Question

Read the excerpt from We Shall Not Be Moved.

Yet what they wanted was modest enough: a fifty-two-hour week with extra pay for overtime, an end to the fines and petty tyrannies, and a living wage. These were the demands that were hammered out by the shop groups behind the closed doors of the meeting halls. The officers of Local 25 sent them on to the owners — along with one more demand, recognition of the union.

Which historical detail best helps clarify a reader’s understanding of the information in the excerpt?

Female factory workers had to work long hours, sometimes up to eighty hours a week.
Many union men believed that women factory workers would never come together to strike.
Women’s clothing first began to be mass produced in the early twentieth century.
“Gorillas” were men who were hired to threaten and harass striking factory workers.

Answer 1

Female factory workers had to work long hours, sometimes up to eighty hours a week.

Step-by-step explanation:

Joan Dash provided a poignant and eye-opening historical account of the women's factory strike of 1909 in "We Shall Not Be Moved." This provides an insight into what the condition was like for women and also how the Women's Trade Union League came to be.

In the given passage from the text, the narrator reveals how the women's demand was simple: "a fifty-two-hour week with extra pay for overtime, an end to the fines and petty tyrannies, and a living wage." And in order to understand what the basis of the demands were, we have to know the situation of workers, especially female workers during the early 1990s. And the fact that women workers were expected to work for long hours, at times even up to eighty hours a week was too much for any living being to endure.

Thus, the correct answer is the first option.