Reading Comprehension - 5

Based on the passage, mainstream Japanese poetry of the Heian period can best be described as:

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

The poetic expressiveness and creativity of Japanese women poets of the Manyoshu era is generally regarded as a manifestation of the freedom and relatively high political and economic status women of that era enjoyed. During the Heian period (A.D. 794 - 1185) which followed, Japanese women became increasingly relegated to domestic roles under the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism, which excluded women from the political and economic arenas. Yet, since poetry of the period came to be defined solely as short lyrical poetry, known as Wakas, and became the prevailing means of expressing love, women continued to excel and play a central role in the development of classical Japanese poetry. Moreover, while official Japanese documents were written in Chinese, the phonetic alphabet Kana was used for poetry. Also referred to as Onnamoji (women’s letters”), Kana was not deemed sufficiently sophisticated for use by Japanese men, who continued to write Chinese poetry, increasingly for expressing religious ideas and as an intellectual pastime. Chinese poetry ultimately yielded, then, to waka as the mainstream of Japanese poetry.

The author’s primary purpose in the passage is to

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

The poetic expressiveness and creativity of Japanese women poets of the Manyoshu era is generally regarded as a manifestation of the freedom and relatively high political and economic status women of that era enjoyed. During the Heian period (A.D. 794 - 1185) which followed, Japanese women became increasingly relegated to domestic roles under the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism, which excluded women from the political and economic arenas. Yet, since poetry of the period came to be defined solely as short lyrical poetry, known as Wakas, and became the prevailing means of expressing love, women continued to excel and play a central role in the development of classical Japanese poetry. Moreover, while official Japanese documents were written in Chinese, the phonetic alphabet Kana was used for poetry. Also referred to as Onnamoji (women’s letters”), Kana was not deemed sufficiently sophisticated for use by Japanese men, who continued to write Chinese poetry, increasingly for expressing religious ideas and as an intellectual pastime. Chinese poetry ultimately yielded, then, to waka as the mainstream of Japanese poetry.

The word “sunk” (Paragraph 5) in the passage conveys the degree to which Ward

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In this passage from a novel, the narrator has been reading letters of his grandmother. Susan Ward was a young woman, a writer and a mother, whose husband Oliver was working as a mining engineer in Leadville, in the West. Here, the narrator imagines Susan Ward as she spends the winter with her family in Milton, New York, before rejoining her husband in the spring.
From the parental burrow, Leadville seemed so far away that it was only half - real. Unwrapping her apple cheeked son after a sleigh ride down the lane, she had a difficulty in believing that she had ever lived anywhere but here in Milton.
She felt how the placid industry of her days matched the placid industry of all the days that had passed over that farm through six generations. Present and past were less continuous than synonymous. She did not have to come at her grandparents through a time machine. Her own life and that of the grandfather she was writing about showed her similar figures in an identical landscape. At the milldam where she had learned to skate she pulled her little boy on his sled, and they watched a weasel, snow - white for winter, flirt his black - tripped tail in and out of the mill’s timbers. She might have been watching with her grandfather’s eyes. Watching a wintry sky die out beyond black elms, she could not make her mind restore the sight of the western mountains at sunset from her cabin door, or the cabin itself, or Oliver, or their friends. Who were those glittering people intent on raiding the continent for money or for scientific knowledge? What illusion was it that she bridged between this world and that? She paused sometimes; cleaning the room she had always called Grandma’s Room, and thought with astonishment of the memory of Oliver’s great revolver lying on the dresser when he, already a thoroughing Westerner, had come to the house to court her. The town of Milton was dim and gentle, moulded by gentle lives, the current of change as slow through it, as the seep of water through a bog. More than once she thought how wrong those women in San Francisco had been, convinced that their old homes did not welcome them on their return. Last year when Oliver’s professional future was uncertain, she would have agreed. Now, with the future assured in the form of Oliver’s appointment as manager of the Adelaide mine in Leadville, the comfortable past asserted itself unchanged. Need for her husband, like worry over him, was turned low. Absorbed in her child and in the writing of her book, she was sunk in her affection for home. Even the signs of mutability that sometimes jolted her — the whiteness of her mother’s hair, the worn patience of her sister’s face, the morose silences of her brother - in - law,
now so long and black that the women worried about him in low voices - could not more than briefly interrupt the deep security and peace. I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to. It is not quite true that you can’t go home again. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transpiration, we have lived too shallowly in too many places. I doubt that any one of my son’s generation could comprehend the home feelings of someone like Susan Ward. Despite her unwillingness to live separately from her husband, she could probably have stayed on indefinitely in Milton, visited only occasionally by an asteroid husband. Or she would have picked up the old home and remade it in a new place. What she resisted was being a woman with no real home.
When frontier historians theorise about the uprooted, the lawless, the purseless, and the socially cut - off who emigrated to the West, they are not talking about people like my grandmother, so much that was cherished and loved, women like her had to give up; and the more they gave it up, the more they carried it helplessly with them. It was a process like ionization: what was subtracted from one pole was added to the other. For that sort of pioneer, the west was not a new country being created, but an old one being reproduced; in that sense our pioneer women were always more realistic than our pioneer men. The moderns, carrying little baggage of the cultural kind, not even living in traditional air, but breathing in to their space helmets, a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that ) are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no domestic sentiment; they have had their empathy removed. Their computers have no ghostly feedback of home, Sweet Home. How marvelously free they are! How unutterably deprived!

