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Expository Writing Historical Analysis

Expository Writing Historical Analysis. Common Core StandardsCommon Core Standards Reading (RL): 1, 2 Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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Page 1: Expository Writing Historical Analysis. Common Core StandardsCommon Core Standards  Reading (RL): 1, 2  Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Expository Writing

Historical Analysis

Page 2: Expository Writing Historical Analysis. Common Core StandardsCommon Core Standards  Reading (RL): 1, 2  Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Common Core Standards

Reading (RL): 1, 2

Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Writing (W): 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2e, 2f, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Speaking and Listening (SL): 3, 4, 4b, 5, 6

Language (L): 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, 4a

Reading for Literacy in History (RH): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Writing for Literacy in History (WHST): 2, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2e, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Page 3: Expository Writing Historical Analysis. Common Core StandardsCommon Core Standards  Reading (RL): 1, 2  Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Outcomes

In this lesson, we will cover the following objectives:

Define the purpose, placement, structure and function of an exposition.

Identify various form of exposition writing

Identify the primary characteristics and techniques of exposition writing

Review Paper Outlining

View and analyze an example paper of a Historical Analysis Exposition in writing.

View and analyze an example paper of a Historical Analysis Exposition in structure.

Examine other form of exposition in multi-media and technology.

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Prior Knowledge Inquiry

What ideas, connotations and denotations come to mind from the words expose, and exposition?

Page 5: Expository Writing Historical Analysis. Common Core StandardsCommon Core Standards  Reading (RL): 1, 2  Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Definition of Expose

Expose (v.): early 15c., “to leave without shelter or defense,” from Middle French exposer “lay open, set forth” (13c.), from Latin exponere “set forth.”

Ex: without, not including, without the right to have

Poser: to place, lay down, to exhibit openly, to unmask

To expose is to place out to the elements.

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Exposition

1. the act of expounding, setting forth, or explaining: the exposition of a point of view.

2. writing or speech primarily intended to convey information or to explain; a detailed statement or explanation; explanatory treatise: The students prepared expositions on familiar essay topics. Synonyms: elucidation, commentary; critique, interpretation, exegesis, explication.

3. the act of presenting to view; display

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Rhetorical Modes

The four most common rhetorical modes (also called modes of discourse) are called: exposition, argumentation, description and narration.

This presentation provides an explanation and model of expository writing, particularly the historical analysis.

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Modes of Discourse

As one of the four traditional modes of discourse, expository writing may include elements of narration, description, and argumentation, but unlike creative writing, or argumentative writing, the primary goal of exposition is to deliver information about an issue, event, subject, method or idea.

Examples of expository writing include (but are not limited to): non fiction books, manuals, pamphlets, journals, definitions, research papers, science reports, term papers, text books, encyclopedia articles, news stories, how-to essay (recipes), personal letters, reports, wills, and history reports, including analysis, synthesis and arguments on events and circumstances in space and time.

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The Exposition

Page 11: Expository Writing Historical Analysis. Common Core StandardsCommon Core Standards  Reading (RL): 1, 2  Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Expository Writing

An expository paper is a genre of essay writing that requires the student to investigate and/or expound upon an idea, evaluate evidence, and set forth an argument concerning that idea in a clear and concise manner.

This form of writing appeals to a readers reasoning skills and understanding rather than their imagination, therefore the writer must demonstrate a secure knowledge of their subject.

Expository writing is often accomplished through comparison and contrast, definition, example, the analysis of cause and effect, etc.

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Functions of Exposition

Expository writing intends to inform the reader.

It explains, describes, gives information, informs or defines

It is writing that responds to questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? And How?

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Use expository writing when you want to…

Tell what happened…

Write a report or analysis on…

Explain how to…

Describe how to…

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Structural Components of Expository papers

A clear, concise, and defined thesis statement that occurs in the first paragraph of the essay.

Clear and logical transitions between the introduction body and conclusion.

Body paragraphs include evidential support

Evidential support: primary source quotes, statistics, facts, logic and anecdotal elements.

Creative touches like similes, metaphors and analogies.

The Conclusion should synthesis the information presented, rather than present new information.

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Expository Writing Strategies

Analogy (including metaphor and simile)

AnalysisCause and EffectClassificationCompare and

ContrastDescription/

Elaboration

DefinitionExamplesProcess/

SupportSequencingSynthesizeSummary

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Historical Exposition

A historical exposition is an expository paper that explores, examines, analyzes and even argues about specific event(s) and circumstances of an era – a movement of the past into the next age, or possibly the present and future.

The era and/or significant event expounded upon in the essay is usually set within an animated body of circumstances and norms that influenced the respected time and space of the period.

Writers of historical exposition (mainly historians and students of history) traditionally respond to questions that seek understanding into how certain circumstances, events and ideas of an era changed time and space (for better or worse). They try to (re)construct and how this movement may continue to ripple into and influence the persons and environment of the present and future.

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Qualities of Historical Exposition

Specifics are more helpful than immense generalities

If you are writing about a historic era, such as the Industrial Revolution, it is better to be precise and specify a exact subject within your topic, rather than attempt to capture the entire philosophy, history and significance of the era. By choosing one person or one incident to expose, you will also explain the circumstances and norms of the time through their experience(s).

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Characteristics and Techniques of Exposition

Focus on a precise topic that lies embedded within the major scope of your paper (the more clear and precise, the better!). You will be able to express your ideas better through more focused examples that develop a fluid story to expose your subject.

