Company's views of Pennsylvania carry the weight of this one: a group of young boys working at a coal breaker in Kingston, in Luzerne County. Breakers were large wooden structures where anthracite was crushed and sorted by size, and boys, often under the age of twelve, were posted along the chutes to pull slate and other impurities from the moving coal. The dust and noise of the work were severe, and the boys were paid little. The plate is a glass negative, a format the company's photographers used in the years before 1910, and it was made as part of a commercial series of views that circulated widely. Its record also notes a 1949 gift to the State Historical Society of Colorado, one of several routes by which such images reached public collections.

Created / published[between 1890 and 1910]
Medium1 negative : glass ; 8 x 10 in.
GenrePortrait photographs.Group portraits.Dry plate negatives.
NotesJacket title: Breaker Boys, Kingston, Pa. Ext" on negative. Detroit Publishing Co. no. 032069. Gift; State Historical Society of Colorado; 1949."
SubjectsCoal miners. Child labor.United States--Pennsylvania--Luzerne County--Kingston.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection
Original scan802 × 980 px
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-DET-65767

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