The localisation of the cotton industry remained extraordinarily static. Although it was totally dependent upon imported raw materials, it was not pulled towards its major port; instead, with the completion of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, the port moved to the industry which kept to the grits and coal-measure sandstones of Rossendale and the Pennines. Despite favourable humidity, cotton mills were of minimal importance in the area around Liverpool bounded by Southport, St Helens and Warrington. Like mining, the industry was concentrated in definite centres which it dominated. Only two large towns were shared by coal and cotton – Burnley was a cotton town with coal, Wigan a coal town with cotton. And in Wigan few men were employed in textiles; not only was the industry carried on there almost exclusively by women but, unlike a cotton town proper, almost exclusively by single women. The miners sent their daughters but not their wives to the mill. The extent of female employment was, indeed, a good index of the extent to which a town depended upon cotton. In 1901 and 1911 alike around three–quarters of unmarried women in the spinning and weaving towns were at work.