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.