Thank you for this great photograph! It made me think how much these kids suffered to make our day. They're actually our great-grandparents, who built our civilization on their backbones. So, I decided to honor them, most still unknown heroes, with this motivational poster:

Since tterrace was flummoxed (I love that word!) I decided to see if I could google around and find anything similar. I say thats a miners lunch pail, even if the "cup" is quite shallow. Just like this one:

Ah, here we have a close view of the shiny things that had flummoxed me earlier. Now the question is, what's the round structure on the top? Other examples of early lunch pails I've located online have cups with handles attached like that, but these here are all much shallower.

Not sure why a breaker boy would have an oil lamp on his hat. Didn't they work outside the mine in daylight? I'd guess he was a nipper or spragger or some other job inside the mine.

[Breaker boys worked in the breaker. -Dave]

A previous Shorpy pic was shot at the same location and probably the same lunch break.

Have you seen any on Ebay? Bet they would go for a pretty good price.

Did this kid know Shorpy?

There's nothing like this photo to give me a much-needed slap in the face when I start to complain about things. We all need to stop complaining, and be grateful that we Shorpsters aren't living this sort of life nowadays.

Ten minutes and all you can eat.