Use logical, supporting evidence (facts and primary sources)

Provide sufficient background information, details, explanations and examples

Clarify your ideas and evidence

Use smooth transitions

Use vocabulary related to your topic or terminology related to the field

Do not assume prior knowledge of your reader

Meaningfully sequence your ideas in a logical order: cause and effect, chronology, deductive or inductive reasoning, thematically, etc.

Use strong organization

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Patterns of ExpositionPattern Description Cue words/Literary

Examples

Circumlocution

Depicts a pattern in which the speaker discusses a topic, then diverts to discuss a related but different topic

To extend, A similar situation, A like comparison

Narrative interspersion

A pattern or a sub-pattern imbedded in other patterns in which the speaker or writer intersperses a narrative within the expository text for specific purposes, including to clarify, or elaborate on a point or to link the subject matter to a personal experience

Similar to Into the Wild, by John Krakauer, or a frame narrative like The Canterbury Tales

Recursion When a speaker/writer discusses a topic, then restates it using different words or symbolism. It is uses to drive home the point and to give special emphasis to the text.

In Hebrew writing, this can be seen in Midrash techniques.

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Patterns of ExpositionPattern Description Cue words/Literary

examples

Description The author describes a topic by listing characteristics, features ad examples

For example, characteristics areApplying the senses

Sequence The author lists item or events in numerical, sequential or chronological order

First, second, third; next; then; finally

Comparison The author explains how to or more things are alike and/or how they are different

Different; in contrast; alike; same as; on the other hand

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Patterns of ExpositionPattern Description Cue words/Literary

Examples

Cause and Effect The author lists one or more causes and the resulting effect or effects

Reasons why; if…then; as a result; therefore; because; Expository writing applies the cause and effect sentence frames of because, if… then, therefore, furthermore, etc.

Problem and Solution The author states a problem and lists one or more solutions for the problem. A variation of this pattern is the question –and-answer format in which the author poses a question and then answers it.

Problem is; dilemma is; puzzle is solved; question… answer

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1. Research 2. Brain storm3. Sequence your

ideas 4. Outline5. Write your first

draft

Planning your writing:

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Writing Process1.Pre-Writing2.Drafting3.Revision4.Editing/Peer Editing5.Publishing/Final Draft

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Prompt for a historical analysis exposition paper:

Prompt:

Analyze some of the major implications of the Industrial Revolution on the American working class.

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The Outline

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Outline

Prompt: Analyze some of the major implications of the Industrial Revolution on the American working class. Topic: Rockefeller and the Unions 1. Introductiona. Industrial Revolution era/backgroundb. Rockefeller – Captain of Industry/Robber Baronc. Thesis statement: property rights, business regulations and unions. Other key terms: bureaucracy, institution, and legalization. 2. Ownership and Property rightsa. Cheap paper granting standard oil business operations – Chernow, pg. 132b. Property rights and the status quo – Josephson, 367-368 3. Business regulations, rebates and ownershipa. Monopolies, rebates and trusts – Rockefeller – Chernow, pg 116b. Political machines – Josephson pg. 352 4. Workers/Unionsa. Rockefellers view of unions and immigration/Worker circumstances – Josephson, pg. 362b. Ludlow massacre, Chernow, pg. 575-579 5. Conclusiona. Industry helped develop the US economy, middle class and progressive reformsb. Unions/labor rights developed through monopoliesc. metaphor to ponder/the “so what?”

Page 27: Expository Writing Historical Analysis. Common Core StandardsCommon Core Standards  Reading (RL): 1, 2  Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Prompt: Analyze some of the major implications of the Industrial Revolution on the American working class.

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The Expository Essay – A Historical Analysis

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Introduction

John D. Rockefeller and the Unions 

During the American Industrial Revolution (circa 1760 – 1840) the production of goods shifted from human hands to factory machines. The mass market of consumer goods created unprecedented sustained growth in the population and income of the upper, middle and lower classes. The developmental aspects of the Industrial Revolution impacted average life expectancy rates, which grew from 31 years before to 70 years after, in the industrialized countries. However, the growing pains of industrialization reveal a volatile and inhumane adolescence of economic advancement. The increased capital, means of production, and wealth of the era was given birth through feudal tactics, which avariciously consumed the animal energies of the vulnerable labor force. The ruthless business practices of the excessively wealthy and powerful Captains of Industry/Robber Barons, such as John D. Rockefeller so expended the labor force, that the workers only recourse of survival and self-sustainability was unionization. Even though, the Industrial Revolution is most often credited for developing the wealth of nations in the United States and Western Europe, another outgrowth of its most exploitative activities were the workers’ unions. The legalization of property rights and the lack of business regulations were major factors leading into the manifestation of labor rights and unions.

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Body Paragraph OneJohn D. Rockefeller was the founder, chairman and major shareholder of Standard Oil (incorporated in 1870 and broken in 1911 under the Sherman Anti-Trust law), the largest oil company in the world. He initially grew his company through horizontal integration and then, vertical integration. The conception of Standard Oil was an old school feudal swipe. The acquisition of new world resources were taken by those who were first to insist that they had legal rights to them, who then developed the bureaucracy to defend those rights, which then became instituted through the status-quo, and eventually banked through hegemonic influences. Rockefeller did not carry battle axes, cross bows and spears in his bloody conquest, rather he held his attorney, councilmen and authoritarian stature up close for a paperwork entitlement. Without any legal training, Rockefeller’s secretary, Henry M. Flagler, drew up a document in 1870 that incorporated Standard Oil. The paper was described as “a cheap looking legal paper, faded yellow and of evident poor material, granting the Standard Oil Company the right to engage in business” (Chernow, 132). This, along with Rockefeller’s shrew business management, was enough to appeal to investors. Within two years, Rockefeller had destroyed most of his competition in Cleveland, Ohio (the headquarters of Standard Oil) and the Northeast. Maintaining ownership of resources was difficult and even impossible to arbitrate between industrial businessmen in the early 1880s, however such laws became most necessary, and were promptly and effectively enforced when associations of laborers challenged the appropriations and questioned their own working conditions in the late 1880s. At that time, judicial decisions enforcing the “sacred rights of property” were drawn up to maintain and enforce Rockefeller’s wealth, by Joseph Choate, his authorized attorney. Choate’s appeal stated, 

