Progressives in the US - Test 4

C2 Proficiency · Multiple Choice Reading · Proficiency Testbuilder, 4th Edition, Mark Harrison, Macmillan

You are going to read an extract from a book about the history of the US. For questions 1–6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

The United States had reached a point, in the closing years of the 19th century, when radical improvements in its political, social and economic arrangements were so plainly necessary that they were actually attempted, and therefore may be called inevitable. Women and men, young and middle-aged, rich, poor and in-between, West, South and North, all acknowledged the necessity and had some hand in shaping the improvements. It was an epoch very much to the American taste, for it seemed a proof that faith in progress, and particularly in the potential for progress in America was justified. The word 'progressive' had long been a favourite in common speech; now it became attached to a political party, a movement, an era. It remains a curiously empty word, but historians will never be able to do without it. And after all due reservations have been made, it would be churlish to deny that the United States did in many respects move forward during this period, did begin to tackle a good many serious problems intelligently. It is a moderately encouraging story. Big business made itself felt at every stage in the progressive story, and not by any means as a purely reactionary force. All the same, it would be a mistake to suppose that business, however profoundly it had shaped and now coloured the day-to-day operations of American life, was the key to progressivism. Nor could the industrial working class, however active, muster the power necessary to dominate the epoch. That privilege belonged to the new middle class. This class had emerged as, numerically, the chief beneficiary of the great transformation of American society. America's rapid development under the impact of industrialism and urbanisation implied an equally rapidly developing need for professional services. The need for a new order was generally felt, and implied the recruitment and training of new men, and new women, to administer it. Society was now rich enough to pay for their services. Hence in the last decades of the 19th century there was a mushroom growth among the professions. Doctors and lawyers, of course; but also engineers, dentists, professors, journalists, social workers, architects. This was the age of the expert; he was given a free hand, such as he has seldom enjoyed since. Each new technical marvel – the telephone, the phonograph, the motor-car, the aeroplane – increased the faith that there was a sound technical answer to every problem, even to the problem of government. When a devastating hurricane and flood wrecked the port of Galveston, Texas, in 1901, the local businessmen proclaimed the regular authorities incompetent to handle the task of reconstruction and handed the city's government over to a commission of experts – a pattern that was to be widely followed in the next few years. This may stand very well for what was happening generally. The new class, conscious of its power and numbers, was anxious to get hold of American society and remake it according to plan. All round were problems that needed solving – crime, disease, bad housing, political corruption – and the new class thought it knew what to do about them. Just as the experts themselves had taken advantage of a society open to the rise of the talented, so they wanted their disadvantaged fellow-citizens to rise also. And this democratic individualistic ideology made it seem perfectly legitimate to bid for political power, that is, for votes: to go down into that arena was simply to carry out one's civic duty. Motives did not need to be examined too closely, since they were self-evidently virtuous. What was new, and important at least to the experts, was the tool-kit they brought to their tasks: their improved spanners, so to speak. The new middle class set out to apply their spanners to such various contraptions as the state and city machines of the old political parties, and the new urban wastelands. Behind the zeal of these technocrats lay an older tradition, betrayed in the word they used to describe the philanthropic centres they established in the slums, 'settlements': to them the cities were wildernesses, the inhabitants alien savages and the new settlers were bringers both of superior techniques and superior ideas, like the settlers of old. It is thus possible to see in the very approach of these progressives certain limitations, a certain inexperience, which were likely to impede their quest. They were mostly of old American stock, brought up on the old pieties, which their new expertise only veneered. The progressives were too conservative in their instincts, too parochial in their outlook, ever to propose, let alone carry out, fundamental changes in the American system.

It should only be used with regard to this period in the US.

No other word has been generally adopted to describe this period in the US.

It was sometimes used inappropriately during this period in the US.

No other word could have united diverse people during this period in the US.

What does the writer say about the word 'progressive' in the first paragraph?

It ensured that the industrial working class was lacking in power.

It paid too little attention to the importance of the new middle class.

It was beginning to have too great an impact on everyday life in the US.

It played a significant part in the development of progressivism.

What does the writer say about big business during this period?

was expected to be only a short-term phenomenon.

resulted from a desire among professionals for greater freedom.

was a natural consequence of other changes at the time.

resulted from fears among Americans about changes in their society.

The writer says that the 'mushroom growth' among the professions

the high regard in which specialists were held during that period.

problems which had never been dealt with satisfactorily before.

the speed at which solutions were found during that period.

disagreements caused by the desire for technical solutions.

The writer uses events in Galveston to illustrate

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