Essay on Mohandas Gandhi

Writing for Social Studies Assessment

Directions:

Write a brief essay on the topic below using the documents as evi-

dence. Be sure to consider the point of view of the writer who created each

document. Your essay should include three parts: (1) an introduction that

states your main point, (2) a body that develops your main point and offers

evidence from the documents and your knowledge of American history, and

(3) a conclusion that restates your main point. Include specific historical

details and use information from the documents.

Essay topic:

In the late 1800s, the United States economy was changed by new

inventions, remarkably rapid growth, and new forms of transportation and

communication. What benefits did these changes bring about? What problems

did they cause?

Document 1:

Historian Sandy Lydon, describing the lives of Chinese immi-

grants who worked on California railroads, in

Chinese Gold

(1985)

“Between 1875 and 1880 the Chinese built three separate railroads, laid forty-

two miles of track, and drilled 2.6 miles of tunnels to stitch Santa Cruz County

together and attach it permanently to the world beyond the Santa Cruz Moun-

tains. The Chinese contributed not only their sweat and their muscle, but

their lives. At least fifty Chinese were killed in accidents while building those

railroads . . .

Chinese railroad workers on the Santa Cruz Railroad worked six ten-hour

days a week and were paid one dollar a day. Two dollars per week [were]

deducted from their pay for food, while expenses such as clothing and recreation

chipped away at the remaining four dollars.”

Document 2:

Andrew Carnegie, describing the beginnings of the American steel

industr

y

, in an essay (1901)

“As late as 1810 there were produced in the whole country only 917 tons of

steel. . . . It was not [until] 1864, when the last century was almost two-thirds

gone, that the revolution in steel manufacture came to us, and the Iron Age

began to give way to the new King Steel, for our first Bessemer steel was made in

that notable year, and steel [that earlier had cost] from six to seven cents per

pound for ordinary grades has since sold at less than one cent per pound.

There is one element of cost, however, . . . that has not been [reduced], and

that is human labor. [Wages have] risen and the tendency is to higher earnings

per man.”