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A thread through time

Women at Work

Why was the textile industry so often built on the labor of women and girls?

Spinning bees, mill girls, shirtwaist strikers, and mill mothers: the industry was the first place many American women earned wages, and the first place they organized.

26 stories across 15 chapters

  1. Before 1600 · Before the Loom

    Innovation

    The Diné Loom

    How the Diné made the Pueblo upright loom and Spanish sheep into one of the world's great weaving traditions.

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    A Diné (Navajo) woman weaving a blanket on an upright loom, a bold stepped design taking shape at the base of the warp.
    George Wharton James, "Navajo woman at her loom weaving a blanket," c. 1900. California Historical Society Collection, USC Digital Library (CHS-4728). Public domain.
  2. Tragedy

    The Long Walk and the Trading Post

    1863 to the 1930s: how conquest, confinement, and federal policy reshaped Diné weaving.

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    Diné (Navajo) captives under armed guard at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, during the internment at Bosque Redondo that followed the Long Walk.
    U.S. Army Signal Corps, "Navajo Indian captives under guard, Fort Sumner, New Mexico," c. 1864-1868. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA 028534); U.S. National Archives (NAID 148727588). Public domain.

  3. 1600–1760 · The Colonial Hearth

    Material Culture

    The Agony of Flax

    The long, many-stage process that turned a blue-flowered plant into a linen shirt.

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    Breaking and scutching flax, from William Hincks's series on the Irish linen industry. Colonial American households did the same work by hand with brakes and swingling knives.
    William Hincks, "A Perspective View of a Scutch Mill, with the Method of Breaking the Flax with Grooved Rollers," Plate V of his Irish linen industry series, 1791. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1978.43.251). CC0.
  4. Innovation

    Two Wheels, Two Worlds

    How the great wheel and the flax wheel divided the colonial household.

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    A great wheel (walking wheel) for spinning wool, in the 18th-century Herkimer Home, Danube, New York.
    Wknight94, "Herkimer House spinning wheel 2" (2009). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
  5. Impact

    Sheep, Statutes, and Survival

    How colonial law conscripted the household into a textile economy.

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    Spinning in the colonial American kitchen, where nearly all household cloth began.
    Engraving from Joel Dorman Steele and Esther Baker Steele, "A Brief History of the United States" (1885). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  6. 1760–1789 · The Revolutionary Loom

    Labor

    The Daughters of Liberty

    Women as the economic engine of colonial resistance.

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    "A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton in North Carolina"-a London satirist's mocking view of the fifty-one women who pledged on October 25, 1774 to refuse British tea and "any Manufacture from England." The caricature is itself evidence of how seriously Britain took the colonial boycott of its cloth.
    Attributed to Philip Dawe, "A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton in North Carolina," mezzotint published by R. Sayer and J. Bennett, London, March 25, 1775. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Public domain.
  7. Material Culture

    The Spinning Bee as Political Theater

    A domestic chore staged as a public act.

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    "A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton in North Carolina"-a London satirist's mocking view of the fifty-one women who pledged on October 25, 1774 to refuse British tea and "any Manufacture from England." The caricature is itself evidence of how seriously Britain took the colonial boycott of its cloth.
    Attributed to Philip Dawe, "A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton in North Carolina," mezzotint published by R. Sayer and J. Bennett, London, March 25, 1775. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Public domain.

  8. 1820–1845 · The Lowell Mill Girls

    Material Culture

    Boarding House Life

    Corporate supervision of the worker's whole life.

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    Two Lowell mill workers photographed in their best clothes.
    Unidentified photographer, two Lowell mill women, tintype, c. 1870. Center for Lowell History, University of Massachusetts Lowell Libraries. Public domain.
  9. Material Culture

    The Lowell Offering

    A literary magazine written by mill workers.

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    The first issue of The Lowell Offering, a magazine written by women mill workers.
    Front page of The Lowell Offering, No. 1, 1840. Merrimack Valley Textile Museum. Public domain.
  10. Biography

    Sarah Bagley: A Labor Voice in Print

    A weaver who became the public voice of industrial reform.

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    A young woman winding shuttle bobbins in a New England weave room.
    After Winslow Homer, "The Bobbin Girl," wood engraving, c. 1871. National Park Service (NPGallery). Public domain.

