Mick Hartley

Plymouth, Pennsylvania, ca. 1901:

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

Click to enlarge. Full size here.

From the "heroic" age of heavy industry. A Shorpy commenter quotes Popular Mechanics, 1908:

The huge coal breaker at Plymouth, Pa., known as "Nottingham No. 15," is the largest in the world. Its capacity is 1,000 cars of a size large enough to carry an equivalent of 7 tons of finished coal each. Not more than 200 ft. from the breaker is a shaft 350 ft. deep from which one of these cars arrives with coal from the mines every 20 seconds.

Here, as everywhere else, mechanical devices are superseding manual labor. In the old-style breaker at least 150 men and boy pickers were employed, but in this breaker a spiral coal-picking machine has made it possible to dispense with at least half of that number.

Wikipedia on coal breakers. Don't miss the Lewis Hine photo of Pennsylvania breaker boys, from 1911.