It can be said that Ward “did not have to come at her grandparents through a time machine” because

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In this passage from a novel, the narrator has been reading letters of his grandmother. Susan Ward was a young woman, a writer and a mother, whose husband Oliver was working as a mining engineer in Leadville, in the West. Here, the narrator imagines Susan Ward as she spends the winter with her family in Milton, New York, before rejoining her husband in the spring.
From the parental burrow, Leadville seemed so far away that it was only half - real. Unwrapping her apple cheeked son after a sleigh ride down the lane, she had a difficulty in believing that she had ever lived anywhere but here in Milton.
She felt how the placid industry of her days matched the placid industry of all the days that had passed over that farm through six generations. Present and past were less continuous than synonymous. She did not have to come at her grandparents through a time machine. Her own life and that of the grandfather she was writing about showed her similar figures in an identical landscape. At the milldam where she had learned to skate she pulled her little boy on his sled, and they watched a weasel, snow - white for winter, flirt his black - tripped tail in and out of the mill’s timbers. She might have been watching with her grandfather’s eyes. Watching a wintry sky die out beyond black elms, she could not make her mind restore the sight of the western mountains at sunset from her cabin door, or the cabin itself, or Oliver, or their friends. Who were those glittering people intent on raiding the continent for money or for scientific knowledge? What illusion was it that she bridged between this world and that? She paused sometimes; cleaning the room she had always called Grandma’s Room, and thought with astonishment of the memory of Oliver’s great revolver lying on the dresser when he, already a thoroughing Westerner, had come to the house to court her. The town of Milton was dim and gentle, moulded by gentle lives, the current of change as slow through it, as the seep of water through a bog. More than once she thought how wrong those women in San Francisco had been, convinced that their old homes did not welcome them on their return. Last year when Oliver’s professional future was uncertain, she would have agreed. Now, with the future assured in the form of Oliver’s appointment as manager of the Adelaide mine in Leadville, the comfortable past asserted itself unchanged. Need for her husband, like worry over him, was turned low. Absorbed in her child and in the writing of her book, she was sunk in her affection for home. Even the signs of mutability that sometimes jolted her — the whiteness of her mother’s hair, the worn patience of her sister’s face, the morose silences of her brother - in - law,
now so long and black that the women worried about him in low voices - could not more than briefly interrupt the deep security and peace. I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to. It is not quite true that you can’t go home again. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transpiration, we have lived too shallowly in too many places. I doubt that any one of my son’s generation could comprehend the home feelings of someone like Susan Ward. Despite her unwillingness to live separately from her husband, she could probably have stayed on indefinitely in Milton, visited only occasionally by an asteroid husband. Or she would have picked up the old home and remade it in a new place. What she resisted was being a woman with no real home.
When frontier historians theorise about the uprooted, the lawless, the purseless, and the socially cut - off who emigrated to the West, they are not talking about people like my grandmother, so much that was cherished and loved, women like her had to give up; and the more they gave it up, the more they carried it helplessly with them. It was a process like ionization: what was subtracted from one pole was added to the other. For that sort of pioneer, the west was not a new country being created, but an old one being reproduced; in that sense our pioneer women were always more realistic than our pioneer men. The moderns, carrying little baggage of the cultural kind, not even living in traditional air, but breathing in to their space helmets, a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that ) are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no domestic sentiment; they have had their empathy removed. Their computers have no ghostly feedback of home, Sweet Home. How marvelously free they are! How unutterably deprived!