  11. 1840–1920 · The Silk City

    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.

  12. 1846–1860 · The Sewing Revolution

    Innovation

    Singer's Installment Plan

    A turning point in American consumer credit.

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    Isaac Singer's 1854 patent model (U.S. Patent 10,975) for improvements to his sewing machine.
    takomabibelot, "Isaac Singer's 1854 Patent Model For Improvements To His Sewing Machine," photographed at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (2007). Flickr, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
  13. Impact

    The Seamstress and the Machine

    An economic cost rarely written into the history of the machine.

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    Nine-year-old Jennie Rizzandi helping her parents finish garments at home in a New York tenement.
    Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee, "11:30 A.M. Jennie Rizzandi, 9 year old girl, helping mother and father finish garments in a dilapidated tenement," New York City, January 1913. Public domain.

  14. 1870–1910 · The Garment District

    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.

  15. 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.
  16. 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.

  17. 1911 · The Ashes of New York

    Biography

    Frances Perkins: The Witness Who Built the New Deal

    A young reformer watched the fire and helped remake American government.

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    Frances Perkins, who witnessed the Triangle fire and became the first woman to serve in a U.S. cabinet.
    Bain News Service, "Frances Perkins." Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection (LCCN 2014708218). Public domain.
  18. 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.

  19. 1920–1930 · The Electric Loom

    Biography

    Ella May Wiggins: The Singer of Gastonia

    A mill mother shot dead on the road to a union rally in 1929.

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    Ella May Wiggins, songwriter and Loray Mill strike organizer, killed September 14, 1929.
    Unidentified photographer, Ella May Wiggins. Public domain in the United States, via English Wikipedia.

  20. 1940–1950 · Synthetic Warfare

    Material Culture

    The Nylon Riots

    When stockings were worth standing in line all day.

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    Women lined up for nylon stockings at Miller's Department Store in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during the postwar nylon shortage.
    Ed Westcott, U.S. Department of Energy, "Standing in line for nylon stockings at Miller's Department Store, Oak Ridge, Tennessee," January 4, 1946. Public domain (U.S. government work).
  21. Material Culture

    Rosie's Coveralls and the Cotton Duck Mills

    American mills as a logistical front in the war.

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    Nylon stockings. DuPont put nylon hosiery on national sale on May 15, 1940-"N-Day."
    Antique Rose, "Nylon stockings" (2006). English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.

  22. 1950–1980 · The Polyester Dream

    Innovation

    The Wash-and-Wear Revolution

    The shirt that promised to retire the iron.

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    A DuPont advertisement selling Orlon acrylic clothing on the promise of easy washing.
    E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, "ORLON teaches new fall fashions to keep their figure in the wash!" magazine advertisement, 1950s. Science History Institute, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

  23. 1960-1985 · The Long Integration

    Labor

    Opening the Mill Gates

    How Black workers used Title VII to integrate the South's largest industry.

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    A cotton mill at Darlington, South Carolina, about 1905. In 1956 the Darlington Manufacturing Company closed days after its workers voted for a union-the case behind the Supreme Court's 1965 Darlington decision.
    Illustrated Post Card Co., "Darlington, S.C. Cotton Mill," tinted halftone postcard, c. 1905. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
  24. Biography

    The Real Norma Rae

    Crystal Lee Sutton, a cardboard sign, and the seventeen-year fight to organize J.P. Stevens.

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    A cotton mill at Darlington, South Carolina, about 1905. In 1956 the Darlington Manufacturing Company closed days after its workers voted for a union-the case behind the Supreme Court's 1965 Darlington decision.
    Illustrated Post Card Co., "Darlington, S.C. Cotton Mill," tinted halftone postcard, c. 1905. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  25. 1980–2000 · The Branded Empire

    Material Culture

    Calvin Klein and the Birth of Designer Denim

    How a Bronx-born designer made workwear a status symbol.

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    An American indoor shopping mall in the 1980s-the retail stage on which apparel brands built national empires.
    Carol M. Highsmith, "Indoor shopping mall," between 1980 and 1990. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LCCN 2011635987). Public domain.

  26. 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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