The metaphysics of ‘natural history,’ pecuniary or otherwise, as Veblen comments in his ‘Theory of Business Enterprise,’ was firmly founded in the Constitution of the land. The owner retained all freedom of contract, and was never to be deprived of ‘life, liberty and property’ without due process of law.

On the other hand, the workman under the standardized, concentrated form of economic life which machine industry imposed might have no choice left him in the acceptance of a contract for his labor. He might starve. But, the necessities of a group of workmen are, under the law ‘not competent to set aside … the natural freedom of the owners of the processes to let work go on or not, as the outlook for profits may decide. Profits is a business proposition, livelihood is not’ (Josephson, 367-368). This legal document, along with simultaneous legislation declaring the new-direct income-tax law unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, granted the industrialists divine and sacred rights to own and exploit both property and labor.

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Body Paragraph Two:

Once Rockefeller secured the horizontal integration (acquisition of his competitor’s companies) for Standard Oil, his business interests vied for the vertical integration (ownership of all the means of production, from natural resources to distribution). Railway rebates were a primary tool to leverage his force inexorable. Rockefeller defended his rebate deals by justifying,  

‘Who can buy beef the cheapest – the housewife for her family, the steward for a club or hotel, or the commissary for an army? Who is entitled to better rebates from a railroad, those who give it 5000 barrels a day, or those who give 500 barrels – or 50 barrels?… I deny that it was reguarded as a dishonorable practice for a merchant or manufacturer to obtain the best rates possible for his goods … For these arrangements were not except by the academic expected to be published, any more than the general of an army’s plans are published to enable the enemy to

defeat him’ (Chernow, 116-117).

 Certainly, Rockefeller viewed his business tactics justified by the survival of the fittest. He was relentlessly without remorse in his destruction of small farmers and independent shippers across America, and he profited enormously for the inability of the government to regulate the inequity of the transportation systems. Again, Rockefeller’s lobbying efforts maintained his status quo and empire over and above the working class. In the book, The Passing of the Idle Rich, Frederick Townsend Martin captured the intention and ideology of the elite. Martin wrote,

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 We (the elite) care absolutely nothing about statehood bills, pensions

agitation, waterway appropriations, ‘pork barrel,’ state rights, or any other political question, save inasmuch as it threatens or fortifies existing conditions. Touch the question of tariff, touch the issue of the income tax, touch the problem of railroad regulation, or touch the most vital of all business matters, the questions of general federal regulation of industrial corporations, and the people amongst whom I live my life become immediately rabid partisans… We are not politicians or public thinkers; we are the rich; we own America; we got it, God knows how; but we intend to keep it if we can by throwing all the tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our political connection, our purchased senators, our hungry congressmen, our public-speaking demagogues into the scale against any legislation, any political platform, any Presidential campaign, that threatens the integrity of our estate

(Josephson, 352). With overpowering force the elite owned the natural resources of the land, the means of production, the hegemony over judicial decisions, and the bodies and energies of the laborers. And yet, there was one component lying outside elitist control and jurisdiction despite their attempts to beat it down – the hearts and minds of the American workers.

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Body Paragraph Three

Rockefeller reviled his workers as anarchists who disrupted the his sacred world order when they ceased to conform in fellowship to their objected status as written in their contracts, and submit to their benefactor’s divine rights. He supported immigration so that the labor pool would naturally create a competitive environment for work, conceding poor wages and conditions by the employers.

Whenever possible and as long as possible the owners of factories

and industries, spurred by competition, sought to hold their laborers to the lowest possible wages and the longest hours; and toward the middle of the nineteenth century to render the motions of labor as simple, as mechanical as possible, so that great numbers of women, children and unskilled Negroes could be pressed into service. From the beginning the managers of industrials enterprise favored the free immigration of subjects of every race and land under the sun to this asylum of freedom – even if they had to be brought here in contract labor gangs… ‘Foreigners as a rule earn the lowest wages and work the full stint of hours…’ (Josephson, 362).

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 The impoverished conditions of the workers however, did nothing but demonstrate how they were beaten, beaten and beaten, and therefore, they understood how they might overcome their historical circumstance through associations and unions. In 1913, the Rockefellers owned 40% of the stock of The Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI). The CFI work force experienced the brutality and oppression, “the cold-blooded barbarism” that had been acquired by Rockefeller and like industrialists when the workers attempted to gain union recognition as the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and negotiate for better hours, wages and housing conditions. To respond to his effort, the coal company evicted the strikers from the company homes, forcing the families to pitch tents outside company grounds, in a space called Ludlow. By then end of September 1913, 11,000 of the 14,000 employees were on strike bringing the Colorado coal mining to a halt. The Governor of Colorado, Elias Ammons sent in the National Guard to protect company interests. CFI still refused to recognize the union while over 20,000 men, women and children suffered through a freezing blizzard moving through Colorado in their pitched tents. Rockefeller’s power was beyond censure, and the company abuses inflicted onto the miners and families were commonly exempted, while the miners were depicted as anarchists and hoodlums. In April of 1914 a drunken guard – an arsonist – of CFI spread a blaze from tent to tent with oil-drenched torches, and the company militiamen hit the tents with machine-gun fire. The following morning, two women and eleven children were found huddled together, dead in a dirt bunker that had been scooped out by hand under one of the tents. The smoke of the fire had asphyxiated them. Junior, Rockefeller’s son, blamed the coal miners for neglecting to place their women and children appropriately during a machine gun raid. In a memo, Junior wrote,

