![# Title: Breaker boys in #9 Breaker, Hughestown Borough, Pa. Coal Co. Smallest boy is Angelo Ross, (See labels #1953 + #1951.) Location: Pittston, Pennsylvania. # Creator: Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 photographer # Date Created/Published: 1911 January. # Medium: 1 photographic print. # Part of: Photographs from the records of the National Child Labor Committee (U.S.) # Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-nclc-01139 (color digital file from b&w original print) LC-USZ62-23757 (b&w film copy negative) # Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication. # Call Number: LOT 7477, no. 1950 [P&P] # Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA](https://toritto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/coal-boys.jpg)
This must have been how it was
to look down from a hillside orchard
to see Reggio or Napoli
shining below for the last time
looking like acres of clean cardboard
as he walked away with what he could carry
hard bread for the journey
lira for his ticket, an address on a small piece of paper
which lead him to the Number 9 coal shaft
in Pittsfield Pennsylvania
where the black dust followed him home
seeping through the windows, mapping his hands
invisibly coating his wife and children
she living her life by the stove and
her round washing machine
he living as a lunch pail headed for the shaft at the last shadow of night
his kids wasting away in the one room school
dozing like all coal boys learning to be the next generation of cogs
never finding the joy of long division
or what those books were really all about
while the poets Studs and Sandburg and Steinbeck died
and no one spoke of the working man anymore
save pols on Labor Day
droning on about the dignity of work they would never do
And of the glorious heritage of that working man
nothing is left
save a fig tree he was lovingly tending
the day his lungs gave out.
.
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toritto 
This is oh so touching toritto! The job kills the working man and his son and the boss don’t care ’cause there’s always another to fill the empty spot. So sad.
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The saddest thing is that it still goes on in so many places. And they are supposed to be grateful for the jobs, in a ‘time of austerity.’
Best wishes, Pete.
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Wonderful poetry. “Studs and Sandburg and Steinbeck” would be most appreciative.
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Not a single miner left in our country. Given the levels of crime, and the heroin problems in seemingly every ex-coal town or village, it might well have been cheaper just to pay them to dig up the coal and then put it back again the next day. (Our coal mines were all nationalised before they became uneconomic)
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