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.

About six years ago, the river Douglas broke into one of the Ince mines, and nearly two hundred people were drowned thereby.

These were almost all buried on one day, and it was a very distressing scene.