PSAT Critical Reading › Understanding Organization and Argument in Social Science / History Passages
Adapted from The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)
The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor. The effects of the division of labor, in the general business of society, will be more easily understood by considering in what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them than in others of more importance, but in those trifling manufactures that are destined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator.
In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in one single branch. Though in such manufactures, therefore, the work may really be divided into a much greater number of parts, than in those of a more trifling nature, the division is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much less observed.
To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture, but one in which the division of labor has been very often taken notice of: the trade of a pin-maker. A workman not educated to this business (which the division of labor has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labor has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.
Which of the following best describes the structure of the passage?
Adapted from The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)
The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor. The effects of the division of labor, in the general business of society, will be more easily understood by considering in what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them than in others of more importance, but in those trifling manufactures that are destined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator.
In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in one single branch. Though in such manufactures, therefore, the work may really be divided into a much greater number of parts, than in those of a more trifling nature, the division is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much less observed.
To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture, but one in which the division of labor has been very often taken notice of: the trade of a pin-maker. A workman not educated to this business (which the division of labor has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labor has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.
Which of the following best describes the structure of the passage?
Adapted from “Queen of the Sea’s Awful Fate on Her First Trip Out” from The Times Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia), April 28, 1912.
The giant Titanic of the White Star Line, the biggest ship afloat when she sailed from Southampton, England, on April 10, on her maiden voyage to the Port of New York, lies to-day a broken wreck, 2,760 fathoms beneath the ocean's surface, some 800 miles from shore off the great Newfoundland Banks. The ship that was unsinkable, in the minds of her makers and the men that ran her, has been sunk. The Queen of the Seas is less to-day than one of her lifeboats which bobs up and down on the broken surface of the Hudson River, safe between the piers of the White Star Line.
And in her sinking the Titanic exacted greater toll than humanity ever before had been made to pay for its efforts to conquer the sea. Of the 2,340 persons composing passengers and crew of the big liner, only 705 ever reached this port. More than two-thirds of those who embarked on the Titanic for her maiden Journey--1,635 persons exactly--went down with her when she snubbed her nose beneath the waves, hung, quivering an instant, half above and half below the surface, and then started her downward plunge to the bottom, nearly two miles below.
Since then the cable ships Mackay-Bennett and Minia have been at the scene of the wreck searching for bodies. Some have been identified by articles in the clothing and are now on their way to Halifax aboard the Mackay-Bennett. Altogether 205 had been picked up last Thursday. The steamship is due there this morning. Others were recommitted to the sea after it had been found that they were unrecognizable. The Minia will remain at the scene of the disaster for some days to come, and it will not be until there is a fair certainty that everybody recoverable has been found that the search will be abandoned.
It was collision with an iceberg which caused the destruction of the Titanic, and those who would moralize over the great ship's loss can see in such a meeting the hand of Fate, which required the greatest example of man's handiwork afloat on the sea to point its protest against his ambition. For it seems certain that nothing less than an iceberg could have withstood collision with the enormous Titanic. Than her no ship which sails the seas was better prepared to meet unexpected encounters with others. Even a war vessel, the heaviest Dreadnought, probably must have succumbed to the rushing impetus of the monster Titanic had they jostled each other in the narrow lanes of the ocean. It had to be something greater than any ship afloat to sink the Titanic, and that something was supplied in the tremendous berg, eight-ninths of whose bulk skulked beneath the waves while it presented a paltry lump of ice, some 120 feet in height to do combat with the steamship.
What is the purpose of the second paragraph?
Adapted from “Queen of the Sea’s Awful Fate on Her First Trip Out” from The Times Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia), April 28, 1912.
The giant Titanic of the White Star Line, the biggest ship afloat when she sailed from Southampton, England, on April 10, on her maiden voyage to the Port of New York, lies to-day a broken wreck, 2,760 fathoms beneath the ocean's surface, some 800 miles from shore off the great Newfoundland Banks. The ship that was unsinkable, in the minds of her makers and the men that ran her, has been sunk. The Queen of the Seas is less to-day than one of her lifeboats which bobs up and down on the broken surface of the Hudson River, safe between the piers of the White Star Line.
And in her sinking the Titanic exacted greater toll than humanity ever before had been made to pay for its efforts to conquer the sea. Of the 2,340 persons composing passengers and crew of the big liner, only 705 ever reached this port. More than two-thirds of those who embarked on the Titanic for her maiden Journey--1,635 persons exactly--went down with her when she snubbed her nose beneath the waves, hung, quivering an instant, half above and half below the surface, and then started her downward plunge to the bottom, nearly two miles below.
Since then the cable ships Mackay-Bennett and Minia have been at the scene of the wreck searching for bodies. Some have been identified by articles in the clothing and are now on their way to Halifax aboard the Mackay-Bennett. Altogether 205 had been picked up last Thursday. The steamship is due there this morning. Others were recommitted to the sea after it had been found that they were unrecognizable. The Minia will remain at the scene of the disaster for some days to come, and it will not be until there is a fair certainty that everybody recoverable has been found that the search will be abandoned.
It was collision with an iceberg which caused the destruction of the Titanic, and those who would moralize over the great ship's loss can see in such a meeting the hand of Fate, which required the greatest example of man's handiwork afloat on the sea to point its protest against his ambition. For it seems certain that nothing less than an iceberg could have withstood collision with the enormous Titanic. Than her no ship which sails the seas was better prepared to meet unexpected encounters with others. Even a war vessel, the heaviest Dreadnought, probably must have succumbed to the rushing impetus of the monster Titanic had they jostled each other in the narrow lanes of the ocean. It had to be something greater than any ship afloat to sink the Titanic, and that something was supplied in the tremendous berg, eight-ninths of whose bulk skulked beneath the waves while it presented a paltry lump of ice, some 120 feet in height to do combat with the steamship.
What is the purpose of the second paragraph?
Adapted from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
In the middle rank of life, to continue the comparison, men, in their youth, are prepared for professions, and marriage is not considered as the grand feature in their lives; whilst women, on the contrary, have no other scheme to sharpen their faculties. It is not business, extensive plans, or any of the excursive flights of ambition, that engross their attention; no, their thoughts are not employed in rearing such noble structures. To rise in the world, and have the liberty of running from pleasure to pleasure, they must marry advantageously, and to this object their time is sacrificed, and their persons often legally prostituted. A man when he enters any profession has his eye steadily fixed on some future advantage (and the mind gains great strength by having all its efforts directed to one point) and, full of his business, pleasure is considered as mere relaxation; whilst women seek for pleasure as the main purpose of existence. In fact, from the education, which they receive from society, the love of pleasure may be said to govern them all; but does this prove that there is a sex in souls? It would be just as rational to declare that the courtiers in France, when a destructive system of despotism had formed their character, were not men, because liberty, virtue, and humanity, were sacrificed to pleasure and vanity.—Fatal passions, which have ever domineered over the whole race!
The same love of pleasure, fostered by the whole tendency of their education, gives a trifling turn to the conduct of women in most circumstances: for instance, they are ever anxious about secondary things; and on the watch for adventures, instead of being occupied by duties.
A man, when he undertakes a journey, has, in general, the end in view; a woman thinks more of the incidental occurrences, the strange things that may possibly occur on the road; the impression that she may make on her fellow travelers; and, above all, she is anxiously intent on the care of the finery that she carries with her, which is more than ever a part of herself, when going to figure on a new scene; when, to use an apt French turn of expression, she is going to produce a sensation.—Can dignity of mind exist with such trivial cares? This observation should not be confined to the fair sex; however, at present, I only mean to apply it to them.
The third paragraph establishes all of the following EXCEPT __________.
Adapted from "Federalist No. 46. The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared" by James Madison in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (1788)
I proceed to inquire whether the federal government or the state governments will have the advantage with regard to the predilection and support of the people. Notwithstanding the different modes in which they are appointed, we must consider both of them as substantially dependent on the great body of the citizens of the United States. I assume this position here as it respects the first, reserving the proofs for another place. The federal and state governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject, and to have viewed these different establishments not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other. Truth, no less than decency, requires that the event in every case should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their common constituents.
Which difference between federal and state governments is the author purposely not addressing in his argument?
Adapted from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
In the middle rank of life, to continue the comparison, men, in their youth, are prepared for professions, and marriage is not considered as the grand feature in their lives; whilst women, on the contrary, have no other scheme to sharpen their faculties. It is not business, extensive plans, or any of the excursive flights of ambition, that engross their attention; no, their thoughts are not employed in rearing such noble structures. To rise in the world, and have the liberty of running from pleasure to pleasure, they must marry advantageously, and to this object their time is sacrificed, and their persons often legally prostituted. A man when he enters any profession has his eye steadily fixed on some future advantage (and the mind gains great strength by having all its efforts directed to one point) and, full of his business, pleasure is considered as mere relaxation; whilst women seek for pleasure as the main purpose of existence. In fact, from the education, which they receive from society, the love of pleasure may be said to govern them all; but does this prove that there is a sex in souls? It would be just as rational to declare that the courtiers in France, when a destructive system of despotism had formed their character, were not men, because liberty, virtue, and humanity, were sacrificed to pleasure and vanity.—Fatal passions, which have ever domineered over the whole race!
The same love of pleasure, fostered by the whole tendency of their education, gives a trifling turn to the conduct of women in most circumstances: for instance, they are ever anxious about secondary things; and on the watch for adventures, instead of being occupied by duties.
A man, when he undertakes a journey, has, in general, the end in view; a woman thinks more of the incidental occurrences, the strange things that may possibly occur on the road; the impression that she may make on her fellow travelers; and, above all, she is anxiously intent on the care of the finery that she carries with her, which is more than ever a part of herself, when going to figure on a new scene; when, to use an apt French turn of expression, she is going to produce a sensation.—Can dignity of mind exist with such trivial cares? This observation should not be confined to the fair sex; however, at present, I only mean to apply it to them.
The third paragraph establishes all of the following EXCEPT __________.
Adapted from "Federalist No. 46. The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared" by James Madison in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (1788)
I proceed to inquire whether the federal government or the state governments will have the advantage with regard to the predilection and support of the people. Notwithstanding the different modes in which they are appointed, we must consider both of them as substantially dependent on the great body of the citizens of the United States. I assume this position here as it respects the first, reserving the proofs for another place. The federal and state governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject, and to have viewed these different establishments not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other. Truth, no less than decency, requires that the event in every case should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their common constituents.
Which difference between federal and state governments is the author purposely not addressing in his argument?
Adapted from "Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft" by George Eliot (1855)
There is a notion commonly entertained among men that an instructed woman, capable of having opinions, is likely to prove an unpractical yoke-fellow, always pulling one way when her husband wants to go the other, oracular in tone, and prone to give lectures. But surely, so far as obstinacy is concerned, your unreasoning animal is the most difficult of your creatures. For our own parts, we see no reason why women should be better kept under control rather than educated to be mans rational equal.
If you ask me what offices women may fill, I reply—any. I do not care what case you put; let them be sea-captains, if you will. I do not doubt there are women well fitted for such an office, and, if so, I should be glad to welcome the Maid of Saragossa. I think women need, especially at this juncture, a much greater range of occupation than they have, to rouse their latent powers. In families that I know, some little girls like to saw wood, and others to use carpenters' tools. Where these tastes are indulged, cheerfulness and good-humor are promoted. Where they are forbidden, because "such things are not proper for girls," they grow sullen and mischievous.
Men pay a heavy price for their reluctance to encourage self-help and independent resources in women. The precious meridian years of many a man of genius have to be spent in the toil of routine, that an "establishment" may be kept up for a woman who can understand none of his secret yearnings, who is fit for nothing but to sit in her drawing-room like a doll-Madonna in her shrine. No matter. Anything is more endurable than to change our established formulae about women, or to run the risk of looking up to our wives instead of looking down on them. So men say of women, let them be idols, useless absorbents of previous things, provided we are not obliged to admit them to be strictly fellow-beings, to be treated, one and all, with justice and sober reverence.
Which of these arguments is reinforced by the author’s use of the stylistic device comparing women to a “doll-Madonna”?
Adapted from "Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft" by George Eliot (1855)
There is a notion commonly entertained among men that an instructed woman, capable of having opinions, is likely to prove an unpractical yoke-fellow, always pulling one way when her husband wants to go the other, oracular in tone, and prone to give lectures. But surely, so far as obstinacy is concerned, your unreasoning animal is the most difficult of your creatures. For our own parts, we see no reason why women should be better kept under control rather than educated to be mans rational equal.
If you ask me what offices women may fill, I reply—any. I do not care what case you put; let them be sea-captains, if you will. I do not doubt there are women well fitted for such an office, and, if so, I should be glad to welcome the Maid of Saragossa. I think women need, especially at this juncture, a much greater range of occupation than they have, to rouse their latent powers. In families that I know, some little girls like to saw wood, and others to use carpenters' tools. Where these tastes are indulged, cheerfulness and good-humor are promoted. Where they are forbidden, because "such things are not proper for girls," they grow sullen and mischievous.
Men pay a heavy price for their reluctance to encourage self-help and independent resources in women. The precious meridian years of many a man of genius have to be spent in the toil of routine, that an "establishment" may be kept up for a woman who can understand none of his secret yearnings, who is fit for nothing but to sit in her drawing-room like a doll-Madonna in her shrine. No matter. Anything is more endurable than to change our established formulae about women, or to run the risk of looking up to our wives instead of looking down on them. So men say of women, let them be idols, useless absorbents of previous things, provided we are not obliged to admit them to be strictly fellow-beings, to be treated, one and all, with justice and sober reverence.
Which of these arguments is reinforced by the author’s use of the stylistic device comparing women to a “doll-Madonna”?