Boys in the Pits: Child Labour in Coal Mines is a 2000 book by Robert McIntosh, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. The book is about child labour in Canada in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with special reference to the history of boys, aged 8 to 15, who worked in coal mines. These boys worked underground, leading horses along subterranean roads, manipulating ventilation doors, helping miners cut and lift tons of coal, and filling wagons with freshly mined coal.
Robert McIntosh is an employee at the National Archives of Canada.
Famous quotes containing the words boys, child, labour, coal and/or mines:
“Keep the home fires burning,
While your hearts are yearning,
Though your lads are far away
They dream of home.
There’s a silver lining
Through the dark cloud shining;
Turn the dark cloud inside out,
Till the boys come home.”
—Lena Guilbert Ford (1870–1916)
“Unusual precocity in children, is usually the result of an unhealthy state of the brain; and, in such cases, medical men would now direct, that the wonderful child should be deprived of all books and study, and turned to play or work in the fresh air.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labour which its possessor will take in exchange for it.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may will call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:M”I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)