Which of the following statements about Kana finds the least support in the passage?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

The poetic expressiveness and creativity of Japanese women poets of the Manyoshu era is generally regarded as a manifestation of the freedom and relatively high political and economic status women of that era enjoyed. During the Heian period (A.D. 794 - 1185) which followed, Japanese women became increasingly relegated to domestic roles under the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism, which excluded women from the political and economic arenas. Yet, since poetry of the period came to be defined solely as short lyrical poetry, known as Wakas, and became the prevailing means of expressing love, women continued to excel and play a central role in the development of classical Japanese poetry. Moreover, while official Japanese documents were written in Chinese, the phonetic alphabet Kana was used for poetry. Also referred to as Onnamoji (women’s letters”), Kana was not deemed sufficiently sophisticated for use by Japanese men, who continued to write Chinese poetry, increasingly for expressing religious ideas and as an intellectual pastime. Chinese poetry ultimately yielded, then, to waka as the mainstream of Japanese poetry.

The reference to the grandfather’s eyes at the end of the second paragraph indicates that Ward

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In this passage from a novel, the narrator has been reading letters of his grandmother. Susan Ward was a young woman, a writer and a mother, whose husband Oliver was working as a mining engineer in Leadville, in the West. Here, the narrator imagines Susan Ward as she spends the winter with her family in Milton, New York, before rejoining her husband in the spring.
From the parental burrow, Leadville seemed so far away that it was only half - real. Unwrapping her apple cheeked son after a sleigh ride down the lane, she had a difficulty in believing that she had ever lived anywhere but here in Milton.
She felt how the placid industry of her days matched the placid industry of all the days that had passed over that farm through six generations. Present and past were less continuous than synonymous. She did not have to come at her grandparents through a time machine. Her own life and that of the grandfather she was writing about showed her similar figures in an identical landscape. At the milldam where she had learned to skate she pulled her little boy on his sled, and they watched a weasel, snow - white for winter, flirt his black - tripped tail in and out of the mill’s timbers. She might have been watching with her grandfather’s eyes. Watching a wintry sky die out beyond black elms, she could not make her mind restore the sight of the western mountains at sunset from her cabin door, or the cabin itself, or Oliver, or their friends. Who were those glittering people intent on raiding the continent for money or for scientific knowledge? What illusion was it that she bridged between this world and that? She paused sometimes; cleaning the room she had always called Grandma’s Room, and thought with astonishment of the memory of Oliver’s great revolver lying on the dresser when he, already a thoroughing Westerner, had come to the house to court her. The town of Milton was dim and gentle, moulded by gentle lives, the current of change as slow through it, as the seep of water through a bog. More than once she thought how wrong those women in San Francisco had been, convinced that their old homes did not welcome them on their return. Last year when Oliver’s professional future was uncertain, she would have agreed. Now, with the future assured in the form of Oliver’s appointment as manager of the Adelaide mine in Leadville, the comfortable past asserted itself unchanged. Need for her husband, like worry over him, was turned low. Absorbed in her child and in the writing of her book, she was sunk in her affection for home. Even the signs of mutability that sometimes jolted her — the whiteness of her mother’s hair, the worn patience of her sister’s face, the morose silences of her brother - in - law,
now so long and black that the women worried about him in low voices - could not more than briefly interrupt the deep security and peace. I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to. It is not quite true that you can’t go home again. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transpiration, we have lived too shallowly in too many places. I doubt that any one of my son’s generation could comprehend the home feelings of someone like Susan Ward. Despite her unwillingness to live separately from her husband, she could probably have stayed on indefinitely in Milton, visited only occasionally by an asteroid husband. Or she would have picked up the old home and remade it in a new place. What she resisted was being a woman with no real home.
When frontier historians theorise about the uprooted, the lawless, the purseless, and the socially cut - off who emigrated to the West, they are not talking about people like my grandmother, so much that was cherished and loved, women like her had to give up; and the more they gave it up, the more they carried it helplessly with them. It was a process like ionization: what was subtracted from one pole was added to the other. For that sort of pioneer, the west was not a new country being created, but an old one being reproduced; in that sense our pioneer women were always more realistic than our pioneer men. The moderns, carrying little baggage of the cultural kind, not even living in traditional air, but breathing in to their space helmets, a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that ) are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no domestic sentiment; they have had their empathy removed. Their computers have no ghostly feedback of home, Sweet Home. How marvelously free they are! How unutterably deprived!

