The Octopus - Review Essay

This cartoon goes by a few names, but the Standard Oil octopus is the most common, it was created by Udo J Keppler in New York and wad published in Puck magazine on September 7th 1904. The cartoon depicts a standard oil tanker as an octopus it has its tentacles wrapped around Congress, state capital, the shipping industry, the railroads, and other business owners or politicians. The only thing that the octopus does not have control of is the White House, its eyes are fixed on it but its tentacles are just hovering above it not able to grasp it, the reason for this is because of President Roosevelt using the Sherman Antitrust Act to regulate the monopolies. The point Kepler was trying to get across the importance of regulating Standard Oil to prevent them from monopolizing farther in controlling the entire country, which at the time they already pretty much did.

White farmers in the South and Midwest faced many problems after the Civil War, economically, politically, and socially. Many farmers had a system of cultivating unimproved land, and then selling it for a profit before moving farther West. However, after the Civil War, many states had no increase or barely an increase in land value. Thus, farmers using this process were no longer earning a profit. In other states, the land value did increase greatly. However, with the coming of income taxes and the raise in property taxes, these farmers still suffered. In addition, there was a lot of tension between railroad companies and farmers because railroad companies were overcharging farmers for the transportation of crops. However, because of a monopoly,

In order to do this, the new Agricultural Adjustment Administration paid landowners to take property out of production. What ended up happening was

Eventually, the workers of American Coal, who were once the landowners of the very area they were mining, formed a labor union to fight for better working conditions. The union was met with great opposition by the company’s secret police. As time went on, the coal miners continued to fight for their rights, only to be put down violently by the coal company’s strikebreakers. Union leaders were also fired and blacklisted from the company as a means to put a stop to union activity.

Pursuing this further, the rich soil of the West was becoming poor, and floods contributed to the problem, and, eventually caused erosion. Beginning in the summer of 1887, a series of droughts forced many people to abandon their farms and towns. As circumstances worsened, farmers were beginning to be controlled by corporations and processors. The farmers were at the mercy of many trusts, which, in turn, could control the productivity and raise prices to high levels. Furthermore, during the late 19th century, many farmers considered monopolies, trusts, railroads, and money shortages as evident threats to their lifestyle. The rise of these monopolies and trusts worried many farmers because they felt that the disappearance of competition would lead to erratic and unreasonable price rises that would harm consumers. Oftentimes, these “robber barons” would prevent competitors from reaching the markets by restricting their ability to transport their goods. In Document E, James B. Weaver wrote of the main weapons of the trust-organized commerce: threats, intimidation, bribery, fraud,

The sermon-like feel of the chapter is effective because it motivates the audience, willing the workers to come together and unite against the elite. The words that Steinbeck chooses to use in this chapter not only resemble biblical language, they also show a clear contrast with how the land is being used. The biblical language can be recognized when Steinbeck beautifully depicts California before the greed manifested. He describes what can be perceived as paradise, an allusion of sorts to the Garden of Eden. This language and allusion brings the audience a sense of serenity and peacefulness that soothes the reader. This sensation is ripped away from the reader when he begins to describe the rot and the decay caused by the miserliness of the elite. By depicting the good found in the land with quasi-biblical language, the greed of the privileged becomes much more malicious and cruel. This contrast helps the audience grasp Steinbeck’s message of how the greed is causing so much turmoil in a state that was once plentiful and luscious. Steinbeck also relies on symbolism to portray his message.

In 1890 clergyman Washington Gladden wrote an article called “The Embattled Farmers”. In it he blamed the ruin of the farmers on “protective tariffs, trusts…speculation in farm products, over-greedy middlemen, and exorbitant transportation rates.”

Text Selection: This selection, taken from the young readers edition of Pollan’s bestseller, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, asks students to consider how their food is grown today and why and how that has changed. This brief history and science of United States farm ecology offers students diverse opportunities for exploration and close reading.

Characters in The Grapes of Wrath are often contrasted to emphasize certain qualities in their relationships, the most notable being a lack of empathy versus a caring and generous nature. Steinbeck’s use of juxtaposition is key to understanding the significance of the contrast involving the landowners and the migrants and why they cannot share sympathies and opinions. These two groups are both rivals and continuously reinforce differences in their lifestyles, and such is the case for the landowners and migrants, which are two drastically different classes that will not cooperate. The migrants are searching for job opportunities and safe places, but are often cheated by the landowners, who are corrupted by their drive for cheap labor and, ultimately, riches,

I was never going to sell it. My father taught me you never sell land. That’s why we have to buy Uncle Jim’s land. We have to keep it in the family.’ ‘You mean you own land worth a million dollars?’ I was thunderstruck. All those years in Welch with no food, no coal, no plumbing, and mom had been sitting on land worth one million dollars?” (Walls 273)

When I first looked at the book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, my first thoughts were that I was not going to be fascinated by a book about organic food and factory farms. When I started to indulge myself into the book I started to consider how much hard work, and time it took to get an entire meal onto my plate. Each meal, with its different ingredients, all have unique paths from which they have come from. The main notion that stayed with me throughout the entirety of the novel were the use of industrial farm systems. These factory farms completely contradict my false perception of a red barn and miles of seemingly endless pasture, filled with cattle. In these industrial farms one of the most frightening aspects, other than the slaughtering of innocent animal, is there standard of living. For example, when Mr. Pollen went to the Petaluma “organic” farm many of the Cornish Chickens were so congested together that by their

Not only does the land suffer from a break in the sacred connection between farmer and crops, the men lose a part of their humanity to the machine. Those "men" who run the tractors are described in the novel as being "part of the monster (Steinbeck, 48)." They have given their humanity to the company in return for money to buy food that was produced by machines, not by men. Chapter eleven describes the slow degrading of the spirits of the tractor men and the migrants who no longer know the land. The slow deterioration of the houses, with no people to care for and be sheltered by them, is symbolic of the death of the land and the people when they are not connected. (Steinbeck 158-159)

The 59-year-old author, Sy Montgomery, has written 20 books, each based on a specific research or expedition she has taken part in. Her studies, which she descriptively incorporates into her novels, have warranted her various book awards and acclaims. She plunges herself into the lives and mysteries of Earth’s wildlife in order to gain a further understanding of how particular organisms thrive in their wild, dangerous environments. Although Montgomery was no expert in the field of cephalopods, she quickly learned all she could about the intriguing invertebrates through fellow researcher, experts, aquarists, divers, and colleagues encountered throughout her studies about octopuses. Through diligent research via articles, studies, field

In the late 1800s the farmers believed that the railroad companies were constricting their profits away, and the government was in favor which is what gave them the reason for discontent. The farmers had plenty of reasons to be angry/upset about that situation because the government saw a need for reform which alludes the fact that their were problems: Monopoly on railroads caused a raise in cost, deflated value of crops, and farmers weren’t treated in a friendly way by big business.

George Orwell includes a strong message in his novel Animal Farm that is easily recognizable. Orwell’s Animal Farm focuses on two primary problems that were not only prominent in his WWII society, but also posed as reoccurring issues in all societies past and present. Orwell’s novel delivers a strong political message about class structure and oppression from the patriarchal society through an allegory of a farm that closely resembles the Soviet Union.