In 1776, America didn’t have a single textile mill. There were no spinning mules, no water-powered looms. There were only rumors of what such things might look like and a few nonfunctioning models built from those rumors. Nearly every American woman, except the wealthiest, knew how to spin her own yarn and weave her own cloth, even as across the Atlantic women were moving out of the home and into millwork as England — bent on protecting its export market by safeguarding its trade secrets — industrialized the manufacturing of textiles.