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

When Moran writes that he aims to demonstrate how our most cherished affable values can be manipulated to serve pecuniary interests the way in which public policy is affected by behind-the-scenes maneuvering of powerful and often ruthless business interests, I commend he is talking solely about the death penalty (xviii). There are various aspects within the death penalty that make it a often much 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 safety and efficacy of direct period versus alternating current in the eventually preferred method of the electric chair. Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, along with a few others, were the players who manipulated how the public, and therefore 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 ninetee nth century. I think it is interesting that, considering his study 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 lifelong opponent of the death penalty (74). With further prodding, and deeper surveil, Edison realized how getting involved with this issue would help his personal business cause. Thomas Edisons light business was quickly losing ground to enemy George Westinghouse. He knew he was widely respected as an electrical engineer and claimed not to change his positioning on executions, but acknowledged the necessity and offered a humane alternative 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 instantaneous death (75). These statements made their way to the Elbridge Gerry, an Edison admirer and man appointed to head a review commission on the death penalty. Not surprisingly 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 say something about Westinghouse. Moran writes, but Edison was too shrewd a businessman, and too conscious 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 potential 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 appealing to the unknown regarding electricity. He manipulated the publics concern everywhere the possible painful and ineffective electr ic chair. Both 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 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.