Which of the following should be the FIRST sentence after rearrangement?

Directions: Rearrange the following five sentences in the proper sequence to form a coherent paragraph, and then answer the question.

(A) Many of the emigrants were men of wealth, as the old lists show, and all of them, with few exceptions, were men of property and good standing.
(B) Many of the immigrants to America in colonial days were capitalists themselves, in a small or a large way, and paid their own passage.
(C) What proportion of the colonists were able to finance their voyage across the sea is a matter of pure conjecture.
(D) Undoubtedly a very considerable number could do so, for we can trace the family fortunes of many early settlers.
(E) They did not belong to the classes from which emigration is usually supplied, for they all had a stake in the country they left behind.