The Making of Arguments

thought that the vastest number of these were sick of heart and ashamed that they, too, were not in line behind the kilted band that headed the procession, the historic symbolic floats, and the inscribed banners, along with their three thousand or more sisters. Here were women, fighting a good fight for the cause of women—for the underpaid factory workers and the overfed lady of fortune who is deprived the right of voice in the government over her inherited property. (Report in a daily paper, May 8, 1911) 9. Find an example of historical evidence in a case where there are no direct witnesses to the fact; discuss it according to S. R. Gardiner's tests (p. 103). 10. Find two examples from the daily papers where statistics are used to establish a complex fact. 11. Name two subjects on which you could gather statistics, and the sources from which you would draw them. 12. Bring to class the testimony of a recognized authority on some complex fact, and explain why his testimony carries weight. 13. Name a subject on which you can speak with authority, and explain why your testimony on that subject should carry weight. 14. Give an example from your own experience of a case in which it is hard to distinguish between direct and indirect evidence. 15. Find in the daily papers or current magazines an argument based on reasoning by analogy; one based on reasoning by generalization; one based on circumstantial evidence; explain the character of each. 16. Find an example of an argument based on reasoning from a causal relation. 17. Find an example of an argument from enumeration of like cases which might be easily upset. 18. In the proposition, "A gentleman ought not to become a professional baseball player," what meaning could be given to the word "gentleman"? 19. Distinguish between the meanings of law in the phrases "moral law," "natural law," and "law of the land." 20. What different meanings would the word "comfort" have had in the days of your grandfather, as compared with the present day? 21. Give, two examples of words with "sliding meanings." 22. Give two examples of words whose denotation is fixed, but whose connotation or emotional implications would be different with different people. 23. Find an example of false analogy. 24. Criticize the reasoning in the following extract from a letter to a newspaper urging Republican and Democratic tickets at the municipal election in a small city in the country. It is an acknowledged fact that competition in the business life of our city is beneficial to the consumer. If that be so, why will not competition in city affairs bring equally good results to the taxpayer? 25. Give an example you have recently heard of hasty generalization; explain its weakness. 26. Give an example of your own of the post hoc fallacy. 27. Give an example of false reasoning based on assuming a complex fact to be simple. 28. Criticize the reasoning in the following extracts: a. [Dispatch to a daily paper.] Haverhill, March 30, 1911. Opponents of commission form of government are deriving no little satisfaction from the development of testimony borne out by figures taken from the auditing department of the city of Haverhill that this method of administering municipal affairs has proved thus far to be a costly experiment there.... The total amount of bonds issued during the past twenty-seven months, covering the period of operation of commission form of government, was $576,000; the present borrowing capacity of the city is only approximately $35,000; that the city's bonded debt has increased from $441,264 to $1,181,314 in the past five years; the net bonded debt has more than doubled within three years; that the assessed valuation has increased $5,000,000; and the tax rate has been raised from $17.40 to $19 in five years. The borrowing capacity of ($341,696 on January 1, 1906, has decreased to $95,000 on January 1, 1911.... Commission form of government went into effect in Haverhill on the first Monday in January, 1909. b. From an article in a magazine, opposing the plan of the postmaster-general to increase the postage on the advertising sections of magazines: consider especially the word "censorship": We see two grave objections to the postmaster-general's plan. First, it requires a censorship to determine what periodicals are "magazines" whose advertising pages are to be taxed, and what are the educational and religious periodicals which are to continue to enjoy what the President calls a "subsidy." Such a censorship would be a new feature in postal administration, and it would seem to be a thing very difficult to work out on any fair basis. 29. In a newspaper report of an inquiry made by the director of the Columbia University gymnasium into the effects of smoking, the following sentences occur: In scholarship the nonsmokers had the distinct advantage. The smokers averaged eighty per cent in their studies at entrance, sixty-two per cent during the first two years, and seven per cent of failure. The nonsmokers got ninety-one per cent in their entrance examinations and sixty-nine per cent in their first two years in college, while only four per cent were failures. In this respect Dr. Meylan thinks there is a distinct relation between smoking and scholarship. Of the same set of students forty-seven per cent of the smokers won places on varsity athletic teams, while only thirty-seven per cent of the nonsmokers could get places. If the next to the last sentence had read, "Smoking therefore seems to be a cause of low scholarship," what should you think of the reasoning? 