Answer:
The Red Scare was hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, which intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Plastic is a word that originally meant “pliable and easily shaped.” It only recently became a name for a category of materials called polymers. The word polymer means “of many parts,” and polymers are made of long chains of molecules. Polymers abound in nature. Cellulose, the material that makes up the cell walls of plants, is a very common natural polymer.
Over the last century and a half humans have learned how to make synthetic polymers, sometimes using natural substances like cellulose, but more often using the plentiful carbon atoms provided by petroleum and other fossil fuels. Synthetic polymers are made up of long chains of atoms, arranged in repeating units, often much longer than those found in nature. It is the length of these chains, and the patterns in which they are arrayed, that make polymers strong, lightweight, and flexible. In other words, it’s what makes them so plastic.
These properties make synthetic polymers exceptionally useful, and since we learned how to create and manipulate them, polymers have become an essential part of our lives. Especially over the last 50 years plastics have saturated our world and changed the way that we live.
The First Synthetic Plastic
The first synthetic polymer was invented in 1869 by John Wesley Hyatt, who was inspired by a New York firm’s offer of $10,000 for anyone who could provide a substitute for ivory. The growing popularity of billiards had put a strain on the supply of natural ivory, obtained through the slaughter of wild elephants. By treating cellulose, derived from cotton fiber, with camphor, Hyatt discovered a plastic that could be crafted into a variety of shapes and made to imitate natural substances like tortoiseshell, horn, linen, and ivory.
This discovery was revolutionary. For the first time human manufacturing was not constrained by the limits of nature. Nature only supplied so much wood, metal, stone, bone, tusk, and horn. But now humans could create new materials. This development helped not only people but also the environment. Advertisements praised celluloid as the savior of the elephant and the tortoise. Plastics could protect the natural world from the destructive forces of human need.
The creation of new materials also helped free people from the social and economic constraints imposed by the scarcity of natural resources. Inexpensive celluloid made material wealth more widespread and obtainable.
The correct answer is nº4.
A thesis statement is used to summarize in 2-3 lines the main argument that will be developed along a much longer piece of text that usually comes right after. In this case, in nº 4 describes very broadly the most important characteristics of the Industrial Revolution (IR) period, including both some causes and consequences of this process. The new technologies that were implemented to enhance the productivity of the manufacturing activities led to new production systems, that required different type of employees and a big number of them. Industrial workers lived in cities so there was an important shift of population from rural to urban areas, that could offer more job positions than the agricultural industry in the countryside. All this meant a great change in society and in the way of life of the majority of the population in industrialized regions.
The other sentences in this introduction paragraph only mention specific aspects of the IR process. In turn, number 4 provides a relation of the main aspects that have to be commented for sure if speaking about industrialization.
The available options are:
(1) Economic competition is inefficient and wasteful.
(2) Strong labor unions are essential to the health of the economy.
(3) Natural resources belong to all citizens and should not be used for private gain.
(4) Concentrating economic power in the hands of a few individuals is a threat to the country.
Answer:
Economic competition is inefficient and wasteful
Explanation:
The statement best describes an attitude shared by John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan is "Economic competition is inefficient and wasteful."
This is evident in the fact that all these three aforementioned wealthy Americans were popularly known for their tendency to develop any form of monopoly in their various business industry.
To them, the existence of economic competition leads to inefficiency. Hence, they always prefer to eliminate the competition, before committing massive investments for the needed growth and development, instead of outwitting the competitors.