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‘There were no women or children shot by the authorities of the State or representatives of the operators in connection with the Ludlow engagement. Not one… The two women and eleven children who met their death in a pit underneath the floor of one of the tents, where they had been placed by the men, apparently for safety, were smothered. That such an outcome was inevitable as a result of placing this number of human beings in a pit 8x6 an 4 ½ feet, the aperture of which was concealed, without any possible ventilation is evident… While this loss of life is profoundly to be regretted, it is unjust in the extreme to lay it at the door of the defenders of law and property, who were in no slightest way responsible for it’…

As one Cleveland paper said, ‘The charred bodies of two dozen women and children show that Rockefeller knows how to win’ (Chernow, 578-579).

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 Without any memory or reprehension of why the miners lived in the flimsy tents, struggling for survival against the natural elements, as well as gunfire and arson, the Rockefellers escaped legal prosecution and responsibility for the miner families’ deaths, but not public outrage. Rockefeller’s image was tarnished and as a result he would complain when the press boasted that he was “the world’s richest man” saying, “You must find some other designation for me… I dislike being characterized in that way. Wealth isn’t a distinction. If I have no other achievement to my credit than the accumulation of wealth, then I have made a poor success of my life… (such stories) have a very bad effect upon a class of people with whom it is becoming increasingly difficult to deal. Such stories rouse their envy and hatred” (Hawke, 218-219). He preferred for public relations to emphasize that he “‘made the country rich. We have developed the country, coalmines and cattle raising as well as cotton. We have created this earning power by developing the system’” (Hawke, 188). Indeed, Rockefeller wanted credit for his divine ordination of his appropriations.

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Conclusion

The wealth developed through coal mining was not distributed among the miners, who were exploited in every aspect, rather the money was concentrated within the company ownership, and those who anointed themselves with rights of ownership without restraint. These industrialists often reinvested their fortunes in other business ventures. Though the economy grew, the workers were used and oppressed in the process and historic events like the Ludlow Massacre brought these abuses to light. The Ludlow Massacre would come to inform and influence progressive legislation that protected union status. Even though the UMWA never received recognition by the CFI, the miner’s unions were able to receive legal support and change the labor laws more immensely and effectively than any other association. Ludlow Massacre supported the passage of human-centered laws, which enacted the eight-hour workday, as well bans on child labor. The fall out of ashes and debris, and burnt patches of earth scorched by the industrial giants, were later fertilized and cultivated by progressive activists. Still, it is better to care for the soil with consistent and fair fertilization that allows the ground to be healthy with nutrients, and abundant with resources. The natural elements of sun and rain given in equity would protect the land from the rages and extremes of feast and famine, as well as natures of violence and entitlements of oppression of all-consuming appetites. Such insatiability is best avoided through greater business regulation and sounder mediation upon all precious resources.

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Bibliography Average Life Expectancy rates throughout the world. Central Intelligence Agency; The World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York: Random House, 1998. Hawke, David Freeman. John D.; The Founding Father of the Rockefellers. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1980. Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons. San Diego: A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1934. 

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Instructions: Read and annotate the paragraph specified. Then highlight the paragraph according to the stoplight method: Green, Yellow, Red. Finally, complete the descriptive outline graphic organizer for the paragraph.

Analyzing Paragraph/Essay Structure

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Stoplight Method

Color code using traffic signal colors

Hooks, topic and introductory sentences, and reminders.

Reasons, details, facts of the background information and transitions.

Evidence, quotes, commentary and analysis.

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Paragraph one – The Introduction

Read, Annotate, Highlight and Descriptive Outline

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Introduction

John D. Rockefeller and the Unions During the American Industrial Revolution (circa 1760 – 1840) the production of goods shifted from human hands to factory machines. The mass market of consumer goods created unprecedented sustained growth in the population and income of the upper, middle and lower classes. The developmental aspects of the Industrial Revolution impacted average life expectancy rates, which grew from 31 years before to 70 years after, in the industrialized countries. However, the growing pains of industrialization reveal a volatile and inhumane adolescence of economic advancement. The increased capital, means of production, and wealth of the era was given birth through feudal tactics, which avariciously consumed the animal energies of the vulnerable labor force. The ruthless business practices of the excessively wealthy and powerful Captains of Industry/Robber Barons, such as John D. Rockefeller, so expended the labor force, that the workers only recourse of survival and self-sustainability was unionization. Even though, the Industrial Revolution is most often credited for developing the wealth of nations in the United States and Western Europe, another outgrowth of its most exploitative activities were the workers’ unions. The legalization of property rights and the lack of business regulations were major factors leading into the manifestation of labor rights and unions.

