Read and analyze the following documents, applying your social studies knowledge and skills to write a short essay of two or three paragraphs in which you:

Task: Read and analyze the following documents, applying your social studies knowledge and skills to write a short essay of two or three paragraphs in which you:

Describe the historical context surrounding these documents
Identify and explain the relationship between the events and/or ideas found in these documents (Cause and Effect, or Similarity/Difference, or Turning Point)

In developing your short essay answer of two or three paragraphs, be sure to keep these explanations in mind:

Describe means to illustrate something in words or tell about it

Historical Context refers to the relevant historical circumstances surrounding or connecting the events, ideas, or developments in these documents

Identify means to put a name to or to name

Explain means to make plain or understandable; to give reasons for or causes of; to show the logical development or relationship of

Types of Relationships:

Cause refers to something that contributes to the occurrence of an event, the rise of an idea, or the bringing about of a development

Effect refers to what happens as a consequence (result, impact, outcome) of an event, an idea, or a development

Similarity tells how something is alike or the same as something else

Difference tells how something is not alike or not the same as something else

Turning Point is a major event, idea, or historical development that brings about significant change. It can be local, regional, national, or global
Document 1

Mary Elizabeth Lease was a leader of the Knights of Labor and the Populist Party. She toured the country giving speeches and was a powerful and popular speaker. Lease gave this speech at a Populist Party convention in Kansas in 1890
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.
The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostate (bowed down) before the manufacturing East.
Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags.

The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. . . . The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their [miserable] wages deny them. . . .

We want the accursed (terrible) foreclosure system wiped out We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.
Source: Mary Elizabeth Lease Speech, Populist Party Convention, 1890

Document 2

This then is held to be the duty of the man of wealth. First: to set an example of modest, unostentatious (humble) living, shunning (avoiding) display; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him, and after doing so, to consider all surplus (extra) revenues which come to him simply as trust funds (money that one person manages for others), which he is strictly bound as a matter of duty, to administer in the manner which in his judgment is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community.

The man of wealth must become a trustee (money manager) and agent for his poorer brethren (brothers), bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer. Those who would administer wisely must indeed be wise. One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. It was better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown into the sea than spent to encourage the slothful (lazy), the drunken, the unworthy..

The [economic] laws of accumulation should be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue. But the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; entrusted for a season with a part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it did, or would have done, of itself.
Source: Excerpt from Andrew Carnegies essay, Gospel of Wealth. North American Review 1889

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