Rare Interior View of a Civil War-Era Coal Breaker in Scranton, PA

Rare Interior View of a Civil War-Era Coal Breaker in Scranton, PA

This illustration appeared in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1863 accompanying an article about a trip through Pennsylvania’s Coal Region. In this view, we see a relatively crude early version of a coal breaker designed to sort valuable coal from worthless slate and rock. The author visited the Oxford Colliery in Scranton, Pennsylvania as the coal industry boomed during the Civil War. “Breaker boys” can be seen doing the risky and tedious labo…