Day 207 MCAT Practice Question

Passage 5

After Appomattox, every one seemed bent on finding a short cut to opulence. To

foreign observers, the United States was then simply a scrambling mass of selfish

units, for there seemed to be among the American people no disinterested group

to balance accounts between the competing elements—no leisure class, living on

secured incomes, mellowed by generations of travel, education, and reflection; no

bureaucracy arbitrarily guiding the details of governmental routine; no aristocracy,

born umpires of the doings of their underlings. All the manifold currents of life

seemed swallowed up in the commercial maelstrom. By the standards of what

happened in this season of exuberance and intense materialism, the American

people were hastily judged by critics who failed to see that the period was but the

prelude to a maturer national life.

It was a period of a remarkable industrial expansion. Then ‘plant’ became a new word

in the phraseology of the market place…Then it was that short railway lines began

to be welded into “systems,” that the railway builders began to strike out into the

prairies and mountains of the West, and that partnerships began to be merged into

corporations and corporations into trusts, ever reaching out for the greater markets.

Meanwhile the inventive genius of America was responding to the call of the time. In

1877 Bell telephoned from Boston to Salem; two years later, Brush lighted by electricity

the streets of San Francisco. In 1882 Edison was making incandescent electric lights

for New York and operating his first electric car in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

All these developments created a new demand for capital. Where formerly

a manufacturer had made products to order or for a small number of known

customers, now he made on speculation, for a great number of unknown customers,

taking his risks in distant markets. Where formerly the banker had lent money on

local security, now he gave credit to vast enterprises far away…This new demand for

capital made necessary a new system of credits, which was erected at first, as the

recurring panics disclosed, on sand, but gradually, through costly experience, on a

more stable foundation…

But much of what is admirable in that generation of nation builders is obscured

by the industrial anarchy which prevailed. Everybody was for himself—and the

devil was busy harvesting the hindmost. There were ‘rate-wars,’ ‘cut-rate sales,’

secret intrigues, and rebates; and there were subterranean passages—some,

indeed, scarcely under the surface—to council chambers, executive mansions,

and Congress. There were extreme fluctuations of industry: prosperity was either

at a very high level or depression at a very low one. Prosperity would bring on an

expansion of credits, a rise in prices, higher cost of living, strikes and boycotts

for higher wages; then depression would follow with the shutdown and that most

distressing of social diseases, unemployment. During the panic of 1873-74 many

thousands of men marched the streets crying earnestly for work.

Between the panics, strikes became a part of the economic routine of the country.

They were expected, just as pay days and legal holidays are expected. Now for the

first time came strikes that can only be characterized as stupendous. They were

not mere slight economic disturbances; they were veritable industrial earthquakes…

The militia were impotent to subdue the mobs; Federal troops had to be sent by

President Hayes into many of the States; and a proclamation by the President

commanded all citizens to keep the peace. Thus was Federal authority introduced

to bolster up the administrative weakness of the States, and the first step was taken

on the road to industrial nationalization.

It was during this feverish epoch that organized labor first entered the arena of

national politics. When the policy as to the national currency became an issue, the

lure of cheap money drew labor into an alliance in 1880 with the Greenbackers,

whose mad cry added to the general unrest. In this, as in other fatuous pursuits,

labor was only responding to the forces and the spirit of the hour. These have been

called the years of amalgamation, but they were also the years of tumult, for, while

amalgamation was achieved, discipline was not. Authority imposed from within

was not sufficient to overcome the decentralizing forces, and just as big business

had yet to learn by self-imposed discipline how to overcome the extremely

individualistic tendencies which resulted in trade anarchy, so labor had yet to learn

through discipline the lessons of self-restraint. Moreover, in the sudden expansion

and great enterprises of these days, labor even more than capital lost in stability.

One great steadying influence, the old personal relation between master and

servant, which prevailed during the days of handicraft and even of the small factory,

had disappeared almost completely. Now labor was put up on the market—a

heartless term descriptive of a condition from which human beings might be

expected to react violently—and they did, for human nature refused to be an inert,

marketable thing.

Orth, S. P. (2002). The armies of labor: A chronicle of the organized wage-earners.

Project Gutenberg. (Original work published 1919)

According to the passage, which of the following statements about postAppomattox America is true?

A) America’s successful industrial expansion depended on those willing to take

significant risks

B) Human nature can be said to have undergone considerable change during

this time period

C) The industrial landscape can be characterized as undergoing greater

fragmentation over time

D) Governmental oversight was necessary for the proper development of

industrial expansion