All those Lancashire towns were clever enough to build a tradition of football supporting by having plenty of years in the first division. That's where City slipped up. When football was still young we didn't make it to the big league. Probably the year the club failed on goal average to go up to the top division was a defining year. The whole history of the club might have been different if we'd got an extra point that season.
Instead a club like Grimsby were far bigger back then with a good few years at the top of football. We missed out.
They weren't clever they just formed football clubs before did and most were founder members of the league which enabled them to have years in the only division before we were formed and whilst Hull had 2 rugby league clubs.
Leeds were late into football and like us had no success despite spending time in Division One. But they did have considerably larger crowds and back then there wasn't as much difference in population as there is now.
You can do anything with figures but a few years ago a site published a list of all time average attendances. We were just behind Luton.
Have a look at this link and click on teams to have a look at historical crowds. A lot of places smaller than us didn't drop so low for so long. Though ourselves and Cardiff are different in that our highest ever average crowds were in the third division.
http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm
