The Slate Picker's

At Eckley, the slate pickers' homes were the smallest and oldest miners homes, with only a living room and kitchen-dining area on the first floor and a sleeping loft above, and the poorest families lived in them. Men who lived there with their families were often hurt, older, or otherwise unable to work underground, and were called slate pickers because they worked in the breaker, often performing a variety of menial tasks. Daily survival was difficult, as women and small children prepared meals, cleaned, washed laundry, hauled water, firewood, and coal, tended the garden, canned, and fed the few farm animals they might own. Many women also took in additional laundry, scrubbed floors, performed seamstress work, or otherwise subsidized the family home, and they sold or bartered any extra produce, fruit, baked goods, and products from the animals. Girls went to school until about sixth or seventh grade, then worked in local factories or mills to further support the family.

Pennsylvania · United States