An encyclopedia article surveying the growth of the American textile industry from household production in colonial times to the factory system of about 1900. It covers colonial homespun and linsey-woolsey, early mills such as Slater's at Pawtucket and the Waltham mill, and the power looms of Lowell, Crompton and Bigelow. It also treats the cotton, wool, worsted, silk and knit-goods branches, with an illustrated plate of spinning machinery and a statistical table of US textile industries in 1900. It ends with a call for technical schools for textile workers.