Read the excerpt from "a quilt of a country."
once these disparate parts were held together by a common enemy, by the fault lines of world wars and the electrified fence of communism. with the end of the cold war there was the creeping concern that without a focus for hatred and distrust, a sense of national identity would evaporate, that the left side of the hyphen—african-american, mexican-american, irish-american—would overwhelm the right.
what is the connotative meaning of fault lines in this excerpt?

Read the excerpt from loom and spindle. but in a short time the prejudice against factory labor wore away, and the lowell mills became filled with blooming and energetic new england women. . they soon began to associate with those who formed the community in which they had come to live, and were invited to their houses. they went to the same church, and sometimes married into some of the best families. or if they returned to their secluded homes again, instead of being looked down upon as "factory girls" by the squire's or the lawyer's family, they were more often welcomed as coming from the metropolis, bringing new fashions, new books, and new ideas with them. what inference can be drawn about the time period of the excerpt? a. the changing workforce transformed society’s rules. b. factories improved local economies with new products. c. women with factory experience found other jobs easily. d. married women preferred factory work to homemaking.