Mary Paul Post

Mary Paul’s first letter to her father was written to convince him to allow her to go to Lowell in order to make money in a mill. She was optimistic and excited to pursue this new opportunity. In this letter she claimed, “I am in need of clothes which I cannot get if I stay about here and for that reason I want to go to Lowell or some other place.” Mary wanted to make money so that she could afford to buy goods, like clothing.  She believed that if she stayed on the farm that would not be possible. When Mary first started living working in the Lowell mill, she enjoyed her stay there. She wrote to her father in the second letter, “I think of staying here a year certain, if not more.” She wanted to stay at the mill because she loves receiving the payments and she adores the boarding house. She could not wait to tell her family about her new experience. However, in the third letter the tone was slightly different. She sounded more scared than before, like when she wrote, “Last Thursday one girl fell down and broke her neck which caused instant death.” She witnessed horror stories and chose to tell her father about them. This means she wanted him to know she was in a dangerous place. Mary explained that her health is downgrading from working so hard. In her fourth letter, Mary wrote to her father, “I stand it well, though they tell me that I am growing very poor.” She was doing a wonderful job in her work, but from working in the mill, she was becoming weak. Her letters were becoming more negative than they started out as. By her fifth letter, Mary admitted that the work was difficult and was negatively impacting her. She wrote, “I cannot tell how it is but never since I have worked in the mill have I been so very tired as I have for the last week but it may be owing to the long rest I have had for the last six months.” The work was exhausting and she was not able to get enough sleep. Mary’s experiences have become regretful and disappointing as the letters were written. Her experiment represents both the success and failure of the ‘Lowell Experiment.’  The girls who worked in the Lowell mill discovered the harsh conditions of labor there, which forced the girls to protest and demand for fair conditions. Nobody planned to work at the mill forever, so they would lose many of the workers eventually. However, it was a success for Mary because she learned that she liked the city more than the farm and that she did not want to go back to the farm and get married there. Also, this was successful to the mill owners because they paid the girls poorly and got a lot of work done. Young girls were easily lured into the mills since girls want to earn money in order to buy fancy items and it was an adventure to get out of the house and work in a city.

http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/bringing-history-home/page_02/sb3.htm