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A thread through time

Immigration

How did the mills remake who Americans were?

Irish, French-Canadian, Italian, Jewish, Portuguese, and later Latin American and Asian workers each arrived to fill the looms, and each changed the towns they came to.

11 stories across 7 chapters

  1. 1790–1810 · The Industrial Spy

    Biography

    Slater the Memoryman

    How an apprentice carried an empire's secret across an ocean in his head—and what he needed help to rebuild.

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    Samuel Slater (1768-1835), who memorized Arkwright's spinning system and rebuilt it in Pawtucket.
    Engraved portrait of Samuel Slater from "The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Rhode Island" (Providence: National Biographical Publishing Co., 1881). Internet Archive, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

  2. 1840–1920 · The Silk City

    Labor

    The Paterson Pageant

    The 1913 strike that staged itself in Madison Square Garden.

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    IWW poster for the Paterson Silk Strike pageant at Madison Square Garden, June 7, 1913.
    Robert Edmond Jones, poster for the Paterson Strike Pageant, Madison Square Garden, June 7, 1913. Public domain (published 1913).
  3. Biography

    Hannah Silverman, Strike Captain

    A teenager who led the women's picket lines.

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    Elizabeth Gurley Flynn with striking silk workers and their children in Paterson, spring 1913.
    Unidentified photographer, "Paterson Strike, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, etc.," 1913. Internet Archive (mms_kerr_bx_2_fl_29_05). Public domain.

  4. 1870–1910 · The Garment District

    Labor

    The Sweatshop System

    Exploitation engineered into the architecture of the tenement.

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    "Knee Pants at Forty-Five Cents a Dozen"-a Ludlow Street sweatshop photographed by Jacob Riis.
    Jacob A. Riis, "Knee Pants at Forty-Five Cents a Dozen-A Ludlow Street Sweater's Shop," from "How the Other Half Lives" (1890). Public domain.
  5. Biography

    The Uprising of the 20,000

    The strike that built the ILGWU—and set the stage for Triangle.

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    Striking shirtwaist makers in New York during the Uprising of the 20,000.
    Bain News Service, "Group of mainly female shirtwaist workers on strike, in a room, New York," January 1910. Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection (cph.3a51055). Public domain.

  6. 1880–1920 · The Gilded Age of Wool

    Labor

    Bread and Roses

    The 1912 Lawrence strike that united dozens of nationalities.

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    Children of Lawrence strikers sent to stay with supporters in New York during the 1912 strike.
    Bain News Service, children of Lawrence strikers sent to sympathizers in New York City, 1912. Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection. Public domain.
  7. Tragedy

    The Pemberton Mill Collapse

    Lawrence's first industrial catastrophe—the disaster that haunted the city for a century.

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    The ruins of the Pemberton Mill the morning after its collapse on January 10, 1860. Estimates of the dead range from roughly 90 to 145 workers.
    "Ruins of the Pemberton Mills, Lawrence, Massachusetts, the morning after the fall," wood engraving from a photograph by Whipple, Boston. Harper's Weekly, January 21, 1860. Internet Archive Book Images, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
  8. Impact

    'The Chinese of the Eastern States'

    French-Canadian migration to the New England mills, and the 1881 report that slandered it.

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    Workers entering the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company mills at 6 a.m., Manchester, New Hampshire.
    Lewis Wickes Hine, "6 A.M. Going to work in Amoskeag Mfg. Co., Manchester, N.H.," May 21, 1909. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NAID 523200). Public domain.

  9. 1911 · The Ashes of New York

    Biography

    Clara Lemlich, Two Years Earlier

    The warning the industry refused to hear.

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    Clara Lemlich, whose call for a general strike in November 1909 launched the Uprising of the 20,000.
    Portrait of Clara Lemlich, c. 1910. ILGWU Archives, Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University. Public domain.

  10. 1934 · The Great Textile Strike

    Tragedy

    Saylesville and Woonsocket

    The National Guard fires on strikers in two Rhode Island mill towns.

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    The historic marker for the Saylesville mill village in Lincoln, Rhode Island.
    Shadowe, "Saylesville Historic District," Lincoln, Rhode Island (2014). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

  11. 2020–Present · The Circular Reckoning

    Labor

    From El Monte to SB 62

    Slavery in a Los Angeles suburb in 1995, and California's 2021 law making brands answer for their sweatshops.

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    A textile-recycling bin beside ordinary waste containers. Most discarded clothing worldwide is still landfilled or incinerated.
    Daniel Capilla, "Textile Recycling Container and Waste Containers," Málaga, Spain (2022). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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