Within these villages communities made cloth for both local and foreign consumption. Textile making was a multi-stage process which relied on a wide range of skilled labour, including cotton farmers, spinners, bleachers, dyers, and weavers. Many of these jobs were tied to caste, a hereditary class system in which people's occupations were determined by their family or community group.

Company paintings like this one showing weavers at work give insight into the processes of creating Madras, which included spinning, reeling and starching the yarn before weaving.