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Introduction

John D. Rockefeller and the Unions During the American Industrial Revolution (circa 1760 – 1840) the production of goods shifted from human hands to factory machines. The mass market of consumer goods created unprecedented sustained growth in the population and income of the upper, middle and lower classes. The developmental aspects of the Industrial Revolution impacted average life expectancy rates, which grew from 31 years before to 70 years after, in the industrialized countries. However, the growing pains of industrialization reveal a volatile and inhumane adolescence of economic advancement. The increased capital, means of production, and wealth of the era was given birth through feudal tactics, which avariciously consumed the animal energies of the vulnerable labor force. The ruthless business practices of the excessively wealthy and powerful Captains of Industry/Robber Barons, such as John D. Rockefeller, so expended the labor force, that the workers only recourse of survival and self-sustainability was unionization. Even though, the Industrial Revolution is most often credited for developing the wealth of nations in the United States and Western Europe, another outgrowth of its most exploitative activities were the workers’ unions. The legalization of property rights and the lack of business regulations were major factors leading into the manifestation of labor rights and unions.

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Paragraph Two – Body Paragraph One

Read, Annotate, Highlight and Descriptive Outline

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Body Paragraph OneJohn D. Rockefeller was the founder, chairman and major shareholder of Standard Oil (incorporated in 1870 and broken in 1911 under the Sherman Anti-Trust law), the largest oil company in the world. He initially grew his company through horizontal integration and then, vertical integration. The conception of Standard Oil was an old school feudal swipe. The acquisition of new world resources were taken by those who were first to insist that they had legal rights to them, who then developed the bureaucracy to defend those rights, which then became instituted through the status-quo, and eventually banked through hegemonic influences. Rockefeller did not carry battle axes, cross bows and spears in his bloody conquest, rather he held his attorney, councilmen and authoritarian stature up close for a paperwork entitlement. Without any legal training, Rockefeller’s secretary, Henry M. Flagler, drew up a document in 1870 that incorporated Standard Oil. The paper was described as “a cheap looking legal paper, faded yellow and of evident poor material, granting the Standard Oil Company the right to engage in business” (Chernow, 132). This, along with Rockefeller’s shrew business management, was enough to appeal to investors. Within two years, Rockefeller had destroyed most of his competition in Cleveland, Ohio (the headquarters of Standard Oil) and the Northeast. Maintaining ownership of resources was difficult and even impossible to arbitrate between industrial businessmen in the early 1880s, however such laws became most necessary, and were promptly and effectively enforced when associations of laborers challenged the appropriations and questioned their own working conditions in the late 1880s. At that time, judicial decisions enforcing the “sacred rights of property” were drawn up to maintain and enforce Rockefeller’s wealth, by Joseph Choate, his authorized attorney. Choate’s appeal stated, 

The metaphysics of ‘natural history,’ pecuniary or otherwise, as Veblen comments in his ‘Theory of Business Enterprise,’ was firmly founded in the Constitution of the land. The owner retained all freedom of contract, and was never to be deprived of ‘life, liberty and property’ without due process of law.

On the other hand, the workman under the standardized, concentrated form of economic life which machine industry imposed might have no choice left him in the acceptance of a contract for his labor. He might starve. But, the necessities of a group of workmen are, under the law ‘not competent to set aside … the natural freedom of the owners of the processes to let work go on or not, as the outlook for profits may decide. Profits is a business proposition, livelihood is not’ (Josephson, 367-368). This legal document, along with simultaneous legislation declaring the new-direct income-tax law unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, granted the industrialists divine and sacred rights to own and exploit both property and labor.

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Body Paragraph OneJohn D. Rockefeller was the founder, chairman and major shareholder of Standard Oil (incorporated in 1870 and broken in 1911 under the Sherman Anti-Trust law), the largest oil company in the world. He initially grew his company through horizontal integration and then, vertical integration. The conception of Standard Oil was an old school feudal swipe. The acquisition of new world resources were taken by those who were first to insist that they had legal rights to them, who then developed the bureaucracy to defend those rights, which then became instituted through the status-quo, and eventually banked through hegemonic influences. Rockefeller did not carry battle axes, cross bows and spears in his bloody conquest, rather he held his attorney, councilmen and authoritarian stature up close for a paperwork entitlement. Without any legal training, Rockefeller’s secretary, Henry M. Flagler, drew up a document in 1870 that incorporated Standard Oil. The paper was described as “a cheap looking legal paper, faded yellow and of evident poor material, granting the Standard Oil Company the right to engage in business” (Chernow, 132). This, along with Rockefeller’s shrew business management, was enough to appeal to investors. Within two years, Rockefeller had destroyed most of his competition in Cleveland, Ohio (the headquarters of Standard Oil) and the Northeast. Maintaining ownership of resources was difficult and even impossible to arbitrate between industrial businessmen in the early 1880s, however such laws became most necessary, and were promptly and effectively enforced when associations of laborers challenged the appropriations and questioned their own working conditions in the late 1880s. At that time, judicial decisions enforcing the “sacred rights of property” were drawn up to maintain and enforce Rockefeller’s wealth, by Joseph Choate, his authorized attorney. Choate’s appeal stated, 

The metaphysics of ‘natural history,’ pecuniary or otherwise, as Veblen comments in his ‘Theory of Business Enterprise,’ was firmly founded in the Constitution of the land. The owner retained all freedom of contract, and was never to be deprived of ‘life, liberty and property’ without due process of law.

On the other hand, the workman under the standardized, concentrated form of economic life which machine industry imposed might have no choice left him in the acceptance of a contract for his labor. He might starve. But, the necessities of a group of workmen are, under the law ‘not competent to set aside … the natural freedom of the owners of the processes to let work go on or not, as the outlook for profits may decide. Profits is a business proposition, livelihood is not’ (Josephson, 367-368). This legal document, along with simultaneous legislation declaring the new-direct income-tax law unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, granted the industrialists divine and sacred rights to own and exploit both property and labor.

