Quote: Ovavoo "Don't know about Yorkshire but in Lancs it was mainly mine workers. There were plenty of cotton mills but they were predominantly in none RL towns like Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley etc. Think the heavy industries, apart from the mills, were common to both South Wales and Northern England.'"
You might be right, apart from the fact that Wigan certainly had its fair share of cotton mills.
However, most of the workforce in the cotton mills were women as this type of work, although hard, was less pphysical than some of the heavy engineering or coal mining.