With respect to which of the following painters does the passage provide the least support for the assertion that the painter was influenced by the contemporary art of France?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In the past century Irish painting has changed from a British - influenced lyrical tradition to an art that evokes the ruggedness and roots of an Irish Celtic past. At the turn of the twentieth century Irish painters, including notables Walter Frederick Osborne and Sir - William Orpen, looked elsewhere for influence.
Osborne’s exposure to “Plein Air” painting deeply impacted his stylistic development; and Orpen allied himself with a group of English artists, while at the same time participating in the French avant - garde experiment, both as painter and teacher.
However nationalist energies were beginning to coalesce, reviving interest in Irish culture and Irish visual arts. Beatrice Elvery’s Aire (1907), a landmark achievement, merged the devotional simplicity of fifteenth - century Italian painting with the iconography of Ireland’s Celtic past, linking the history of Irish Catholicism with the still - nascent Irish republic. And, although also captivated by the French Plein Air school, Sir John Lavery invoked the mythology of his native land for a 1928 commission to paint the central figure for the bank note of the new Irish Free State. Lavery chose as this figure Aire, with her arm on a Celtic harp, the national symbol of independent Ireland. In Irish painting from about 1910, memories of Edwardian romanticism coexisted with a new sense of realism, exemplified by the paintings of Paul Henry and Sean Keating, a student of Orpen’s realism also crept in to the work of Edwardian’s Lavery and Orpen, both of whom made paintings depicting World War I, Lavery with a distanced Victorian nobility, Orpen closer to the front, revealing a more sinister and realistic vision. Meanwhile, counterpoint to the Edwardians and realists came Jack B. Yeats, whose travels throughout the rugged and more authentically Irish west led him to depict subjects ranging from street scenes in Dublin to boxing matches and funerals. Fusing close observations of Irish life and icons with an Irish identity in a new way, Yeats changed the face of Irish painting and became the most important Irish artist of his century.

The author points out the coexistence of romanticism and realism most probably in order to show that

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In the past century Irish painting has changed from a British - influenced lyrical tradition to an art that evokes the ruggedness and roots of an Irish Celtic past. At the turn of the twentieth century Irish painters, including notables Walter Frederick Osborne and Sir - William Orpen, looked elsewhere for influence.
Osborne’s exposure to “Plein Air” painting deeply impacted his stylistic development; and Orpen allied himself with a group of English artists, while at the same time participating in the French avant - garde experiment, both as painter and teacher.
However nationalist energies were beginning to coalesce, reviving interest in Irish culture and Irish visual arts. Beatrice Elvery’s Aire (1907), a landmark achievement, merged the devotional simplicity of fifteenth - century Italian painting with the iconography of Ireland’s Celtic past, linking the history of Irish Catholicism with the still - nascent Irish republic. And, although also captivated by the French Plein Air school, Sir John Lavery invoked the mythology of his native land for a 1928 commission to paint the central figure for the bank note of the new Irish Free State. Lavery chose as this figure Aire, with her arm on a Celtic harp, the national symbol of independent Ireland. In Irish painting from about 1910, memories of Edwardian romanticism coexisted with a new sense of realism, exemplified by the paintings of Paul Henry and Sean Keating, a student of Orpen’s realism also crept in to the work of Edwardian’s Lavery and Orpen, both of whom made paintings depicting World War I, Lavery with a distanced Victorian nobility, Orpen closer to the front, revealing a more sinister and realistic vision. Meanwhile, counterpoint to the Edwardians and realists came Jack B. Yeats, whose travels throughout the rugged and more authentically Irish west led him to depict subjects ranging from street scenes in Dublin to boxing matches and funerals. Fusing close observations of Irish life and icons with an Irish identity in a new way, Yeats changed the face of Irish painting and became the most important Irish artist of his century.

