Essay Set I - Regents

• 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)

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.”

RUBRIC	LEVEL 5	LEVEL 4	LEVEL 3	LEVEL 2	LEVEL 1
Addresses Task	Thoroughly develops both aspects of the task in depth	Develops both aspects of the task in depth or may do so somewhat unevenly by thoroughly developing one aspect of the task in depth while developing the other aspect of the task in some depth	Develops both aspects of the task in some depth Level	Minimally develops both aspects of the task or develops one aspect of the task in some depth	Minimally addresses the task
Provides Analysis	Is more analytical than descriptive	Is both descriptive and analytical	Is primarily descriptive	May include faulty analysis	Is descriptive; may lack understanding or application
Uses accurate outside information	Integrates relevant outside information	Includes relevant outside information	Includes some relevant outside	Includes little relevant outside information	Includes minimal or no relevant outside information
Uses documents to support theme	Supports the theme with many relevant facts and/or examples from the documents	Supports the theme with relevant facts and/or examples from the documents	Includes some relevant facts and/or examples from the documents; may include some minor inaccuracies	Includes a few relevant facts and/or examples from the documents; may include some inaccuracies	Includes a few relevant facts and/or examples from the documents; may make only vague, unclear references to the documents; may include inaccuracies

Task: Based on your reading and analysis of these documents, apply your social studies knowledge and skills to write a short essay of two or three paragraphs in which you:

Guidelines: 

• 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 your short essay, be sure to

1. Develop all aspects of the task

2. Incorporate relevant outside information

3. Support the task with relevant facts and examples

SEQ Set 1 Directions (Question 29):

Read and analyze the following documents before writing your short essay in the separate essay booklet.

Document 1

. . . There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption [tuberculosis] germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. 

There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast. Some of it they would make into “smoked” sausage—but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatin to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it “special,” and for this they would charge two cents more a pound. . . .

“The Jungle”, Upton Sinclair, Chicago, (November 4, 1905)

Document 2

The Secretary [of Agriculture] shall cause to be made, by experts in sanitation or by other competent inspectors, such inspection of all slaughtering, meat canning, salting, packing, rendering, or similar establishments in which amenable species are slaughtered and the meat and meat food products thereof are prepared for commerce as may be necessary to inform himself concerning the sanitary conditions of the same, and to prescribe the rules and regulations of sanitation under which such establishments shall be maintained; and where the sanitary conditions of any such establishment are such that the meat or meat food products are rendered adulterated [contaminated], he shall refuse to allow said meat or meat food products to be labeled, marked, stamped or tagged as “inspected and passed.”

“Meat Inspection Act”, United States Congress, (June 30, 1906), as amended in 1967 and 2005