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Paragraph Three – Body Paragraph Two

Read, Annotate, Highlight and Descriptive Outline

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Body Paragraph Two:

Once Rockefeller secured the horizontal integration (acquisition of his competitor’s companies) for Standard Oil, his business interests vied for the vertical integration (ownership of all the means of production, from natural resources to distribution). Railway rebates were a primary tool to leverage his force inexorable. Rockefeller defended his rebate deals by justifying,  

‘Who can buy beef the cheapest – the housewife for her family, the steward for a club or hotel, or the commissary for an army? Who is entitled to better rebates from a railroad, those who give it 5000 barrels a day, or those who give 500 barrels – or 50 barrels?… I deny that it was reguarded as a dishonorable practice for a merchant or manufacturer to obtain the best rates possible for his goods … For these arrangements were not except by the academic expected to be published, any more than the general of an army’s plans are published to enable the enemy to

defeat him’ (Chernow, 116-117).

 Certainly, Rockefeller viewed his business tactics justified by the survival of the fittest. He was relentlessly without remorse in his destruction of small farmers and independent shippers across America, and he profited enormously for the inability of the government to regulate the inequity of the transportation systems. Again, Rockefeller’s lobbying efforts maintained his status quo and empire over and above the working class. In the book, The Passing of the Idle Rich, Frederick Townsend Martin captured the intention and ideology of the elite. Martin wrote,

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 We (the elite) care absolutely nothing about statehood bills, pensions

agitation, waterway appropriations, ‘pork barrel,’ state rights, or any other political question, save

inasmuch as it threatens or fortifies existing conditions. Touch the question of tariff, touch the issue of the income tax, touch the problem of railroad regulation, or touch the most vital of all business matters, the questions of general federal regulation of industrial corporations, and the people amongst whom I live my life become immediately rabid partisans… We are not politicians or public thinkers; we are the rich; we own America; we got it, God knows how; but we intend to keep it if we can by throwing all the tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our political connection, our purchased senators, our hungry congressmen, our public-speaking demagogues into the scale against any legislation, any political platform, any Presidential campaign, that threatens the integrity of our estate (Josephson, 352). With overpowering force the elite owned the natural resources of the land, the means of production, the hegemony over judicial decisions, and the bodies and energies of the laborers. And yet, there was one component lying outside elitist control and jurisdiction despite their attempts to beat it down – the hearts and minds of the American workers.

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Body Paragraph Two:

Once Rockefeller secured the horizontal integration (acquisition of his competitor’s companies) for Standard Oil, his business interests vied for the vertical integration (ownership of all the means of production, from natural resources to distribution). Railway rebates were a primary tool to leverage his force inexorable. Rockefeller defended his rebate deals by justifying,  

‘Who can buy beef the cheapest – the housewife for her family, the steward for a club or hotel, or the commissary for an army? Who is entitled to better rebates from a railroad, those who give it 5000 barrels a day, or those who give 500 barrels – or 50 barrels?… I deny that it was reguarded as a dishonorable practice for a merchant or manufacturer to obtain the best rates possible for his goods … For these arrangements were not except by the academic expected to be published, any more than the general of an army’s plans are published to enable the enemy to

defeat him’ (Chernow, 116-117).  Certainly, Rockefeller viewed his business tactics justified by the survival of the fittest. He was relentlessly without remorse in his destruction of small farmers and independent shippers across America, and he profited enormously for the inability of the government to regulate the inequity of the transportation systems. Again, Rockefeller’s lobbying efforts maintained his status quo and empire over and above the working class. In the book, The Passing of the Idle Rich, Frederick Townsend Martin captured the intention and ideology of the elite. Martin wrote,

Page 51: Expository Writing Historical Analysis. Common Core StandardsCommon Core Standards  Reading (RL): 1, 2  Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

 We (the elite) care absolutely nothing about statehood bills, pensions

agitation, waterway appropriations, ‘pork barrel,’ state rights, or any other political question, save inasmuch as it threatens or fortifies existing conditions. Touch the question of tariff, touch the issue of the income tax, touch the problem of railroad regulation, or touch the most vital of all business matters, the questions of general federal regulation of industrial corporations, and the people amongst whom I live my life become immediately rabid partisans… We are not politicians or public thinkers; we are the rich; we own America; we got it, God knows

how; but we intend to keep it if we can by throwing all the tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our political connection, our purchased senators, our hungry congressmen, our public-speaking demagogues into the scale against any legislation, any political platform, any Presidential campaign, that threatens the integrity of our estate (Josephson, 352). With overpowering force the elite owned the natural resources of the land, the means of production, the hegemony over judicial decisions, and the bodies and energies of the laborers. And yet, there was one component lying outside elitist control and jurisdiction despite their attempts to beat it down – the hearts and minds of the American workers.

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Paragraph Four – Body Paragraph Three

Read, Annotate, Highlight and Descriptive Outline

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Body Paragraph Three

Rockefeller reviled his workers as anarchists who disrupted the his sacred world order when they ceased to conform in fellowship to their objected status as written in their contracts, and submit to their benefactor’s divine rights. He supported immigration so that the labor pool would naturally create a competitive environment for work, conceding poor wages and conditions by the employers.

