1775612 Breaker Boys Pittston PA c.1911 (b/w photo) by Hine, Lewis Wickes (1874-1940); Private Collection; (add.info.: Lewis Wickes Hine (1874 ??1940) was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labour laws in the United States; A breaker boy was a coal-mining worker in the United States and United Kingdom whose job was to separate impurities from coal by hand in a coal breaker. Although breaker boys were primarily children, elderly coal miners who could no longer work in the mines because of age, disease, or accident were also sometimes employed as breaker boys;); Prismatic Pictures ; American, out of copyright.