ABSTRACT
The anthracite coal region of eastern Pennsylvania was the first industry investigated by the NCLC. The great anthracite coal strike of 1902, which had brought to light the fact that thousands of young boys were working in and around the mines, was still fresh in the public mind. NCLC northern secretary Owen Lovejoy had investigated conditions in the region during the strike and, three months after joining the NCLC, returned to the region to conduct the committee’s first field investigation. Lovejoy’s published report set the rhetorical tone:
The coal-breaker dominates the anthracite region. The most important object on the landscape, the largest building, with the most mysterious machinery—the coal-breaker paints the first deep picture on the mind of the miner’s son. From the dawn of his intelligence he recognizes its power, and in it his destiny. He may go to school; he will go to the breaker…. Yonder is the miner’s “patch”—thirty or forty black, squatty huts, with alleys of mud and coal-dirt winding among them—birthplaces of a hundred boys. Here stands the great building with a hundred narrow boards laid across the coal-chutes—seats for a hundred boys. The plan is complete. A boy is born; let him hasten through his babyhood! Can he not see the breaker needs his labor and the hut his wages? 1