Ward came to feel differently from “those women in San Francisco” because

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In this passage from a novel, the narrator has been reading letters of his grandmother. Susan Ward was a young woman, a writer and a mother, whose husband Oliver was working as a mining engineer in Leadville, in the West. Here, the narrator imagines Susan Ward as she spends the winter with her family in Milton, New York, before rejoining her husband in the spring.
From the parental burrow, Leadville seemed so far away that it was only half - real. Unwrapping her apple cheeked son after a sleigh ride down the lane, she had a difficulty in believing that she had ever lived anywhere but here in Milton.
She felt how the placid industry of her days matched the placid industry of all the days that had passed over that farm through six generations. Present and past were less continuous than synonymous. She did not have to come at her grandparents through a time machine. Her own life and that of the grandfather she was writing about showed her similar figures in an identical landscape. At the milldam where she had learned to skate she pulled her little boy on his sled, and they watched a weasel, snow - white for winter, flirt his black - tripped tail in and out of the mill’s timbers. She might have been watching with her grandfather’s eyes. Watching a wintry sky die out beyond black elms, she could not make her mind restore the sight of the western mountains at sunset from her cabin door, or the cabin itself, or Oliver, or their friends. Who were those glittering people intent on raiding the continent for money or for scientific knowledge? What illusion was it that she bridged between this world and that? She paused sometimes; cleaning the room she had always called Grandma’s Room, and thought with astonishment of the memory of Oliver’s great revolver lying on the dresser when he, already a thoroughing Westerner, had come to the house to court her. The town of Milton was dim and gentle, moulded by gentle lives, the current of change as slow through it, as the seep of water through a bog. More than once she thought how wrong those women in San Francisco had been, convinced that their old homes did not welcome them on their return. Last year when Oliver’s professional future was uncertain, she would have agreed. Now, with the future assured in the form of Oliver’s appointment as manager of the Adelaide mine in Leadville, the comfortable past asserted itself unchanged. Need for her husband, like worry over him, was turned low. Absorbed in her child and in the writing of her book, she was sunk in her affection for home. Even the signs of mutability that sometimes jolted her — the whiteness of her mother’s hair, the worn patience of her sister’s face, the morose silences of her brother - in - law,
now so long and black that the women worried about him in low voices - could not more than briefly interrupt the deep security and peace. I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to. It is not quite true that you can’t go home again. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transpiration, we have lived too shallowly in too many places. I doubt that any one of my son’s generation could comprehend the home feelings of someone like Susan Ward. Despite her unwillingness to live separately from her husband, she could probably have stayed on indefinitely in Milton, visited only occasionally by an asteroid husband. Or she would have picked up the old home and remade it in a new place. What she resisted was being a woman with no real home.
When frontier historians theorise about the uprooted, the lawless, the purseless, and the socially cut - off who emigrated to the West, they are not talking about people like my grandmother, so much that was cherished and loved, women like her had to give up; and the more they gave it up, the more they carried it helplessly with them. It was a process like ionization: what was subtracted from one pole was added to the other. For that sort of pioneer, the west was not a new country being created, but an old one being reproduced; in that sense our pioneer women were always more realistic than our pioneer men. The moderns, carrying little baggage of the cultural kind, not even living in traditional air, but breathing in to their space helmets, a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that ) are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no domestic sentiment; they have had their empathy removed. Their computers have no ghostly feedback of home, Sweet Home. How marvelously free they are! How unutterably deprived!

Which of the following best explains the author’s use of the word “counterpoint” in referring to Yeats?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In the past century Irish painting has changed from a British - influenced lyrical tradition to an art that evokes the ruggedness and roots of an Irish Celtic past. At the turn of the twentieth century Irish painters, including notables Walter Frederick Osborne and Sir - William Orpen, looked elsewhere for influence.
Osborne’s exposure to “Plein Air” painting deeply impacted his stylistic development; and Orpen allied himself with a group of English artists, while at the same time participating in the French avant - garde experiment, both as painter and teacher.
However nationalist energies were beginning to coalesce, reviving interest in Irish culture and Irish visual arts. Beatrice Elvery’s Aire (1907), a landmark achievement, merged the devotional simplicity of fifteenth - century Italian painting with the iconography of Ireland’s Celtic past, linking the history of Irish Catholicism with the still - nascent Irish republic. And, although also captivated by the French Plein Air school, Sir John Lavery invoked the mythology of his native land for a 1928 commission to paint the central figure for the bank note of the new Irish Free State. Lavery chose as this figure Aire, with her arm on a Celtic harp, the national symbol of independent Ireland. In Irish painting from about 1910, memories of Edwardian romanticism coexisted with a new sense of realism, exemplified by the paintings of Paul Henry and Sean Keating, a student of Orpen’s realism also crept in to the work of Edwardian’s Lavery and Orpen, both of whom made paintings depicting World War I, Lavery with a distanced Victorian nobility, Orpen closer to the front, revealing a more sinister and realistic vision. Meanwhile, counterpoint to the Edwardians and realists came Jack B. Yeats, whose travels throughout the rugged and more authentically Irish west led him to depict subjects ranging from street scenes in Dublin to boxing matches and funerals. Fusing close observations of Irish life and icons with an Irish identity in a new way, Yeats changed the face of Irish painting and became the most important Irish artist of his century.

