Hassan Rasheed
BA 3300
9/25/15

Part 1 – Applying the Universal Intellectual Standards:

Accuracy:

Accuracy is the first infringement of the Universal Intellectual Standards. The statistics of how many minors and females for the company’s total workers is not validated through a non-biased party. UNICEF is a good source to get demographic data in industrial settings and they are more reliable than a union’s statistics.

Fairness:

Speaker talks about the “little girl…working hour after hour…trying not to collapse from the heat…” and that violates the fairness of the argument. He is trying to manipulate the audience by appealing to their emotional side. This argument is not based in factual evidence, and therefore, could be dismissed by the audience. There may not be a little girl in this exact situation described, and therefore, this statement is irrelevant. This could be corrected by leaving the entire story of the “little girl” out, or an interview of a child that works in the factory could be conducted giving a first-hand look into the conditions of the workplace.

Breadth:

The next violation is the breadth. The essay did not mention any interviews of the workers, nor opposing/alternate viewpoints of the supervisors. The problem is that Honduras is a third world country. They are “forced” to work ten hours a day, when the regular sweatshops force their workers to work at least twelve hours; workers might be willing and eagerly working for this company. We will never truly understand how they feel or what they think because no communication was made with the workers. And the only way to understand the situation is listening to the both sides.

Depth

Another problem is the depth. No research was done on Honduras’s political aspects, and no information was given on industrial-wide statistics, nor the workforce. We don’t know the individual