How people, ideas and events shape one another

Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   Who Sat at the Typewriter (history article)

   [1] The first typewriter to sell in meaningful numbers was the Remington Model 1, introduced in 1873 and based on a design that Christopher Sholes and his partners had patented in 1868. [2] Sales were slow for a decade, and the machines found their first steady customers among court reporters, lawyers and authors, most of them men. [3] By the 1880s the rapid growth of railroads, insurance companies and manufacturing firms had created a mountain of correspondence, and the number of clerical jobs began to rise year after year.

   [4] The census shows what happened next. [5] In 1870 women made up a small fraction of the clerks, copyists and stenographers counted; by 1900 about three out of four stenographers and typists were women. [6] Early commentators often explained this by pointing to the machine, which was new and, they said, as natural for a woman's fingers as the piano.

   [7] The historian Margery Davies, writing in the 1980s, and others since have found that explanation too simple. [8] The growth of large firms had created more clerical jobs than the supply of young men with the right schooling could fill, while a growing number of young women had finished high school with the skills to type and take dictation. [9] Employers also paid women less than men for the same work, which gave them a further reason to hire them. [10] The typewriter was a part of the story, but it was one cause among several rather than a master key.

   [11] Influence also ran in the other direction. [12] Business schools opened classes to train women, manufacturers photographed women at the keyboard in their advertisements, and the people who used the machines were soon called typewriters themselves, a phrase that confused the worker with the tool. [13] As more women entered the work, the job came to be seen as a woman's job, and wages and promotion prospects for typists lagged behind those of male clerks.

2. 1.

   Pia draws an arrow back from the women who typed to the work around the machine. Which statement shows the influence running both ways?

   • The typewriter by itself drew women into offices, and the women then gave the machine its name.
   • The machine and clerical growth opened jobs women filled, and their entry then made typing look like women's work.
   • Women's entry into offices led Sholes and his partners to design the typewriter in 1868 for the female clerks they expected to hire.
   • The machine and clerical growth opened jobs to women, and the women simply filled jobs set by their employers.
3. 2.

   Ren covers sentences 8 and 9, the other causes. What does the article's chain lose without them?

   • The reasons women were hired in such numbers, which leaves the popular story that the machine did it.
   • The proof that women typed faster than men, which made employers prefer them for the new office jobs.
   • Little of importance, since sentence 6 already explains why women took the new clerical jobs in offices.
   • The account of why the machines sold slowly at first and reached offices after the 1880s in large numbers.
4. 3.

   Tala weighs four claims about the typewriter and women's office work. Which claim does the article support best?

   • The typewriter was one cause among several, alongside firm growth, schooling and lower pay for women.
   • The typewriter caused the change by itself, since it was new and no one yet called it men's work or women's work.
   • Women's arrival in offices caused the typewriter's invention, since makers later advertised to them.
   • The typewriter must have caused the change, since its spread came before women filled the offices.

5. The City After Dark (history article)

   [1] In 1807 a German-born entrepreneur named Frederick Winsor lit part of Pall Mall in London with gas lamps, and within a decade the Gas Light and Coke Company was laying iron pipes under many of the city's streets. [2] Baltimore followed in 1816, when a private company, partly organized by the painter Rembrandt Peale, began lighting the streets, and by the 1850s most American cities of any size had a gasworks.

   [3] Before gas, a city after dark was lit mainly by candles, oil lamps and the moon. [4] Respectable households went to bed soon after sunset, and the streets belonged to watchmen and revelers. [5] Gas lamps, which burned much brighter than oil lamps and could be fed from a single main, made it possible for shops to stay open in the evening, for theaters to schedule later performances and for factories to run a night shift.

   [6] The relation between light and evening life was not one-way, however. [7] Cities that had a lively nightlife before gas, such as London and Paris, had crowds ready to pay for lights, and gas companies expanded fastest where such crowds already existed. [8] Merchants who had begun to keep late hours lobbied councils for lamps, and the companies, which earned money by the number of lamps lit, built pipes toward the busiest streets first. [9] Poorer districts waited longer for gas, and in some of them the old darkness lasted into the 1880s.

   [10] Gas lighting also changed the habits of the people it served. [11] Evening schools opened, libraries extended their hours, and reading at night became common for families who could afford the fuel. [12] By the end of the century, electric light had begun to replace gas in the busiest streets, and the evening habits that gas had helped form carried over to the new lamps almost unchanged.

6. 4.

   Zee draws an arrow back from the evening crowds to the gas lamps. Which statement shows the influence running both ways?

   • Evening crowds in London and Paris led Winsor to invent gas lighting in 1807 to serve the theaters.
   • Gas let shops and theaters stay open at night, and crowds and merchants pulled the pipes toward busy streets.
   • Gas let shops, theaters and factories keep evening hours, and the people simply adjusted to the new light after dark in their daily habits.
   • Gas lighting by itself created evening life, and that life then paid for the gas companies' pipes.
7. 5.

   Bo weighs four claims about gas and evening life. Which claim does the article support best?

   • Evening schools and libraries caused gas lighting, since they stayed open after dark in the cities.
   • Evening crowds caused gas lighting, and the lamps merely followed where the crowds happened to go.
   • Gas made later evenings practical, but crowds and merchants already keeping late hours pulled the pipes.
   • Gas created evening life where it had not existed before, since candles and moonlight could not do so in any city before 1807.

