I am told that Wigan was one of
the first--if not the very first--of the towns of Lancashire to feel
the nip of our present distress. I am told, also, that it was the
first town in which a Relief Committee was organised. The cotton
consumed here is almost entirely of the kind from ordinary to
middling American, which is now the scarcest and dearest of any.
Preston is almost wholly a spinning town. In Wigan there is a
considerable amount of weaving as well as spinning. The counts spun
in Wigan are lower than those in Preston; they range from 10's up to
20's. There is also, as I have said before, another peculiar element
of labour, which tends to give a strong flavour to the conditions of
life in Wigan, that is, the great number of people employed in the
coal mines. This, however, does not much lighten the distress which
has fallen upon the spinners and weavers, for the colliers are also
working short time--an average of four days a week. I am told, also,
that the coal miners have been subject to so many disasters of
various kinds during past years, that there is now hardly a
collier's family which has not lost one or more of its most active
members by accidents in the pits.
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