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Since the early 1970’s, historians have begun to
devote serious attention to the working class in the
United States. Yet while we now have studies of
working-class communities and culture, we know
(5) remarkably little of worklessness. When historians have
paid any attention at all to unemployment, they have
focused on the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The
narrowness of this perspective ignores the pervasive
recessions and joblessness of the previous decades, as
(10) Alexander Keyssar shows in his recent book. Examining
the period 1870-1920, Keyssar concentrates on Massa-
chusetts, where the historical materials are particularly
rich, and the findings applicable to other industrial
areas.
(15 ) The unemployment rates that Keyssar calculates
appear to be relatively modest, at least by Great Depres-
sion standards: during the worst years, in the 1870’s
and 1890’s, unemployment was around 15 percent. Yet
Keyssar rightly understands that a better way to
(20) measure the impact of unemployment is to calculate
unemployment frequencies—measuring the percentage
of workers who experience any unemployment in the
course of a year. Given this perspective, joblessness
looms much larger.
(25) Keyssar also scrutinizes unemployment patterns
according to skill level, ethnicity, race, age, class, and
gender. He finds that rates of joblessness differed
primarily according to class: those in middle-class and
white-collar occupations were far less likely to be unem-
(30) ployed. Yet the impact of unemployment on a specific
class was not always the same. Even when dependent on
the same trade, adjoining communities could have
dramatically different unemployment rates. Keyssar uses
these differential rates to help explain a phenomenon
(35) that has puzzled historians—the startlingly high rate of
geographical mobility in the nineteenth-century United
States. But mobility was not the dominant working-class
strategy for coping with unemployment, nor was assis-
tance from private charities or state agencies. Self-help
(40) and the help of kin got most workers through jobless
spells.
While Keyssar might have spent more time develop-
ing the implications of his findings on joblessness for
contemporary public policy, his study, in its thorough
(45) research and creative use of quantitative and qualitative
evidence, is a model of historical analysis.
1. The passage is primarily concerned with
(A) recommending a new course of investigation
(B) summarizing and assessing a study
(C) making distinctions among categories
(D) criticizing the current state of a field
(E) comparing and contrasting two methods for
calculating data
2. The passage suggests that before the early 1970’s, which
of the following was true of the study by historians of
the working class in the United States?
(A) The study was infrequent or superficial, or both.
(B) The study was repeatedly criticized for its allegedly
narrow focus.
(C) The study relied more on qualitative than
quantitative evidence.
(D) The study focused more on the working-class
community than on working-class culture.
(E) The study ignored working-class joblessness during
the Great Depression.
3. According to the passage, which of the following is true
of Keyssar’s findings concerning unemployment in
Massachusetts?
(A) They tend to contradict earlier findings about such
unemployment.
(B) They are possible because Massachusetts has the
most easily accessible historical records.
(C) They are the first to mention the existence of high
rates of geographical mobility in the nineteenth
century.
(D) They are relevant to a historical understanding of
the nature of unemployment in other states.
(E) They have caused historians to reconsider the role of
the working class during the Great Depression.
4. According to the passage, which of the following is true
of the unemployment rates mentioned in line 15
(A) They hovered, on average, around 15 percent during
the period 1870-1920.
(B) They give less than a full sense of the impact of
unemployment on working-class people.
(C) They overestimate the importance of middle class
and white-collar unemployment.
(D) They have been considered by many historians to
underestimate the extent of working-class
unemployment.
(E) They are more open to question when calculated for
years other than those of peak recession.
5. Which of the following statements about the
unemployment rate during the Great Depression can be
inferred from the passage?
(A) It was sometimes higher than 15 percent.
(B) It has been analyzed seriously only since the early
1970’s.
(C) It can be calculated more easily than can
unemployment frequency.
(D) It was never as high as the rate during the 1870’s.
(E) It has been shown by Keyssar to be lower than
previously thought.
6. According to the passage, Keyssar considers which of the
following to be among the important predictors of the
likelihood that a particular person would be unemployed in
late nineteenth-century Massachusetts?
Ⅰ. The person’s class
Ⅱ. Where the person lived or worked
Ⅲ. The person’s age
(A) Ⅰonly
(B) Ⅱonly
(C) Ⅰand Ⅱ only
(D) Ⅰand Ⅲ only
(E) Ⅰ,Ⅱ, and Ⅲ
7. The author views Keyssar’s study with
(A) impatient disapproval
(B) wary concern
(C) polite skepticism
(D) scrupulous neutrality
(E) qualified admiration
8. Which of the following, if true, would most strongly
support Keyssar’s findings as they are described by the
author?
(A) Boston, Massachusetts, and Quincy, Massachusetts,
adjoining communities, had a higher rate of
unemployment for working-class people in 1870
than in 1890.
(B) White-collar professionals such as attorneys had as
much trouble as day laborers in maintaining a steady
level of employment throughout the period 1870-
1920.
(C) Working-class women living in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, were more likely than working-class
men living in Cambridge to be unemployed for some
period of time during the year 1873.
(D) In the 1890’s, shoe-factory workers moved away in
large numbers from Chelmsford, Massachusetts,
where shoe factories were being replaced by other
industries, to adjoining West Chelmsford, where the
shoe industry flourished.
(E) In the late nineteenth century, workers of all classes
in Massachusetts were more likely than workers of all
classes in other states to move their place of
residence from one location to another within the
state.