Whatever Happened To Arthur Albicker?

According to National Child Labor Committee Investigation Report 480, housed at the Library of Congress, and reprinted in Child Labor: An American History, by Hugh H. Hindman, Lewis Hine wrote the following after observing the “breaker boys” in the coal mines of Pennsylvania.

“The boys working in the breaker are bent double, with little chance to relax; the air at times is dense with coal-dust, which penetrates so far into the passages of the lungs that for long periods after the boy leaves the breaker, he continues to cough up the black coal dust. Fingers are calloused and cut by the coal and slate, the noise and monotony are deadening; and, worse still grave danger from the machinery to those boys who persist in playing about the breaker, and even for those at their regular work. While I was in the region, two breaker boys of 15 years, while at work assigned to them, fell or were carried by the coal down into the car below. One was badly burned and the other was smothered to death. This was at the Lee Breaker at Chauncy, Pennsylvania, January 6, 1911; the boy who was killed was Dennis McKee. The coroner told me that this boy had reached his 15^th birthday only a few days before his death and the evidence seems to prove that he was working in another breaker before he was 14 years old.”