Why would you think it’s fake? I googled young children working before child labor laws and got a lot of comparatively ghastly visuals.

@Killtheskyfairy Certainly. But at least in the western world, and it certainly looks like western clothes and a western pipe, nineteen ten would seem to be a little late. Most western countries had child labour laws by then. While also it is clearly a posed shot in front of a studio curtain. By nineteen ten cameras were more than good enough for outdoor reportage photos, if you wanted to do social comment you would surely do it in front of the mine, for extra impact. Also the pipe looks like an expensive one, that no child miner could ever hope to afford. Not certain but probably the case.

One other interesting idea is of course that a photo journalist, or social commentator, in nineteen ten wanted to address child labour issues. In, what is now called, the third world, and did not want to spend huge sums of time and money traveling, so they grabbed a handy child and dressed it up.

No certainties but fun to speculate.

@Fernapple I appreciate you pointing out possible errors and your attention to detail but USA didn’t get child labor laws passed until FDR and his New Deal in 1933. Also, as men usually tell me when I object to their sexist humor, it’s just a joke.

I find it personally funny because one of my sons told me, when he was a teenager, that I wasn’t as good a mom as I thought I was. I just laugh and laugh because I sure the hell was!

@Killtheskyfairy Yes I know it was just a joke, that is why I thought it fine to have some fun with it. I did not know that America was so late in bringing in child labour laws. The UK started in eighteen thirty three, nearly a hundred years before that. If I had not responded to you I would never have learned that bit of US history.

As a long-time student of child labor horrors, (UNION gal!) pic is absolutely not a fake, the clothing is correct and the child labor laws, passed in the 30's, not way back then, speifically excluded some jobs, one being coal miner.
the pipe could have been a family heirloom and/or carved by the first owner (i carved a meershaum once), likely passed to the child on his first day of work, lucky him.

@AnneWimsey Quite possible, I was quite unaware that the USA was so far behind Europe in passing child labour laws.

However I do think that the photo is far from true. The pipe is a very expensive one, made in three parts, with a large bowl, which would hold a huge amount of expensive smoke, and even has the look of a silver ring joining stem to mouth piece. Such a pipe is not that, even of a child miners family, while the coat is clearly a good one that has been made dirty, no rips or wear. And why would you even wear a coat down a mine, let alone a good one ? And how many mining families could afford children's clothing then, most would wear adapted adult clothes that would be ill fitting. While most mines are oppressively hot, and miners strip.

@Fernapple Not in the U.S. In 1910 we had more laws about how you could treat (or not treat) horses than we had about how you could treat your wife and kid (s).
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) was the most sweeping, some states had laws but not many. 19 fucking 38!! very sad

@Fernapple, @Killtheskyfairy It was actually the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). Yeah they fought child labor restrictions for 5 damn years.

@Fernapple As far as the coat......we have no idea what season this was taken in. If you get all sweaty even mild temps upon returning to the surface ould feel damn nippy!!!!!!
The wallpaper in the background looks to be late 1800's style.
i think what you perceive as a silver ring on the pipe is a Repair.
He also has, under his arm, a ''lunch pail'' of proper shape for the time. (My grandpa had one).
Also a 'headlight', ie. a candle holder on his hard hat ( which he no doubt owes the Company Store for!) and home-done haircut.
plus, roaming photographers of the time and activists encouraging letting the insulated upper clases to See, had, sadly, plenty of young subjects to choose from, no need to stage anything......

@Fernapple, @silverotter11 ummmm, 5 years Hell, they fought them from the Dark Ages on........

@AnneWimsey It could indeed be true that the subject was a child miner, I do not claim any certainty. But Having seen many pictures of child workers and slaves, from many different ages and cultures, this just does not seem by any means to ring true.