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American Studies 211 Spring 2020
Triangle Essay Assignment
Immigration, Poverty, Wealth, and Reform
There are two parts to the third assignment. You must do both parts. For part A, please write a four page (or more) essay on the topic given below. Quote from at least three of the readings in your essay, one of which must be the Triangle book required for the class. Remember, you must quote from the Triangle book in your essay. For part B, please write a two page report on one of the figures listed below. The essay is due April 20. If you have any questions or need any help, just ask.
Part A
If it is said that there are some persons in our time who have become rapidly and in a great degree rich, it is true; if it is said that large aggregations of wealth in the control of individuals is a social danger, it is not true. (William Graham Sumner)
Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. . . . Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. . . . the politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children . . . starve to death every year in the U.S. and over 100,000 shop girls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for bread. (Mary Ellen Lease, qtd. in Zinn)
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. . . . and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. (Andrew Carnegie)
Do you ever stop to think that nearly everything else you wear is the product of some poor girls hard work, who at least should be entitled to equal consideration with the birds? (Rose Schneiderman)
There was a clear conflict between the thinking represented by Sumner and Carnegie, and by the Eugenics movement advocates, and that represented by many of the working people, especially the immigrants, and farmers of the time. It was a battle of sorts between more traditional conservative defenders of limited government and laissez faire capitalism against progressive reformers, working class organizations, and farmers organizations over the future direction of American society. It was also a battle over national and racial stereotyping and fitness for democracy. Discuss this conflict, trying to be fair to all sides, representing views accurately. Of course your own thoughts are important and most welcome, but be sure to ground your discussion in the texts and support your thinking as fully as possible.
Part B
Pick one of the figures or topics below and write a two-page report on that figure or topic.
Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, Pauline Newman, Frances Perkins, Alfred E. Smith, Senator Robert Wagner, Ida Tarbell, Henry Demarest Lloyd, Ignatius Donnolly, Mary Ellen Lease, Tom Watson, Eugene Debs, Robert LaFollette, Albert and/or Lucy Parsons, Upton Sinclair, Lester Frank Ward; Jane Addams, the Haymarket Riot, the Populist Party, the Farmers Alliance, William Jennings Bryan, John Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Ida B. Wells, Big Bill Heywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, Lothrop Stoddard, Madison Grant.
please follow instructions, I have no room for errors nor plagiarism, please answer all requirements as specific as you can and if there is anything you need please come to me. also do not use anything other than the attached files. thank you.
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