• New Machines and the Factory System: Words to Know
• Textiles: The second "engine" of the Industrial Revolution
• New ways of working: The factory system
• Setting the stage for social change
• For More Information

It seems like an idealistic scene: In a quaint English cottage, a mother sits spinning cotton or wool, twisting the short fibers into yarn. Perhaps the older children are sitting at smaller spinning wheels. Upstairs, the father sits at his loom, weaving the yarn spun by his family downstairs into cloth. Not far away, a farmer tends a flock of sheep that provided the raw wool to the family, whose name might well be Weaver. An unmarried older...