Cloth

I spent yesterday 'reviewing' the process of taking raw cotton and turning it into cloth.  So fascinating to me as it really isn't something I've ever thought a great deal about.  I've certainly thought about who makes our clothes and where.  I've thought about the labor issues and the sweatshops both here and across the world.  But even amidst my interest in this story and the textile industry, I hadn't really thought about the process itself.  When you think about the pre-industrial period and the amount of time it took for people to make their own clothes - and the difficulty - it contextualizes the value of creating a system where cotton could be taken from its raw state, cleaned, made into threads, strengthened, and woven into cloth.    Even though woven cloth was certainly available prior to these mills, just thinking about the impact of being able to do that with machines all under one roof clarifies how  revolutionary this was!

Another point of interest is the fact that the cotton came from the south and was shipped to the north. Even though many in Lowell opposed slavery, in this pre-civil war period they were actually supporting the cotton trade using slaves as laborers to harvest the raw material.  It is another piece of this that intrigues me - there is a whole social/political aspect of this story that is fascinating:  the debate over an agrarian vs. an industrial future for America, the role of slavery in early industrialization, the feminist perspective of an ignored population that is able to move toward independence and freedom through work in the mills.

So... what is the story I'm telling????