The battle of three kindoms
Choose ONE question from this part. You are advised to spend 5 minutes planning and 30 minutes writing your answer. Cite relevant historical evidence in support of your generalizations and present your arguments clearly and logically.
“I am but one of many victims of Rockefeller’s colossal combination,” said Mr. [George]
Rice, “and my story is not essentially different from the rest. . . . I established what was known as the Ohio Oil Works. . . . I found to my surprise at first, though I afterward understood it perfectly, that the Standard Oil Company was offering the same quality of oil at much lower prices than I could do—from one to three cents a gallon less than I could possibly sell it for.” “I sought for the reason and found that the railroads were in league with the Standard Oil concern at every point, giving it discriminating rates and privileges of all kinds as against myself and all outside competitors.”
The organized working men and women, the producers of the wealth of the world, declare that men, women and children, with human brains and hearts, should have a better consideration than inanimate and dormant things, usually known under the euphonious title of “Property.”. . . We demand a reduction of the hours of labor, which would give a due share of work and wages to the reserve army of labor and eliminate many of the worst abuses of the industrial system now filling our poor houses and jails. . . . Labor . . . insists upon the exercise of the right to organize for self and mutual protection. . . . That the lives and limbs of the wage-workers shall be regarded as sacred as those of all others of our fellow human beings; that an injury or destruction of either by reason of negligence or maliciousness of another, shall not leave him without redress simply because he is a wage-worker. . . . And by no means the least demand of the Trade Unions is for adequate wages.
“I am but one of many victims of Rockefeller’s colossal combination,” said Mr. [George]
Rice, “and my story is not essentially different from the rest. . . . I established what was known as the Ohio Oil Works. . . . I found to my surprise at first, though I afterward understood it perfectly, that the Standard Oil Company was offering the same quality of oil at much lower prices than I could do—from one to three cents a gallon less than I could possibly sell it for.” “I sought for the reason and found that the railroads were in league with the Standard Oil concern at every point, giving it discriminating rates and privileges of all kinds as against myself and all outside competitors.”
The organized working men and women, the producers of the wealth of the world, declare that men, women and children, with human brains and hearts, should have a better consideration than inanimate and dormant things, usually known under the euphonious title of “Property.”. . . We demand a reduction of the hours of labor, which would give a due share of work and wages to the reserve army of labor and eliminate many of the worst abuses of the industrial system now filling our poor houses and jails. . . . Labor . . . insists upon the exercise of the right to organize for self and mutual protection. . . . That the lives and limbs of the wage-workers shall be regarded as sacred as those of all others of our fellow human beings; that an injury or destruction of either by reason of negligence or maliciousness of another, shall not leave him without redress simply because he is a wage-worker. . . . And by no means the least demand of the Trade Unions is for adequate wages.