We have provided a couple of activity suggestions, but there are many ways that you can use these documents with your students. Feel free to use the primary sources in lessons of your own design.
In preparation for the activities, students should have a grounding in the Industrial Revolution (in particular the textile industry in Massachusetts), and the early 19th-century shift from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy that changed the way Americans lived and work. Whether you have covered the Industrial Revolution in a previous lesson of your own, in a textbook, or with our suggested background activity, students will be more successful with their document analysis if they understand the early American Industrial Revolution as the context of Barilla’s life.