30. Criticize the reasoning in the following portion of an argument for prohibition: Dr. Williams says, "We find no evidence that the prohibition laws have in the past been effective in diminishing the consumption of alcoholic beverages." ... The absence of logic in Dr. Williams's conclusion will be readily seen by substituting the homicide evil and the greed evil for the liquor evil in his argument. Since its establishment the United States has sought to remedy with prohibition the homicide evil. Every state has laws with severe penalties prohibiting murder. And yet the number of homicides in the United States has steadily increased until the number in 1910 was eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-five. Since, then, homicides have steadily increased during the past hundred years under a law with severe penalties prohibiting them, a prohibitory law has not been and cannot be a remedy for homicide. 31. Criticize the reasoning in the following extract from an argument for the electrification of the terminal part of a railroad: It is true that locomotive smoke and gas do not kill people outright; but that their influence though not immediately measurable is to shorten life cannot, I submit, be successfully combated.... A few years ago I made some calculations based on the records of ten years' operation of the railroads in this state, and found that if a man should spend his whole time day and night riding in railroad trains at an average rate of thirty miles an hour, and if he had average good luck, he would not be killed by accident, without his fault, oftener than once in fifteen hundred years, and that he would not receive any injury of sufficient importance to be reported oftener than once in five hundred years. I ask you to estimate how long a man would, in your opinion, live if he were obliged continuously day and night to breathe the air of our stations without any opportunity to relieve his lungs by a breath of purer and better air. 32. Give an example in which you yourself have used the method of agreement in arriving at a conclusion in the last week. 33. Give an example, from one of your studies, of the use of the method of agreement. 34. Give an example, which has recently come to your notice, of the use of the method of difference. 36. Criticize the following syllogisms, giving your reasons for thinking them sound or not: a. All rich men should be charitable with their wealth; Charitable men forgive their enemies; Therefore all rich men should forgive their enemies. b. Every man who plays baseball well has a good eye and quick judgment; Every good tennis player has a good eye and a quick judgment; Therefore every good tennis player is a good baseball player. c. Whenever you find a man who drinks hard you find, a man who is unreliable; Our coachman does not drink hard; Therefore he is reliable. d. All the steamships which cross the ocean in the quickest time are comfortable; This steamship is slow; Therefore she is not comfortable. e. All dogs who bark constantly are not bad-tempered; This dog does not bark constantly; Therefore he is not bad-tempered. f. All cold can be expelled by heat; John's illness is a cold; Therefore it can be expelled by heat. (From Minto) g. The use of ardent spirits should be prohibited by law, seeing that it causes misery and crime, which it is one of the chief ends of law to prevent. (From Bode) h. Rational beings are accountable for their actions; brutes not being rational, are therefore exempt from responsibility. (From Jevons) 36. Expand the following arguments into syllogisms and criticize their soundness: a. The snow will turn to rain, because it is getting warmer. b. The boy has done well in his examination, for he came out looking cheerful. c. We had an economical government last year, therefore the tax rate will be reduced. d. Lee will be a good mayor, for men who have energy and good judgment can do incalculable good to their fellow citizens. e. There is unshaken evidence that every member of the board of aldermen received a bribe, and George O. Carter was a member of that board. f. The candidate for stroke on the freshman crew came from Santos School, therefore he must be a good oarsman. 37. Criticize the reasoning in the following arguments, pointing out whether they are sound or unsound, and why: a. It costs a Nebraska farmer twenty cents to raise a bushel of corn. When corn gets down to twenty cents he cannot buy anything, and he cannot pay more than twelve or fifteen dollars a month for help. When it gets up to thirty-five cents the farmer gives his children the best education possible, and buys an automobile. Therefore the farmer will be ruined if the tariff on corn is not raised. b. For many years the Democratic platforms have declared explicitly or implicitly against the duties on sugar; if the Democrats should come into power and reduce the duties, they would lose their strength in the states producing cane sugar and beet sugar; if they do not reduce the duty, they admit that their platforms have been insincere. (Condensed from an editorial in a newspaper. March, 1911) c. I hardly need say that I am opposed to any such system as that of Galveston, or to call it by its broader name, the commission system. It is but another name for despotism. Louis XIV was a commissioner for executing the duties of governing France. Philip II was the same in Spain. The Decemvirs and Triumvirs of Rome were but the same sort of thing, as was also the Directory in France. They all came to the same end. Says Madison, in No. XLVII of The Federalist: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." Mr. justice Story said, "Whenever these departments are all vested in one person or body of men, the government is in fact a despotism, by whatever name it be called, whether a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy." d. The procedure of Berlin has in it an element of fairness worthy of our consideration; those representing large property interests have a surety of being at least represented. Some such system must be devised if the holding of properly at all be regarded as moral and necessary to our civilization. Remember that you are, in a large sense, but a chartered joint-stock corporation. Can you