The boy learns many things in the breakers and in the mines. The hard conditions do not dampen the ardor and crush the spirits of the average lad. Most of them are bright, cheerful and full of tricks. They have a good appetite and with dirty hands the contents of the dinner-pail generally disappears. They have their "spats" and fights, and woe betide the man who injures one of them. They are full of fun and frolic, but their curiosity sometimes leads them to injury and death. Many of them fall into the machinery and are mangled, or down the chutes and are smothered. Of all deaths in this risky business the death of one of these boys is the saddest. To witness a funeral procession of a boy hardly in his teens and the cortege made up of his companions in the breaker, is a sight sad enough to melt a heart of stone, and every humane soul asks: "Is this sacrifice of youth necessary for the prosperity of the mining industry?"