PSAT Reading Practice Question 575

Question: 575

Upton Sinclair's 1906 The Jungle recounts the immigration of Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite from Lithuania to Chicago. The text raised social awareness of the unhealthy standards of industrial work at the turn of the century.
Promptly at seven the next morning Jurgis
reported for work. He came to the door that
had been pointed out to him, and there he
waited for nearly two hours. The boss had
05meant for him to enter, but had not said this,
and so it was only when on his way out to
hire another man that he came upon Jurgis.
He gave him a good cursing, but as Jurgis did
ot understand a word of it he did not object.
10He followed the boss, who showed him
where to put his street clothes, and waited
while he donned the working clothes he had
bought in a secondhand shop and brought
with him in a bundle; then he led him to the
15killing beds. The work which Jurgis was to
do here was very simple, and it took him but
a few minutes to learn it. He was provided
with a stiff besom, such as is used by street
sweepers, and it was his place to follow down
20the line the man who drew out the smoking
entrails from the carcass of the steer; this
mass was to be swept into a trap, which was
then closed, so that no one might slip into
it. As Jurgis came in, the first cattle of the
25morning were just making their appearance;
and so, with scarcely time to look about him,
and none to speak to any one, he fell to work.
It was a sweltering day in July, and the place
ran with steaming hot blood—one waded
30in it on the floor. The stench was almost
overpowering, but to Jurgis it was nothing.
His whole soul was dancing with joy—he
was at work at last! He was at work and
earning money! All day long he was figuring
35to himself. He was paid the fabulous sum
of seventeen and a half cents an hour; and
as it proved a rush day and he worked until
nearly seven o'clock in the evening, he went
home to the family with the tidings that he
40had earned more than a dollar and a half in a
single day!
At home, also, there was more good news;
so much of it at once that there was quite a
celebration in Aniele's hall bedroom. Jonas
45had been to have an interview with the
special policeman to whom Szedvilas had
introduced him, and had been taken to see
several of the bosses, with the result that
one had promised him a job the beginning
50of the next week. And then there was Marija
Berczynskas, who, fired with jealousy by
the success of Jurgis, had set out upon her
own responsibility to get a place. Marija
had nothing to take with her save her two
55brawny arms and the word "job," laboriously
learned; but with these she had marched
about Packingtown all day, entering every
door where there were signs of activity. Out
of some she had been ordered with curses;
60but Marija was not afraid of man or devil,
and asked every one she saw—visitors and
strangers, or work-people like herself, and
once or twice even high and lofty office
personages, who stared at her as if they
65thought she was crazy. In the end, however,
she had reaped her reward. In one of the
smaller plants she had stumbled upon a
room where scores of women and girls were
sitting at long tables preparing smoked beef
70in cans; and wandering through room after
room, Marija came at last to the place where
the sealed cans were being painted and
labeled, and here she had the good fortune
to encounter the "forelady." Marija did not
75understand then, as she was destined to
understand later, what there was attractive
to a "forelady" about the combination of a
face full of boundless good nature and the
muscles of a dray horse; but the woman had
80told her to come the next day and she would
perhaps give her a chance to learn the trade
of painting cans. The painting of cans being
skilled piecework, and paying as much as two
dollars a day, Marija burst in upon the family
85with the yell of a Comanche Indian, and fell
to capering about the room so as to frighten
the baby almost into convulsions.

The passage suggests that Marija has what level of proficiency in the English language?

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