Whenever possible and as long as possible the owners of factories

and industries, spurred by competition, sought to hold their laborers to the lowest possible wages and the longest hours; and toward the middle of the nineteenth century to render the motions of labor as simple, as mechanical as possible, so that great numbers of women, children and unskilled Negroes could be pressed into service. From the beginning the managers of industrials enterprise favored the free immigration of subjects of every race and land under the sun to this asylum of freedom – even if they had to be brought here in contract labor gangs… ‘Foreigners as a rule earn the lowest wages and work the full stint of hours…’ (Josephson, 362).

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 The impoverished conditions of the workers however, did nothing but demonstrate how they were beaten, beaten and beaten, and therefore, they understood how they might overcome their historical circumstance through associations and unions. In 1913, the Rockefellers owned 40% of the stock of The Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI). The CFI work force experienced the brutality and oppression, “the cold-blooded barbarism” that had been acquired by Rockefeller and like industrialists when the workers attempted to gain union recognition as the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and negotiate for better hours, wages and housing conditions. To respond to his effort, the coal company evicted the strikers from the company homes, forcing the families to pitch tents outside company grounds, in a space called Ludlow. By then end of September 1913, 11,000 of the 14,000 employees were on strike bringing the Colorado coal mining to a halt. The Governor of Colorado, Elias Ammons sent in the National Guard to protect company interests. CFI still refused to recognize the union while over 20,000 men, women and children suffered through a freezing blizzard moving through Colorado in their pitched tents. Rockefeller’s power was beyond censure, and the company abuses inflicted onto the miners and families were commonly exempted, while the miners were depicted as anarchists and hoodlums. In April of 1914 a drunken guard – an arsonist – of CFI spread a blaze from tent to tent with oil-drenched torches, and the company militiamen hit the tents with machine-gun fire. The following morning, two women and eleven children were found huddled together, dead in a dirt bunker that had been scooped out by hand under one of the tents. The smoke of the fire had asphyxiated them. Junior, Rockefeller’s son, blamed the coal miners for neglecting to place their women and children appropriately during a machine gun raid. In a memo, Junior wrote,

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‘There were no women or children shot by the authorities of the State or representatives of the operators in connection with the Ludlow engagement. Not one… The two women and eleven children who met their death in a pit underneath the floor of one of the tents, where they had been placed by the men, apparently for safety, were smothered. That such an outcome was inevitable as a result of placing this number of human beings in a pit 8x6 an 4 ½ feet, the aperture of which was concealed, without any possible ventilation is evident… While this loss of life is profoundly to be regretted, it is unjust in the extreme to lay it at the door of the defenders of law and property, who were in no slightest way responsible for it’…

As one Cleveland paper said, ‘The charred bodies of two dozen women and children show that Rockefeller knows how to win’ (Chernow, 578-579).

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Without any memory or reprehension of why the miners lived in the flimsy tents, struggling for survival against the natural elements, as well as gunfire and arson, the Rockefellers escaped legal prosecution and responsibility for the miner families’ deaths, but not public outrage. Rockefeller’s image was tarnished and as a result he would complain when the press boasted that he was “the world’s richest man” saying, “You must find some other designation for me… I dislike being characterized in that way. Wealth isn’t a distinction. If I have no other achievement to my credit than the accumulation of wealth, then I have made a poor success of my life… (such stories) have a very bad effect upon a class of people with whom it is becoming increasingly difficult to deal. Such stories rouse their envy and hatred” (Hawke, 218-219). He preferred for public relations to emphasize that he “‘made the country rich. We have developed the country, coalmines and cattle raising as well as cotton. We have created this earning power by developing the system’” (Hawke, 188). Indeed, Rockefeller wanted credit for his divine ordination of his appropriations.

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Body Paragraph Three

Rockefeller reviled his workers as anarchists who disrupted the his sacred world order when they ceased to conform in fellowship to their objected status as written in their contracts, and submit to their benefactor’s divine rights. He supported immigration so that the labor pool would naturally create a competitive environment for work, conceding poor wages and conditions by the employers.

Whenever possible and as long as possible the owners of factories

and industries, spurred by competition, sought to hold their laborers to the lowest possible wages and the longest hours; and toward the middle of the nineteenth century to render the motions of labor as simple, as mechanical as possible, so that great numbers of women, children and unskilled Negroes could be pressed into service. From the beginning the managers of industrials enterprise favored the free immigration of subjects of every race and land under the sun to this asylum of freedom – even if they had to be brought here in contract labor gangs… ‘Foreigners as a rule earn the lowest wages and work the full stint of hours…’ (Josephson, 362).

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 The impoverished conditions of the workers however, did nothing but demonstrate how they were beaten, beaten and beaten, and therefore, they understood how they might overcome their historical circumstance through associations and unions. In 1913, the Rockefellers owned 40% of the stock of The Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI). The CFI work force experienced the brutality and oppression, “the cold-blooded barbarism” that had been acquired by Rockefeller and like industrialists when the workers attempted to gain union recognition as the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and negotiate for better hours, wages and housing conditions. To respond to his effort, the coal company evicted the strikers from the company homes, forcing the families to pitch tents outside company grounds, in a space called Ludlow. By then end of September 1913, 11,000 of the 14,000 employees were on strike bringing the Colorado coal mining to a halt. The Governor of Colorado, Elias Ammons sent in the National Guard to protect company interests. CFI still refused to recognize the union while over 20,000 men, women and children suffered through a freezing blizzard moving through Colorado in their pitched tents. Rockefeller’s power was beyond censure, and the company abuses inflicted onto the miners and families were commonly exempted, while the miners were depicted as anarchists and hoodlums. In April of 1914 a drunken guard – an arsonist – of CFI spread a blaze from tent to tent with oil-drenched torches, and the company militiamen hit the tents with machine-gun fire. The following morning, two women and eleven children were found huddled together, dead in a dirt bunker that had been scooped out by hand under one of the tents. The smoke of the fire had asphyxiated them. Junior, Rockefeller’s son, blamed the coal miners for neglecting to place their women and children appropriately during a machine gun raid. In a memo, Junior wrote,