Which of the following is the most likely title of a longer article in which the passage might have appeared?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In the past century Irish painting has changed from a British - influenced lyrical tradition to an art that evokes the ruggedness and roots of an Irish Celtic past. At the turn of the twentieth century Irish painters, including notables Walter Frederick Osborne and Sir - William Orpen, looked elsewhere for influence.
Osborne’s exposure to “Plein Air” painting deeply impacted his stylistic development; and Orpen allied himself with a group of English artists, while at the same time participating in the French avant - garde experiment, both as painter and teacher.
However nationalist energies were beginning to coalesce, reviving interest in Irish culture and Irish visual arts. Beatrice Elvery’s Aire (1907), a landmark achievement, merged the devotional simplicity of fifteenth - century Italian painting with the iconography of Ireland’s Celtic past, linking the history of Irish Catholicism with the still - nascent Irish republic. And, although also captivated by the French Plein Air school, Sir John Lavery invoked the mythology of his native land for a 1928 commission to paint the central figure for the bank note of the new Irish Free State. Lavery chose as this figure Aire, with her arm on a Celtic harp, the national symbol of independent Ireland. In Irish painting from about 1910, memories of Edwardian romanticism coexisted with a new sense of realism, exemplified by the paintings of Paul Henry and Sean Keating, a student of Orpen’s realism also crept in to the work of Edwardian’s Lavery and Orpen, both of whom made paintings depicting World War I, Lavery with a distanced Victorian nobility, Orpen closer to the front, revealing a more sinister and realistic vision. Meanwhile, counterpoint to the Edwardians and realists came Jack B. Yeats, whose travels throughout the rugged and more authentically Irish west led him to depict subjects ranging from street scenes in Dublin to boxing matches and funerals. Fusing close observations of Irish life and icons with an Irish identity in a new way, Yeats changed the face of Irish painting and became the most important Irish artist of his century.

In the beginning of the first paragraph, the phrase “parental burrow” suggests

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In this passage from a novel, the narrator has been reading letters of his grandmother. Susan Ward was a young woman, a writer and a mother, whose husband Oliver was working as a mining engineer in Leadville, in the West. Here, the narrator imagines Susan Ward as she spends the winter with her family in Milton, New York, before rejoining her husband in the spring.
From the parental burrow, Leadville seemed so far away that it was only half - real. Unwrapping her apple cheeked son after a sleigh ride down the lane, she had a difficulty in believing that she had ever lived anywhere but here in Milton.
She felt how the placid industry of her days matched the placid industry of all the days that had passed over that farm through six generations. Present and past were less continuous than synonymous. She did not have to come at her grandparents through a time machine. Her own life and that of the grandfather she was writing about showed her similar figures in an identical landscape. At the milldam where she had learned to skate she pulled her little boy on his sled, and they watched a weasel, snow - white for winter, flirt his black - tripped tail in and out of the mill’s timbers. She might have been watching with her grandfather’s eyes. Watching a wintry sky die out beyond black elms, she could not make her mind restore the sight of the western mountains at sunset from her cabin door, or the cabin itself, or Oliver, or their friends. Who were those glittering people intent on raiding the continent for money or for scientific knowledge? What illusion was it that she bridged between this world and that? She paused sometimes; cleaning the room she had always called Grandma’s Room, and thought with astonishment of the memory of Oliver’s great revolver lying on the dresser when he, already a thoroughing Westerner, had come to the house to court her. The town of Milton was dim and gentle, moulded by gentle lives, the current of change as slow through it, as the seep of water through a bog. More than once she thought how wrong those women in San Francisco had been, convinced that their old homes did not welcome them on their return. Last year when Oliver’s professional future was uncertain, she would have agreed. Now, with the future assured in the form of Oliver’s appointment as manager of the Adelaide mine in Leadville, the comfortable past asserted itself unchanged. Need for her husband, like worry over him, was turned low. Absorbed in her child and in the writing of her book, she was sunk in her affection for home. Even the signs of mutability that sometimes jolted her — the whiteness of her mother’s hair, the worn patience of her sister’s face, the morose silences of her brother - in - law,
now so long and black that the women worried about him in low voices - could not more than briefly interrupt the deep security and peace. I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to. It is not quite true that you can’t go home again. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transpiration, we have lived too shallowly in too many places. I doubt that any one of my son’s generation could comprehend the home feelings of someone like Susan Ward. Despite her unwillingness to live separately from her husband, she could probably have stayed on indefinitely in Milton, visited only occasionally by an asteroid husband. Or she would have picked up the old home and remade it in a new place. What she resisted was being a woman with no real home.
When frontier historians theorise about the uprooted, the lawless, the purseless, and the socially cut - off who emigrated to the West, they are not talking about people like my grandmother, so much that was cherished and loved, women like her had to give up; and the more they gave it up, the more they carried it helplessly with them. It was a process like ionization: what was subtracted from one pole was added to the other. For that sort of pioneer, the west was not a new country being created, but an old one being reproduced; in that sense our pioneer women were always more realistic than our pioneer men. The moderns, carrying little baggage of the cultural kind, not even living in traditional air, but breathing in to their space helmets, a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that ) are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no domestic sentiment; they have had their empathy removed. Their computers have no ghostly feedback of home, Sweet Home. How marvelously free they are! How unutterably deprived!

