Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-11-01
The Breaker Boy
BY CLARENCE BARROW
Copyright, 1913. by the Newspaper
Enterprise Aesociation.)

Johnny AcCanery was eleven years
old when he became a man. Five
years before this his father and moth
er, with their four children and steer
age tickets, sailed out of the Queens
town harbor, hound for the United
States. They had heard OF America
all Irishmen had-they knew that
America had no English landlords; no
rack-rented tenants: no hopeless men
and ragged women and hungry boys
and girls. So. as they stood on the
steerage deck and looked through
the wire netting at the fading white
houses and green fields of their ma
tive land Owen and Bridget were
light OF heart Beyond the great
turbulent ocean were contentment,
equality and wealth; a home for
themselves and brilliant future for
the four children, who, half in fear
and half in wonder, were looking out
! at the white gulls and the white
crested waves.
! Two weeks later they landed in
/ New York, were rushed through Cas-
| tie Garden and hurried to the railway
train, where they set out for Scrarf-
| ton, Pa.
Within few days Owen had found
job in the mines, opened an ac-
count with Company store. and
rented Company house, with a
kitchen and parlor below and two lit
tie bedrooms above. Down under the
kitchen floor was hole in the ground
which they called cellar, and some
rough wooden steps led to the bot
tom from the side of the house. The
hut was closed with boards which ran
up and down; the inside was without
paper or even plaster; while, here and
there, the cracks let in the daylight.
and. through the winter, the wind and
shifting snow. Owen and Bridget
were q triffe disappointed in their
home. In their little stone hut in their
| far of island they had never dreamed
that house like this could be found
| in land so rich and free. but they
were starting life In a new, strange
world; so, with strong hopes and
brave hearts they set to work to make
the best of what they had, never
doubling that the looked-for mansion
would soon be theirs.
Owen went to work in the coal mines
800 feet beneath the ground. Every
morning he stepped on board a car,
grasped his dinner pail in one hand,
while he clutched the iron rail in the
other, and held his breath until he
vas dropped to the bottom; then, at
U
pit and boarded the car to be taken
again to the top of the earth.
But this story is about Johnny, so
we have no time to tell more of Owen.
except that one day great piece of
rock broke off from the roof of the
chamber where he worked and fell
squarely upon him, crushing him to
death.
The miners took him to the top of
TIE shaft and back to the little hut,
and consoled the helpless widow and
children as best they could, and then
followed him to the grave, and the
story of his hopes and struggles was
told
| Johnny was almost eleven when
they laid his father In the little conse-
Grated ground and put the white
wooden cross above his head. He was
ct school the day the rock came down
and had done so we'll that he was in
the third reader, and had reached
division" in the arithmetic.
Johnny's older brother was already
tending a door n the mine, and his
sisters were in the public school. Some
years before. wise good man, seeing
ow scant was the miners income
had built lace mill SO that his Girls
could earn something to help the fam
i.y along. SO one night when the
cider sister left the school she care
fully packed her books and slate and
took them home, and the next day
went to the mill.
Bridget planned and saved the best
she could. She had great hopes for
little Johnny. He would surely be
scholar and make famous the Nc
| Gallery name, but all her hopes and
| struggles went for naught. OWENS
| funeral had left them hopelessly in
debt, and the earning of the boy and
| girl could not keep the family alive.
| There was really nothing left but to
send Johnny to the breaker The law
| had humanely said that child should
be spared from the mine until he was
twelve years old. but Bridget soon
saw that this law was no protection
against poverty and want; so she
went to justice of the peace and
swore that Johnny's age was twelve.
and sent him to the breaker. She
somehow did not think much about
this oath. In fact, she almost felt
that Johnny was twelve years old.
She knew of other boys of the same
age who were at work.
| Well. Johnny went to the breaker.
| He was halfway pleased to be re-
leased from school. II there is any
| place for q boy more cruel and hope
1 less than the breaker 1t is the ordi-
nary public school.
Johnny lived about half a mile from
the breaker where he went to work.
Over and over again he had seen the
huge rough black building standing
up against the sky, and just beyond,
the great piles of refuse which they
called "culm'' that doomed up higher
still especially at night they rose up
sombre and black like the mountains
Just behind. The front of the build
ing was a hundred feet high Tt
sloped slowly and evenly down to
about twenty-five feet at the rear.
| It's great sides were dotted with win
dows-little gray spots in the vast
surface of black weather-beaten
boards. Johnny had never seen q
cathedral. but from the stories that
his teacher told at school he thought
this building was about the size of one
of those medieval temples, but 1t was
a temple built, not to God, but to
| AIammon.
Along the side of the great build
| ing ran the zigzag stairs. and in the
early morning light and sometimes
before the gloom had been fairly
driven away little boys tugged up
Panama a Triumph for SAM