A cotton mill is a factory that houses spinning and weaving machinery. Typically built between 1775 and 1930, mills spun cotton which was an important product during the Industrial Revolution.

Cotton mills, and the mechanisation of the spinning process, were instrumental in the growth of the machine tool industry, enabling the construction of larger cotton mills. The requirement for water helped stimulate the construction of the canal system, and the need for power the development of steam engines. Limited companies were developed to construct the mills. This led to the trading floors of the cotton exchange of Manchester, which in its turn created a vast commercial city. The mills also created additional employment, drawn largely from rural areas, leading to the expansion of local urban populations and the consequent need for additional housing. In response, mill towns with municipal governments were created. The mills provided independent incomes for girls and women. Child labour was used in the mills, and the factory system led to organised labour. Poor conditions in cotton mills became the subject of exposes, and in England, the Factory Acts were written to regulate them. The cotton mill was originally a Lancashire phenomenon that then was copied in New England and later in the southern states of America. In the 20th century, North West England lost its supremacy to the United States, then India and then China. In the 21st century, redundant mills have been accepted as part of a country's industrial heritage.

Hedy West (April 6, 1938 - July 3, 2005) was an American folksinger and songwriter.

West was of the same generation as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and others of the American folk music revival. Her most famous song "500 Miles" is one of America's best loved and best known folk songs. She was described by the English folk musician AL Lloyd as "far and away the best of American girl singers in the [folk] revival."

She was born Hedwig Grace West in Cartersville in the mountains of northern Georgia in 1938. Her father, Don West, was a southern poet and coal mine labor organizer in the 1930s; his bitter experiences included seeing a close friend machine-gunned on the street by company goons in the presence of a young daughter. Later, he operated the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia and co-founded the Highlander Folk School in New Market, Tennessee.

Her great-uncle Augustus Mulkey played the fiddle; her paternal grandmother Lillie Mulkey West played the banjo. By her teens West was singing at folk festivals, both locally and in neighbouring states. In the mid-50s she won a prize for ballad-singing in Nashville, TN. Many of her songs, including the raw materials for "500 Miles", came from Lily, who passed on the songs she had learned as a child. She used her father's poetry in several songs, such as Anger in the Land.

Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-20th-century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, and environmental causes.

As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964, and The Seekers in 1966. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS "American Masters" episode Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Seeger states it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more singable "We shall overcome".

Roger Robinson ("Trey") Wright III (born April 1, 1974) is an American classical concert pianist. He is also a Scrabble player who won the United States National Scrabble Championship in 2004.

Roger Wright was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Roger Wright, Jr., and Christy (Schmidt ) Wright. He began piano study at age 12. During high school he studied with Houston teacher John Weems. At 18 Wright made his concerto debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

Wright entered the piano program at the University of Houston, where he continued his studies with Nancy Weems, Ruth Tomfohrde, Abbey Simon, and Horacio Gutiérrez, and earned his Bachelor of Music degree. During this time he won second prize in the 1996 (U.S.) Music Teachers National Association Piano Competition, College Division. Wright remained in Houston for graduate study, earning his Master of Music degree as a student of John Perry at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music; he would later do doctoral work with Perry at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Malvina Reynolds (August 23, 1900 – March 17, 1978) was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist, best known for her song-writing, particularly the songs "Little Boxes" and "Morningtown Ride".

Malvina Milder was born in San Francisco to David and Abagail Milder, Jewish and socialist immigrants, who opposed involvement in World War I.

She married William ("Bud") Reynolds, a carpenter and labor organizer, in 1934. They had one child, Nancy Reynolds Schimmel (a songwriter and performer in her own right), in 1935. She had earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and later earned a doctorate there, finishing her dissertation in 1938.

Though she played violin in a dance band in her twenties, she began her songwriting career late in life. She was in her late 40s when she met Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger, and other folk singers and songwriters. She returned to school at UC Berkeley, where she studied music theory. She went on to write several popular songs, including "Little Boxes," "What Have They Done to the Rain," recorded by The Searchers and Joan Baez (about nuclear fallout), "It Isn't Nice" (a civil rights anthem), "Turn Around" (about children growing up, later sung by Harry Belafonte), and "There's a Bottom Below" (about depression). Reynolds was also a noted composer of children's songs, including "Magic Penny" and "Morningtown Ride," a top five UK single (December 1966) recorded by The Seekers.