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.
It preserves a beauty spot for us all to enjoy, and they wouldn't have dug much coal out anyway.
Therefore every year we dig less and less coal.
Telegraph View: We no longer think the state should dig coal, provide water, supply energy, run the buses or grow food.
Draglines are not used to dig coal but only strip overburden.
Men have dug coal in this area for centuries.
The country around Carbon Hill is filled with families who settled here long ago to dig coal out of the mountains.
They sent me up to Vorkuta with a lot of other fellows to dig coal!
We need to dig coal out of the ground again, rather than buy it (in Euros) from Germany.
A union leader told me she is much admired by the legions of unskilled migrant workers who dig South Africa's gold and coal.