Women's grassroots activism and their vision
of a new civic consciousness lay at the heart of
social reform in the United States throughout the
Progressive Era, the period between the depression
of 1893 and America's entry into the Second
World War. Though largely disenfranchised except
for school elections, white middle-class women
reformers won a variety of victories, notably in
the improvement of working conditions, especially
for women and children. Ironically, though,
child labor legislation pitted women of different
classes against one another. To the reformers,
child labor and industrial home work were equally
inhumane practices that should be outlawed, but,
as a number of women historians have recently
observed, working-class mothers did not always
share this view. Given the precarious finances of
working-class families and the necessity of pooling
the wages of as many family members as possible,
working-class families viewed the passage and
enforcement of stringent child labor statutes as a
personal economic disaster and made strenuous
efforts to circumvent child labor laws. Yet
reformers rarely understood this resistance in terms
of the desperate economic situation of workingclass
families, interpreting it instead as evidence
of poor parenting. This is not to dispute women
reformers' perception of child labor as a terribly
exploitative practice, but their understanding of
child labor and their legislative solutions for ending
it failed to take account of the economic needs of
working-class families.
14. The author of the passage mentions the observations
of women historians (lines 15-17) most probably in
order to
(A) provide support for an assertion made in the
preceding sentence (lines 10-12)
(B) raise a question that is answered in the last
sentence of the passage (lines 27-32)
(C) introduce an opinion that challenges a statement
made in the first sentence of the passage
(D) offer an alternative view to the one attributed in
the passage to working-class mothers
(E) point out a contradiction inherent in the
traditional view of child labor reform as it is
presented in the passage
[spoiler]OA is A. But I'm not convinced with the explanation given for why A is correct and why C is wrong. [/spoiler]
of a new civic consciousness lay at the heart of
social reform in the United States throughout the
Progressive Era, the period between the depression
of 1893 and America's entry into the Second
World War. Though largely disenfranchised except
for school elections, white middle-class women
reformers won a variety of victories, notably in
the improvement of working conditions, especially
for women and children. Ironically, though,
child labor legislation pitted women of different
classes against one another. To the reformers,
child labor and industrial home work were equally
inhumane practices that should be outlawed, but,
as a number of women historians have recently
observed, working-class mothers did not always
share this view. Given the precarious finances of
working-class families and the necessity of pooling
the wages of as many family members as possible,
working-class families viewed the passage and
enforcement of stringent child labor statutes as a
personal economic disaster and made strenuous
efforts to circumvent child labor laws. Yet
reformers rarely understood this resistance in terms
of the desperate economic situation of workingclass
families, interpreting it instead as evidence
of poor parenting. This is not to dispute women
reformers' perception of child labor as a terribly
exploitative practice, but their understanding of
child labor and their legislative solutions for ending
it failed to take account of the economic needs of
working-class families.
14. The author of the passage mentions the observations
of women historians (lines 15-17) most probably in
order to
(A) provide support for an assertion made in the
preceding sentence (lines 10-12)
(B) raise a question that is answered in the last
sentence of the passage (lines 27-32)
(C) introduce an opinion that challenges a statement
made in the first sentence of the passage
(D) offer an alternative view to the one attributed in
the passage to working-class mothers
(E) point out a contradiction inherent in the
traditional view of child labor reform as it is
presented in the passage
[spoiler]OA is A. But I'm not convinced with the explanation given for why A is correct and why C is wrong. [/spoiler]
What we think, we become
