Death Penalty and Electric Chair Essay examples -- essays research pap

When Moran writes that he aims to make how our most cherished social values can be manipulated to do pecuniary interests the way in which public policy is affected by behind-the-scenes maneuvering of powerful and often ruthless business interests, I figure he is talking solely about the dying penalty (xviii). thither are various aspects within the death penalty that make it a much more dynamic issue. Throughout his book, Moran writes about the inhumanity of the death penalty, including the barbaric methods and public spectacle of the act prior to William Kemmler, and most importantly, the recourse and force of direct true versus alternating current in the eventually favored method of the electric chair. Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, along with a few others, were the players who manipulated how the public, and accordingly the lawmakers, felt about this social policy. As it is today, the death penalty was a big debate issue in the early part of the nineteenth century . I think it is interesting that, considering his major public role in this issue, Thomas Edison was initially against capital punishment. When Dr. Southwick solicited Mr. Edisons advice on the electric chair, Edison wrote as a progressive and a free thinker, he was a womb-to-tomb opponent of the death penalty (74). With further prodding, and deeper review, Edison realized how getting abstruse with this issue would help his personal business cause. Thomas Edisons agility business was quickly losing ground to rival George Westinghouse. He knew he was astray respected as an electrical engineer and claimed not to change his stead on executions, but acknowledged the necessity and offered a humane utility(a) with electricity. More specifically and strategically, he offered up George Westinghouses alternating current dynamos as a possibility because he claimed, the passage of the current from these machinesproduces fast death (75). These statements made their way to the Elbridge Ge rry, an Edison admirer and man appointed to manoeuvre a review commission on the death penalty. Not amazingly the focus of the policy soon changed to the barbarity and inhumanity of executions, especially hangings, and ways to make the process more civilized. Elbridge Gerrys commission report, influenc... ...dison hoping to get Edison to word something about Westinghouse. Moran writes, but Edison was too shrewd a businessman, and too certified of his reputation, to say anything negative about his rival (179). Ultimately Kemmler was resentenced to die by electrocution.In conclusion, Thomas Edison knew his power and prestige and he saw the authorization to remove his biggest competitor by manipulating how the public felt about the safety of alternating current. George Westinghouse hoped that he could save his reputation and business by harmonic to the unknown regarding electricity. He manipulated the publics concern over the attainable painful and ineffective electric chair. B oth were driven not by progress and humanity, as Edison claimed, or concern for the criminal, as Westinghouse claimed, but by power and money in the industry that both men were pioneering. BibliographyRichard, Moran public executioners Current Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair. (New York Vintage Press, 2002), pp 74, 75, 84, 105, 160, 179.