Although similar to the work of Lewis Hine often featured here, this one actually comes from the diverse and interesting archives of the Detroit Publishing Company digitized by the Library of Congress. Hine's work for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) is always annotated with information about the subjects, but there is nothing about these boys in the LOC record, so all we can assume about them is that they were Appalachian coal breakers. Check out the little gas lamps on their cloth hats.
Nearly all of these urchins were discovered in the photography archives of the Library of Congress (and available without copyright restrictions online). Otherwise, urchin photos will be credited to the appropriate photographer with a link to its source (unless they come from my own collection of photographs from unknown photographers). If there is ever a copyright concern, do not hesitate to contact me.