Read the excerpt from Chapter 5 of Wheels of Change.

For decades, Willard, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and many others, had been working toward increased political and economic rights for women. Now the bicycle brought a taste of independence to women on a very personal level, and some of them took the opportunity to express their discontent with old traditions and expectations. In August 1895, a cyclist named Ann Strong caused a stir when she compared the value of a bicycle to that of a husband in the Minneapolis Tribune. "I can't see but that a wheel is just as good company as most husbands," she declared. "I would as lief [sic] talk to one inanimate object as another; and I'd a great deal rather talk to one that can't answer than one that won't."

What two ideas does Macy synthesize to create a new understanding in this excerpt?
A. women’s fight for political rights and their increased satisfaction with traditions
B. women’s fight for political rights and their decreased contentment in marriages
C. the invention of the bicycle and increased personal independence for women
D. the invention of the bicycle and decreased interest in women’s economic rights

Read the passage, then answer the question that follows. no one could have seen it at the time, but the invention of beet sugar was not just a challenge to cane. it was a hint—just a glimpse, like a twist that comes about two thirds of the way through a movie—that the end of the age of sugar was in sight. for beet sugar showed that in order to create that perfect sweetness you did not need slaves, you did not need plantations, in fact you did not even need cane. beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the age of science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry, not whips. in 1854 only 11 percent of world sugar production came from beets. by 1899 the percentage had risen to about 65 percent. and beet sugar was just the first challenge to cane. by 1879 chemists discovered saccharine—a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than natural sugar. today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructose corn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (for example, aspartame, invented in 1965, or sucralose—splenda—created in 1976). brazil is the land that imported more africans than any other to work on sugar plantations, and in brazil the soil is still perfect for sugar. cane grows in brazil today, but not always for sugar. instead, cane is often used to create ethanol, much as corn farmers in america now convert their harvest into fuel. –sugar changed the world, marc aronson and marina budhos how does this passage support the claim that sugar was tied to the struggle for freedom? it shows that the invention of beet sugar created competition for cane sugar. it shows that technology had a role in changing how we sweeten our foods. it shows that the beet sugar trade provided jobs for formerly enslaved workers. it shows that sweeteners did not need to be the product of sugar plantations and slavery.