A bootleg mine shaft near Ashland, Pennsylvania. There is also Ashland '''Township''' in Clarion County. Ashland is a Borough located in Pennsylvania, United Here, one man would get into the cart and two other men would crank him down into the shaft. The man in the shaft would fill up the cart with coal and the two men at the top of the shaft would pull the cart up.

Bootleg mining is illegal coal mining. Coal mining is the extraction or removal of Coal from the Earth by Mining.

The term originated around the 1920s, though the practice probably predates that. The 1920s is sometimes referred to as the " Jazz Age " or the " Roaring Twenties " when speaking about the United States and Canada Generally, a bootleg mine (sometimes called a Bootleg Pit) is a small mine dug by a handful of men. They were frequently dug by coal miners off official tunnels in order to procure additional, free coal for themselves, a practice that causes additional ramifications when fighting mine fires. A coal seam fire or mine fire is the underground Smouldering of a Coal deposit often a Coal mine. Sometimes small pits are hidden under houses or outbuildings. Usually, the mine is not large enough to turn around in. The pits are known for being unsafe, and often causing collapse.

The practice has died away in the United States; an American with simple equipment cannot dig enough coal in a day to reach a living wage. Living wage is a term used to describe the minimum hourly wage necessary for a person to achieve some specific standard of living Bootleg mines in China are very common, as are the fatalities resulting from unregulated mining. China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National

See also

Freeminer

External links

• The Great "Bootleg" Coal Industry in Shamokin, Pennsylvania,