Within the British North American colonies there were five different sources of cloth production: silk, hemp, flax, wool, and cotton; however, despite several experiments, silk never became a major source of cloth. Flax and hemp, both the products of agricultural fibers, were important crops. Hemp was used to make rope and canvas and therefore was central in supplying the shipping industry, which expanded throughout the 18th century and became crucial to the economy of the early republic. Flax was used in the production of linen. While flax was never a major area of cloth production in any one region, many farms produced some flax for linen to be used at home and sold in local markets. Both Pennsylvania and Connecticut, however, exported large amounts of flax seed for the Irish linen industry during the colonial period.

Many farms also produced wool during the colonial period. Sheep were useful for fertilizer and as a source of meat, and wool was a by-product of keeping a limited number of sheep on a farm; they would be sheared once or twice a year. However, the quality of the wool was not high, and it was not until after 1790, when some farmers began to concentrate on sheep breeding--especially following the introduction of merino sheep--that more extensive wool supplies appeared.

Before the 1790s, in South Carolina and elsewhere in the South, planters and farmers grew some cotton, most of which was used locally to produce cloth. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 increased the production of cotton for an export market and made possible the beginnings of cloth manufacturing in New England and the middle states. Growing or raising the raw material was only the first step in the complicated process of cloth production. The next step was to transform the raw material into a fiber. Flax and hemp were handled in similar ways: The plant had to be broken and then hackled--straightening the fiber and separating the long from the short strands in preparation for spinning. Most of this work was physically demanding and utilized specialized tools. Some farmers did this preparation themselves; others hired specialists who owned machines. After the Revolutionary War (1775-83), flax became a less important crop, and linen production declined in the United States. Hemp, however, remained important. The area around Lexington, Kentucky, began to specialize in hemp and the manufacturing of rope and canvas. Almost every seaboard and river port had a ropewalk to supply local shipping needs. Wool, too, needed to have the fibers aligned before spinning, either through carding from shorter and finer fibers or by combing from longer and coarser fibers. Initially, carding and combing were part of the household work of women on the farm, but during the 1790s and early 1800s the number of water-driven carding mills expanded, allowing an increase in the amount of wool yarn available.

Once the fibers were created, they had to be spun into yarn, which then needed to be turned into cloth. Spinning yarn, performed by women on spinning wheels, was an important component of household work on most farms. There were different types of spinning wheels for different fibers, with larger frames used to spin wool yarn and smaller frames for linen. Although it entailed some training and skill, spinning could be done in between other types of housework, and it was interrupted easily, thus fitting the work patterns of many farm women. Spun yarn was used both for home consumption and for a market. Indeed, many women would spin to earn money to supplement the overall income of the family unit and to purchase consumer items. With the introduction of spinning jennies and machine spinning in textile factories in the 1790s, home spinning declined. By the 1830s factory yarns had become so ubiquitous and cheap that the spinning wheel became a relic of the past.

Yarn could be turned into cloth through either knitting or weaving. Women did most knitting in the home, though there was some frame knitting performed with machinery run by men to produce stockings more quickly and cheaply than hand knitting. Weaving also involved larger machinery and more skill. Traditionally, weaving was a male-dominated craft in Europe, and the practice was brought to North America. During the 18th century in New England, however, women took over much of the weaving, which was done largely for home use or the local market. Elsewhere, such as in Pennsylvania, weaving remained the work of men who were both rural artisans and farmers.

The final stage in making cloth was fulling--bleaching, cleansing, stretching, brushing, dyeing, and shrinking the cloth to make it the appropriate color and consistency. Seldom was this done in the home, as the process was highly skilled and usually conducted in fulling mills by men trained in the trade. Fullers would also rework used cloth, a task that became especially important during the Revolutionary War when textile imports almost ceased and the demands of the Continental army for blankets and uniforms was high.

Until the early 19th century, overall textile production remained limited in North America. In the late 18th century the average Pennsylvania farm household needed 42 yards of textiles a year just for clothing; this figure does not include the textiles used for bedding, curtains, tablecloths, sacks, wagon covers, and other farm uses. With the average farm producing wool that could make only three yards of cloth a year, and with most weavers working only part-time, local production could not meet demand. Importation of cloth and involvement in the wider Atlantic world of trade therefore remained crucial. However, domestic and imported cloth did not compete with each other in the market; instead, they were complementary. Production of yarn or cloth in the home often provided the additional capital needed to buy imported fabric. Although most of the finest cloth was imported, some North American weavers were capable of producing high-quality work. Homespun, moreover, was not so much a label for cloth made at home as it was a general term to describe all coarse and cheaper fabric.

Around 1800 the textile industry began to change. With the expansion of factory-produced yarn, weavers could increase output more easily. Thus, rural master weavers who might have woven around 600-700 yards of cloth a year in the 1790s began to hire journeymen to work their looms and double or even triple their output to 1,800 yards annually 10 years later. In cities such as Philadelphia, the transformation was more profound because an influx of British immigrant weavers, displaced by industrialization in Great Britain, provided a labor force that allowed for the growth of hand loom weaving on a small scale and in factories. Most of this new and growing textile production relied on cotton shipped from the South, but production of other fabrics also increased. In 1810 there was one Philadelphia establishment with eight looms that could make 17,000 yards of canvas a year. The textile industry in New England moved along a different path. With the increase of spinning factories after the success of the mill established in 1793 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, by Samuel Slater, manufacturers developed an extensive outworker system using women weavers in their homes in the countryside. In 1814 the Boston Associates built the first fully integrated textile production factory, including weaving and fulling, in Waltham, Massachusetts, which became the model of the larger Lowell Mills built in the 1820s.

Bibliography:

1) Adrienne D. Hood, The Weaver's Craft: Cloth, Commerce, and Industry in Early Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003)

2) Barbara M. Tucker, Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry, 1790-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984)

3) Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Knopf, 2001)

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