question 2: analysis

President John F. Kennedy’s speech was in response to the steel companies and their disregard of his word when he asked for stable prices in manufactured products and wages as a part of a program he had established. The program required sacrifice of a national scale due to an economic crisis during that time. Of course he could not just outright shutdown the company or have the owners removed; such actions would cause a scandal the size of Mt. Everest. If he would have taken such a course of action the whole nation would have eaten him alive; would’ve said that he took the wrong course of action, that he is damaging American business, and that he does not believe in the great capitalist values and freedoms of the American nation and many other variations of these accusations. The media, the public, and politics in general would have all turned against him. So he didn’t do that and instead he turned the American population against the steel corporations. Brilliant using tactics like this to get his way. He starts off by sounding very sympathetic and reasonable in his requests for companies and corporations of the United States, reasoning that due to the war going on and the economic crisis going on in the country some sacrifices had to be made. He sells his argument more by giving statistics on corporations that had to cut back and how the steel corporations not only did not cut back prices but also increased them, by giving statistics he not only gives more credibility but also makes the steel corporations look bad on a mathematical view point. This whole speech can really be summarized as the bashing of steel corporations and the catering of the American masses sensibilities. 

Kennedy uses a multitude of strategies when trying to convert the audience against the steel corporations. Kennedy’s word choices in his speech, for example, are a perfect example of how. Words such as “unjustifiable” and “irresponsible”, used to describe what the steel corporations did do not portray them as ‘good’ actions. It does the opposite, these words send a strong negative connotation to the audience. He also uses statistics to further his argument; this not only serves to prove his point about the corporations to the public, but also to give his more credibility and a stronger argument. He lists some sounding credible sources such as the “Acting Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics” as well as his secretary of defense McNamara. These sources are preceded or go after some sort of statistic that help his argument. Even after his given statistic he elaborates with how it is relevant to the American people and how badly if affects them as a nation and as individuals. He acknowledges that due to the war going on that most of the American dollars have gone to funding it; of course he does not word that way, instead he uses the words “national security” and “other purposes” perhaps he did not outright say “war” because of the anti-war spirit going on in the United States at the time. Continuing on why he acknowledged the cost of war, he then tells the people of how that will affect American business for the worse and in order to prevent that his program had to be carried out, but that big steel corporations chose to ignore.

All of speech however, was not just statistics followed by logical conclusions with undertones of bashing steel corporations. It also had a good chunk of righteous appeal. Which for those times of war was crucial for governments to have the support of the American public and the only way for it to gain support was to appeal to nationality and ethical reasoning. Kennedy gave a very good example of this in has second paragraph where he combined both of these things. Using men who have had to leave behind their families to fight for war and glorifying their deaths as a great sacrifice for the safety of the country as an example in his speech serves to give people a sorrowful yet patriotic feeling. Then he uses labor workers that hold down their requests for wages as another lesser but just as important of a sacrifice. He also puts himself at the level of the common American person with “as do I” when talking about the difficulty of adjusting to when “restraint and sacrifice are being asked of every citizen”. This gives the American people a sense of unity and comfort, in thinking that their president is on their side and goes through their same struggles. In using these methods of persuasion that worked well in accomplishing the goal of gaining the American population’s support and turning them against steel corporations