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A breaker boy was a coal-mining worker in the United States〔Hindman, Hugh D. ''Child Labor: An American History.'' Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2002. ISBN 0-7656-0936-3〕 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.〔This gave rise to a saying among coal miners: "Once an adult, twice a boy." See: Miller, Donald L. and Sharpless, Richard E. ''The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields.'' State College, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8122-7991-3; McDowell, John. "The Life of a Coal Miner." In ''The World's Work...: A History of Our Time.'' Vol. 4. Walter Hines Page and Arthur Wilson Page, eds. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1902; Richards, John Stuart. ''Early Coal Mining in the Anthracite Region.'' Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2002. ISBN 0-7385-0978-7〕 The use of breaker boys began in the mid-1860s.〔〔 Although public disapproval of the employment of children as breaker boys existed by the mid-1880s, the practice did not end until the 1920s.〔〔 ==Coal breaking== Coal came into wide use in late 1590s in the United Kingdom after the island nation was widely deforested and a ban was placed on the harvesting of wood by Charles I of England so that forests could be used solely by the Royal Navy.〔Burke, James. ''Connections.'' New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1978, ISBN 0-316-11685-8. p. 163-170.〕 A newly emergent middle class increasingly demanded glass for windows, and the glass-making industry relied heavily on charcoal for fuel. With charcoal no longer available, this industry turned to coal. Demand for coal also increased after the invention of the reverbatory furnace and the development of methods for casting iron objects such as cannon.〔 The first function of a coal breaker is to break coal into pieces and sort these pieces into categories of nearly uniform size, a process known as breaking.〔Ketchum, Milo Smith. ''The Design of Mine Structures.'' New York: McGraw-Hill, 1912.〕 But coal is often mixed with impurities such as rock, slate, sulphur, ash (or "bone"), clay, or soil.〔〔Ash are impurities such as alumina, iron, silica, and other noncombustible materials. See: ("Ash." ''Dictionary of Energy.'' June 30, 2007. ) Accessed 2009-10-31.〕 Thus, the second function of a coal breaker is to remove as many impurities as economically desirable and technologically feasible, and then grade the coal based on the percent of impurities remaining.〔 This was not necessary when coal was used in cottage-industry grade production methods, but became necessary when economies of scale moved production into early factories with a larger workforce and those installations began producing glass and iron in greater quantities. In the U.S. prior to 1830, very little bituminous coal was mined and the fuel of the early American Industrial Revolution— anthracite coal underwent little processing before being sent to market, which was primarily iron works and smithies producing wrought iron. The miner himself would use a sledgehammer to break up large lumps of coal, then use a rake whose teeth were set two inches apart to collect the larger pieces of coal for shipment to the surface〔Korson, George Gershon. ''Black Rock: Mining Folklore of the Pennsylvania Dutch.'' Manchester, N.H.: Ayer Publishing, 1950. ISBN 0-405-10607-6〕 for such were easiest to pack densely in the sack-like bags that could be slung over the back, or onto a pack animal for the trip out of the mine. The smaller lumps of coal were considered non-marketable and left in the mine.〔 Beginning about 1830, surface processing of coal in the US began concurrent with various canal projects in Eastern Seaboard. These developments lagged behind Great Britain better matching the timing of similar developments in Continental Europe. Great Britain with its heavily deforested landscapes simply had to find economic alternatives sooner, stimulating Coal, Iron, and machine developments leading ultimately to Railroads and the infant industrial chemicals industries of the 1860s. Lumps of coal were placed on plates of perforated cast iron and "breakers" would hammer on the coal until it was in pieces small enough to fall through the holes.〔 A second screen caught the coal, and was shaken (by hand, animal, steam, or water power) to remove the unmarketable smaller lumps.〔 This "broken and screened" coal was worth much more than "broken" coal or lump coal〔 for the even sizes combusted with less trouble and need for tending once past the ignition point. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Breaker boy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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