The reference to a bog in the first part of the fifth paragraph serves to convey a sense of the

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In this passage from a novel, the narrator has been reading letters of his grandmother. Susan Ward was a young woman, a writer and a mother, whose husband Oliver was working as a mining engineer in Leadville, in the West. Here, the narrator imagines Susan Ward as she spends the winter with her family in Milton, New York, before rejoining her husband in the spring.
From the parental burrow, Leadville seemed so far away that it was only half - real. Unwrapping her apple cheeked son after a sleigh ride down the lane, she had a difficulty in believing that she had ever lived anywhere but here in Milton.
She felt how the placid industry of her days matched the placid industry of all the days that had passed over that farm through six generations. Present and past were less continuous than synonymous. She did not have to come at her grandparents through a time machine. Her own life and that of the grandfather she was writing about showed her similar figures in an identical landscape. At the milldam where she had learned to skate she pulled her little boy on his sled, and they watched a weasel, snow - white for winter, flirt his black - tripped tail in and out of the mill’s timbers. She might have been watching with her grandfather’s eyes. Watching a wintry sky die out beyond black elms, she could not make her mind restore the sight of the western mountains at sunset from her cabin door, or the cabin itself, or Oliver, or their friends. Who were those glittering people intent on raiding the continent for money or for scientific knowledge? What illusion was it that she bridged between this world and that? She paused sometimes; cleaning the room she had always called Grandma’s Room, and thought with astonishment of the memory of Oliver’s great revolver lying on the dresser when he, already a thoroughing Westerner, had come to the house to court her. The town of Milton was dim and gentle, moulded by gentle lives, the current of change as slow through it, as the seep of water through a bog. More than once she thought how wrong those women in San Francisco had been, convinced that their old homes did not welcome them on their return. Last year when Oliver’s professional future was uncertain, she would have agreed. Now, with the future assured in the form of Oliver’s appointment as manager of the Adelaide mine in Leadville, the comfortable past asserted itself unchanged. Need for her husband, like worry over him, was turned low. Absorbed in her child and in the writing of her book, she was sunk in her affection for home. Even the signs of mutability that sometimes jolted her — the whiteness of her mother’s hair, the worn patience of her sister’s face, the morose silences of her brother - in - law,
now so long and black that the women worried about him in low voices - could not more than briefly interrupt the deep security and peace. I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to. It is not quite true that you can’t go home again. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transpiration, we have lived too shallowly in too many places. I doubt that any one of my son’s generation could comprehend the home feelings of someone like Susan Ward. Despite her unwillingness to live separately from her husband, she could probably have stayed on indefinitely in Milton, visited only occasionally by an asteroid husband. Or she would have picked up the old home and remade it in a new place. What she resisted was being a woman with no real home.
When frontier historians theorise about the uprooted, the lawless, the purseless, and the socially cut - off who emigrated to the West, they are not talking about people like my grandmother, so much that was cherished and loved, women like her had to give up; and the more they gave it up, the more they carried it helplessly with them. It was a process like ionization: what was subtracted from one pole was added to the other. For that sort of pioneer, the west was not a new country being created, but an old one being reproduced; in that sense our pioneer women were always more realistic than our pioneer men. The moderns, carrying little baggage of the cultural kind, not even living in traditional air, but breathing in to their space helmets, a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that ) are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no domestic sentiment; they have had their empathy removed. Their computers have no ghostly feedback of home, Sweet Home. How marvelously free they are! How unutterably deprived!