Page 59: Expository Writing Historical Analysis. Common Core StandardsCommon Core Standards  Reading (RL): 1, 2  Reading (RI): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

‘There were no women or children shot by the authorities of the State or representatives of the operators in connection with the Ludlow engagement. Not one… The two women and eleven children who met their death in a pit underneath the floor of one of the tents, where they had been placed by the men, apparently for safety, were smothered. That such an outcome was inevitable as a result of placing this number of human beings in a pit 8x6 an 4 ½ feet, the aperture of which was concealed, without any possible ventilation is evident… While this loss of life is profoundly to be regretted, it is unjust in the extreme to lay it at the door of the defenders of law and property, who were in no slightest way responsible for it’…

As one Cleveland paper said, ‘The charred bodies of two dozen women and children show that Rockefeller knows how to win’ (Chernow, 578-579).

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 Without any memory or reprehension of why the miners lived in the flimsy tents, struggling for survival against the natural elements, as well as gunfire and arson, the Rockefellers escaped legal prosecution and responsibility for the miner families’ deaths, but not public outrage. Rockefeller’s image was tarnished and as a result he would complain when the press boasted that he was “the world’s richest man” saying, “You must find some other designation for me… I dislike being characterized in that way. Wealth isn’t a distinction. If I have no other achievement to my credit than the accumulation of wealth, then I have made a poor success of my life… (such stories) have a very bad effect upon a class of people with whom it is becoming increasingly difficult to deal. Such stories rouse their envy and hatred” (Hawke, 218-219). He preferred for public relations to emphasize that he “‘made the country rich. We have developed the country, coalmines and cattle raising as well as cotton. We have created this earning power by developing the system’” (Hawke, 188). Indeed, Rockefeller wanted credit for his divine ordination of his appropriations.

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Paragraph Five – The Conclusion

Read, Annotate, Highlight and Descriptive Outline

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Conclusion

The wealth developed through coal mining was not distributed among the miners, who were exploited in every aspect, rather the money was concentrated within the company ownership, and those who anointed themselves with rights of ownership without restraint. These industrialists often reinvested their fortunes in other business ventures. Though the economy grew, the workers were used and oppressed in the process and historic events like the Ludlow Massacre brought these abuses to light. The Ludlow Massacre would come to inform and influence progressive legislation that protected union status. Even though the UMWA never received recognition by the CFI, the miner’s unions were able to receive legal support and change the labor laws more immensely and effectively than any other association. Ludlow Massacre supported the passage of human-centered laws, which enacted the eight-hour workday, as well bans on child labor. The fall out of ashes and debris, and burnt patches of earth scorched by the industrial giants, were later fertilized and cultivated by progressive activists. Still, it is better to care for the soil with consistent and fair fertilization that allows the ground to be healthy with nutrients, and abundant with resources. The natural elements of sun and rain given in equity would protect the land from the rages and extremes of feast and famine, as well as natures of violence and entitlements of oppression of all-consuming appetites. Such insatiability is best avoided through greater business regulation and sounder mediation upon all precious resources.

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Conclusion

The wealth developed through coal mining was not distributed among the miners, who were exploited in every aspect, rather the money was concentrated within the company ownership, and those who anointed themselves with rights of ownership without restraint. These industrialists often reinvested their fortunes in other business ventures. Though the economy grew, the workers were used and oppressed in the process and historic events like the Ludlow Massacre brought these abuses to light. The Ludlow Massacre would come to inform and influence progressive legislation that protected union status. Even though the UMWA never received recognition by the CFI, the miner’s unions were able to receive legal support and change the labor laws more immensely and effectively than any other association. Ludlow Massacre supported the passage of human-centered laws, which enacted the eight-hour workday, as well bans on child labor. The fall out of ashes and debris, and burnt patches of earth scorched by the industrial giants, were later fertilized and cultivated by progressive activists. Still, it is better to care for the soil with consistent and fair fertilization that allows the ground to be healthy with nutrients, and abundant with resources. The natural elements of sun and rain given in equity would protect the land from the rages and extremes of feast and famine, as well as natures of violence and entitlements of oppression of all-consuming appetites. Such insatiability is best avoided through greater business regulation and sounder mediation upon all precious resources.

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Bibliography Average Life Expectancy rates throughout the world. Central Intelligence Agency; The World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York: Random House, 1998. Hawke, David Freeman. John D.; The Founding Father of the Rockefellers. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1980. Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons. San Diego: A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1934. 

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Think – Pair – Share Questions

Which characteristics and techniques of expository writing did you identify in the essay?

What writing techniques did you see in the paper that you have learned before?

Why do longer and more advanced essays develop the red aspects of the paper?

Why might the beginning of the paper have the most yellow?

Which characteristics and techniques of exposition can you identify in the following photography and musical expositions?

What other multi-media forms of exposition have you experienced? Any favorites?

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Woody Guthrie, Ludlow Massacre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDd64suDz1A

A Musical Exposition:

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Research Resources

http://www.mvla.net/MVHS/Department/133-Library

Mountain View High School Library

• Libguides • Library Catalogue• Online databases• Gale Resources• Jstore• eLibrary

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The End