Alice Morse Earle's magazine article traces attempts to establish silk culture in the American colonies and early United States, from the Virginia efforts under James I and Charles II through Carolina, Georgia, the Middle States and New England. It describes the sericulture methods and advice of the period, including a first-hand account of making sewing silk in Mansfield, Connecticut. It also covers the role of women and children as workers, the Morus multicaulis mulberry speculation of the 1830s, and why American silk raising failed to compete with Chinese and Italian producers.

An illustrated historical sketch of Lowell, Massachusetts, the 'Spindle City', from the 1884 Bay State Monthly. It traces the city from the Penacook Indians and early colonial settlement through the founding of the canals and the Merrimack, Appleton, Lowell, Boott and other cotton and woolen mill corporations, the railroads, and the city's civic growth. Later sections list mill treasurers, agents and products, churches and pastors, and closing statistics on spindles, looms, operatives and cloth output. Illustrated with views, church engravings and portraits of mill founders and civic figures.