8. Roads That Followed the Cars (history article)

   [1] In 1956 President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which authorized about forty-one thousand miles of interstate highways and promised to pay ninety percent of the cost. [2] Supporters pointed to national defense, to congestion in the cities and to the trucking industry, and the first sections opened within months. [3] Over the next three decades the interstates carried a growing share of the nation's traffic, and the share of Americans living in suburbs rose from about a quarter in 1950 to about half by 1990.

   [4] It is tempting to read the second fact as the result of the first, but the order of events does not support that reading. [5] The great suburban movement had started earlier. [6] After the Second World War, a housing shortage, a flood of returning veterans and low-interest mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration led builders to cover farmland with houses. [7] Levittown, New York, began selling houses in 1947, nine years before the highway act, and it relied on existing roads and the family car. [8] Automobile ownership had been growing since the 1920s, and by 1950 more than half of American families owned a car.

   [9] The interstates then amplified the trend. [10] They made it practical to live thirty miles from work, opened cheap land beyond the existing suburbs and encouraged shopping centers and offices to move to the edges of cities. [11] In many cities, highway planners routed the roads through older neighborhoods, often poorer ones, because the land was cheap and the political resistance was weak, and the homes and businesses that were displaced did not return. [12] Residents who left for the suburbs, in turn, paid less in city taxes, and the cities that lost them had less to spend on the transit systems and schools that might have held them.

   [13] The highways were therefore neither the first cause of the suburbs nor a bystander. [14] They joined a movement already under way, and then changed its scale, its direction and its costs.

9. 6.

   Esme draws an arrow back from the families who moved out to the cities they left. Which statement shows the influence running both ways?

   • Highways made distant homes practical, and the families who left simply took advantage of the new roads in their daily lives.
   • City taxes fell before 1956, which led to the highway act and then to the families' move into the suburbs.
   • Highways made distant homes practical, and the families who left then cut city taxes, leaving less for transit and schools.
   • Highways caused the move out of the cities, and the move out had no effect on the cities left behind.
10. 7.

    Jun covers sentences 6 to 8, the postwar housing and car ownership. What does the article's chain lose without them?

    • The reason suburbs were already growing before 1956, which leaves the highways as the one visible cause.
    • The account of which neighborhoods the highways displaced and how cities lost taxes and transit money afterward.
    • Little of importance, since sentence 3 already shows the suburbs rising after the highway act passed.
    • The proof that highway planners chose routes to help Levittown grow into the largest suburb.
11. 8.

    Kira weighs four claims about highways and suburbs. Which claim does the article support best?

    • Highways caused suburban growth and also closed the older city schools when taxes moved outward.
    • Highways caused suburban growth, since the suburban share kept rising while the interstates were built.
    • Highways were neither the first cause of suburban growth nor a bystander; they joined a trend already under way.
    • Highways were the main cause of suburban growth, since they made distant homes practical for commuters by car.

12. The Library on the Corner (history article)

    [1] Between 1883 and 1919 the steel manufacturer Andrew Carnegie paid for more than sixteen hundred public libraries in American towns and cities, along with hundreds more abroad. [2] A town did not receive a gift automatically; its officials had to write to Carnegie's secretary, James Bertram, describe the town and answer a questionnaire. [3] From the early 1900s the terms were standard: the town had to provide the land, promise to spend at least ten percent of the building's cost each year on its upkeep and agree to use public money to run it.

    [4] The rules were meant to keep the gift from becoming a burden, and most towns accepted them. [5] Some used the occasion to build a library that locals had wanted for decades; others had not thought about a library before the offer arrived. [6] A few refused. [7] In a number of cities, labor leaders and newspaper editors objected that Carnegie's wealth had been made in mills where workers put in long days, and that a library did not repay them; one critic suggested that higher pay would have been a better gift.

    [8] In most towns, the argument was settled not by principle but by arithmetic. [9] A council that accepted a library committed itself to a yearly tax, and in some places elections turned on the question. [10] Where the voters agreed, the tax came to look ordinary; where they disagreed, the library sometimes stood half-empty or closed for lack of funds. [11] The result was a map of American towns divided not simply by wealth but by willingness to pay for a public good once the first building had been given.

    [12] In turn, the libraries changed the giver's terms. [13] Bertram, who read thousands of plans, grew to insist on simple, well-lit buildings with open shelves and a single reading room, a design that librarians and architects increasingly preferred, and that shaped the look of the American library for decades.

13. 9.

    Luz draws an arrow back from the towns' libraries to Carnegie's terms. Which statement shows the influence running both ways?

    • Towns' plans led Carnegie to start giving libraries in 1883 to any community that applied for aid.
    • Carnegie's wealth decided each town's library, and the towns' plans had no effect on the terms.
    • Carnegie's terms shaped what towns built, and the towns simply carried out the plans Bertram sent them for each building.
    • Carnegie's terms set what towns promised to pay, and towns' plans shaped Bertram's later design standards.
14. 10.

    Noah weighs four claims about the terms and the towns' libraries. Which claim does the article support best?

    • The terms made towns commit public money, and voters' acceptance of the tax helped decide which libraries thrived.
    • Carnegie's gift decided which towns had good libraries, whatever the voters chose about the yearly tax.
    • Half-empty libraries caused towns to vote against the yearly tax, since the buildings came first.
    • Opposition from labor leaders came first, so it caused towns to refuse the gift in the early 1900s.