Mary Paul Letters Response

Mary Paul was a young girl who was born on a small farm in New Hampshire. She had correspondence with a cousin who had moved to Lowell to work in the newly erected cotton mills. She decided she wanted to do the same, and begged her father to let her go. After much persuasion, her father let her go off into the large city of Lowell to work. While there, she wrote letters to her family explaining her job and how she was being treated in the new environment. The first letter was to her father, asking his permission to attend the mills and work full time, seeing it as a great opportunity to earn her own way in the world. You can tell that she is anxious to go as she lists off many of the benefits she would gain by working in the mills. Her second letter is her first from Lowell and states what she will be working on during her stay. She also explains how the pay is going to be handled, stating how much she will be earning and how much she will have to pay for room and board. She also hints at how she wants to be written to, telling her father he must “write as soon as you receive this”. The third letter takes a darker turn in it, as she tells of how some of the girls had accidents during work, some of them actually dying on the job. This shows how she might be scared of how dangerous the work can be. The letter than turns to a better light as she tells of how she received her pay and used some of it to buy some clothes for herself. In the fourth letter, she tells of how she is one of the hardest workers in the mill room, however she is told by others that she is “growing very poor”, which means she is growing sick because of the work load. This is also explained later in the letter when she tells of her schedule in its fullest detail. She also appears to be growing lonelier as she once again asks for people to, not only write to her, but visit her as well. In letter five, she makes it very obvious that the work load she has is way too much for her. She states in the letter that she actually lost her old job and had to scrounge for a new one that wouldn't pay as much. She also complains about how the wages she already earns, which are meager at best, will be reduced even further. The final letter is very short and states that her condition as deteriorated even further. She had actually become so sick that she was “obliged to be out of the mill four days”. She also had not been paid, and didn't expect to be paid much if at all. That was her final latter before she left the mill and traveled back to Vermont. These letters are a very credible account of the impact the Lowell experiment had on the girls who participated in it. These letters show that show both success and failure in the Lowell experiment. It was a success because Mary was able to make some money working in the mills, and also was a very hard worker for the company. It was also, however, a failure because she became ill due to the increasingly bad working conditions and was also neglected in terms of pay, which led to her quitting and moving away from the mills.