For Educators
Teach with the archive
Every chapter has a study guide ready to print or download: a guiding question, the reading, a timeline, primary sources quoted word for word with full citations, discussion questions that move from recall to argument, and a written argument to finish. Each comes with a teacher edition and a slide deck. They suit U.S. history, economics, labor studies, and women's history courses at the high school and university level.
Ways to use the exhibit
Chronological unit
Assign chapters in order. Each takes about 15 minutes to read and pairs with one kit for a single class period.
Thematic inquiry
Assign one thread, such as Childhood or Health & Safety, and have students argue how the issue changed across eras.
OpenLocal history
Start with your own state on the regional map, then connect its mill towns and tragedies to the national chapters.
OpenStudy guides by chapter
Study guide
Eight parts on Letter paper: before you read, the reading, a timeline, key terms, a primary source workshop, discussion, a claim-evidence-reasoning paragraph, and an exit ticket.
Teacher edition
The same guide with objectives, AP U.S. History periods, C3 and Common Core standards, two-day pacing, guidance for teaching hard history, and the answer key.
Slides
An editable PowerPoint deck for each chapter, with the full story text and source context in the speaker notes and image credits on every slide.
Can we understand Indigenous textile traditions through the eyes of the outsiders who first wrote them down?
- Anonymous member of the Coronado expedition; translated by George Parker Winship, c. 1540s (translation published 1896)
- Thomas Harriot, 1588
- Washington Matthews, 1884
Was colonial cloth-making a private household chore or a public duty controlled by government?
- Massachusetts General Court, 1655
- Parliament of England (10 & 11 William III, c. 10), 1699
Did homespun cloth help win American independence, or did it mainly make patriotism visible?
- First Continental Congress, October 20, 1774
- George Washington, January 29, 1789
Was Samuel Slater a traitor, a thief, or the founder of American manufacturing?
- Samuel Slater, December 2, 1789
- Moses Brown, December 10, 1789
- Alexander Hamilton, December 5, 1791
How responsible were Northern mills and consumers for the expansion of slavery in the Cotton South?
- Solomon Northup, 1853
- Sarah Ashley, interviewed by the Federal Writers' Project, c. 1937
Was the Lowell mill system an opportunity for young women or a new form of exploitation?
- Massachusetts House of Representatives, Special Committee on Hours of Labor, 1845
- Harriet H. Robinson, 1898
Did Paterson's founding plan to rely on cheap machine labor make conflict like the 1913 silk strike inevitable?
- Alexander Hamilton (attributed), August 1791
- John Reed, June 1913
Did the sewing machine free needleworkers or simply speed up their exploitation?
- Thomas Hood, December 1843
- Elias Howe Jr., September 10, 1846
Did the Civil War's demand for uniforms modernize American industry, or did it mainly reward profiteers?
- Montgomery C. Meigs, 1865
- Benjamin Apthorp Gould, for the U.S. Sanitary Commission, 1869
Who should have been held responsible for sweatshop conditions: the contractor, the manufacturer, the government, or the consumer?
- Jacob A. Riis, 1890
- Clara Lemlich, November 28, 1909
- Clara Lemlich (as reported and translated from Yiddish), November 22, 1909
Were child workers in Gilded Age mills the victims of greedy employers, desperate families, or weak laws?
- Camella Teoli, before the House Committee on Rules, March 1912
- Lewis Wickes Hine, National Child Labor Committee, December 3, 1908
Was the Triangle fire an accident, a crime, or the predictable result of how the garment industry worked?
- William G. Shepherd, United Press, March 25, 1911 (published March 27, 1911)
- Rose Schneiderman, April 2, 1911
Did new technology in 1920s Southern mills make work better, or only faster?
- Ella May Wiggins, 1929
- Robert Ragan, interviewed by Judith Helfand and George Stoney, Early 1990s
Did the federal government protect or abandon Southern textile workers during the 1934 General Strike?
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 20, 1934
- Sue Hill, Early 1990s
When World War II turned nylon from a luxury into a strategic material, who gained and who paid?
- Wallace H. Carothers, assignor to E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, September 20, 1938
- U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, 1946
Was the postwar promise of cheap, easy-care synthetic clothing a sign of progress or a problem passed to the future?
- The New York Times, reporting Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev, July 24, 1959 (published July 25, 1959)
- Edward J. Carpenter and Kenneth L. Smith Jr., March 17, 1972
Did civil rights law, union organizing, and the brown lung movement change Southern mills, or did the industry's decline overtake them?
- U.S. Congress, July 2, 1964
- Crystal Lee Sutton, 1973 (later recollection)
- U.S. Supreme Court (opinion of Justice William J. Brennan Jr.), June 17, 1981
When a brand's clothes are sewn by contractors overseas, who is responsible for the workers who make them?
- Wendy Díaz (translated by Barbara Briggs), May 1996
- William J. Clinton, April 14, 1997
Was the collapse of American textile jobs the unavoidable price of progress, or the result of policy choices that could have gone differently?
- William J. Clinton, December 8, 1993
- Janet Patterson, interviewed by PBS NewsHour, September 23, 2003
Can the United States rebuild a textile industry, and should national security be the reason to do it?
- U.S. Congress, First enacted 1941; current codification
- U.S. Department of Defense, April 1, 2016
Who should pay the true cost of fast fashion: brands, consumers, governments, or the workers who already do?
- International Labour Organization, January 29, 2024
- California State Legislature, September 27, 2021
Essential questions by thread
- Labor & OrganizingWho did the work, and what did it take for them to be heard?
- Slavery & RaceHow did race shape who grew the fiber, who ran the mills, and who was kept out?
- Women at WorkWhy was the textile industry so often built on the labor of women and girls?
- ImmigrationHow did the mills remake who Americans were?
- ChildhoodWhat did it mean to grow up in a mill?
- Machines & MaterialsDid new technology free workers or bind them more tightly?
- Health & SafetyWhat did it cost in lives before workplaces were made safe?
- Law & PolicyHow did government decide whose side to take?
- Global TradeWhere does your shirt come from, and who decides?
- Land & EnvironmentWhat did the industry take from the land and water?