Carusu

Carusu (plural carusi) is the Sicilian word for "boy" and is derived from the Latin carus which means "dear". In the mid-1800s through the early 1900s in Sicily, carusu was used to denote a "mine-boy", a labourer in a sulfur, salt or potash mine who worked next to a picuneri or pick-man, and carried raw ore from deep in the mine to the surface. As with other mining industries, the use of carusi declined as mines switched to other, more efficient methods of transporting minerals to the surface, and the use of children is said to have ended by the 1920s or 1930s, but teenagers were still employed to carry ore to the surface until the 1950s.