"Breaker Boys" worked 14-16 hours a day in coal mines. They were young boys, usually between the ages of 8 and 12 years old, employed in breaking stage of coal mining, breaking mined coal into relatively uniform sized pieces by hand and separating out impurities such as rock, slate, sulphur, clay and soil. In 1908, Hine accepted a position as chief investigator and photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), a private organization founded in 1904 whose mission was to promote legislation to protect children from exploitation by American industry. At the time, children as young as four years old labored in a variety of trades eight to twelve hours a day in factories, tenements, and on the streets. For sixteen years Hine worked for the NCLC, often traveling incognito as an insurance inspector, to gain access to the work environment. He photographed throughout the country in mines, farms, canneries, tenement sweatshops, and on the street, ultimately producing more than five thousand negatives of child labor. Breaker boys working in #9 Breaker at the Hughestown Borough, Pennsylvania Coal Company, Pittston, Pennsylvania. Photograph by Lewis Hine, January 1911.