What was Good Food’s first bad move that led to its eventual decline?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

When one company acquires another, the larger firm usually takes over the smaller one. There are exceptions to the rule, however, such as the Good – Value Mart merger.
Once the leading chain of supermarkets in New England, Good Food Stores have been steadily declining for twenty years. Their sales fell from 25 per cent to 5 per cent of the market. During the same period (1958–1978), earning plunged from over 8 million to a loss of 23 million. With such a track record, Good Food stores hardly seemed a likely candidate for acquisition.
But the Midwest - based Value Mart chain acquired Good Food earlier this year with high hopes of turning around the New England chain. Value Mart is a privately owned chain of supermarkets, with approximately sixty stores throughout the Midwest. The average sales for last year ran a little over 6 million per store. On the other hand, Good Food is a publicly held company that averaged sales of 4 million in each of its 230 stores. In the last five years, Value Mart’s earnings reached nearly 15 million, while Good Food lost 40 million during that same period.
The chairman of Value Mart, Harold Brown, is an old hand at putting ailing supermarkets back on their feet. In 1963, Mr. Brown helped turn around an old Cincinnati chain; he changed it from an unprofitable, out of date store to a market leader with a profit of 7 million in just six years. After leaving the Cincinnati chain, Brown, along with thirty other investors, bought Value Mart and turned it around, so that in the past year it has surpassed even the Cincinnati chain in sales. Brown’s two success stories now account for 60 per cent of the supermarket business in the Cincinnati area.
Although Brown’s track record has been good (and was, in fact, the reason Value Mart was able to obtain the necessary funds to acquire Good Food), there has been some speculation on whether Value Mart has undertaken more than it can handle. A powerful New England trade member wonders whether Value Mart has the know-how and strength to take on the leading established New England chains. Good Food’s problems started in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they failed to follow their competitors move to the suburbs and large shopping centres. This put Good Food behind in market share.
Good Food then made another bad move in 1962 in an attempt to regain some of its lost market share. They acquired a wavering division of supermarkets in the New York area and tried to establish themselves there, while maintaining a policy of low investment and high prices back home in New England. The strategy did not work, and consequently Good Food had to pull out of New York. In addition, Good Food has lost customers in New England. Good Food’s woes were increased by mismanagement. Complacent task forces were formed to “study” problems instead of dealing with them immediately. Coupled with this was a group of directors who were, for the most part, not industry experts but bankers and lawyers.
The choices facing Good Food in 1976 were as follows: sell, if possible; liquidate; or push onwards. The decision was made to seek a merger partner, and Value Mart was contacted through Good Food’s investment counselor. Given Good Food’s unpromising situation, it seems surprising that Value Mart was interested. Mr. Brown, however, fresh out of a Cincinnati price war, realised that his home market was saturated and that acquisition or territorial expansion was the necessary means for growth.
Value Mart took charge of the situation and began to reorganise even before the merger was completed. Their top executives took over key positions in the Good Food organisation, a move that included ousting Good Food’s president. In an attempt to drastically cut down on administrative expenses, over two hundred jobs at the management level were abolished. (It is expected that this alone resulted in savings of over 3 million.)
Another change was placing control of grocery merchandising and buying in the hands of those at the corporate level, rather than dividing this function amongst Good Food’s store managers and executives. This facilitated the introduction of Value Mart’s tried-and-true policy of “deal buying,” or taking advantage of cut-rate prices to buy huge quantities of canned or packaged goods. Because “buying” in such quantity necessitates ample inventory space, construction was begun the day after the merger, to increase Good Food’s warehousing facilities to the tune of 7 million. The new warehouse will be the largest supermarket warehouse in the United States, and it is expected to save in cost and avoid out-of-stock problems.
The Value Mart strategy for turning around the New England chain also involves deemphasizing non food items and hence attracting customers by placing emphasis on the quality of its produce (fruits and vegetables) and meats. Problems at the store level are being corrected by extending work hours at individual stores, cleaning up dirty premises (Good Food had reduced personnel in its stores in an attempt to cut labour costs, resulting in dirty stores and low morale among the employees), and teaching store managers how to repackage and maintain their fresh produce. Visits to each Good Food store by a Value Mart senior vice-president of operations resulted in control and, equally as important, a demonstrated and direct interest by top management in individual store operations.
This top-level involvement in daily store routine is a far cry from the old Good Food “hands off” approach. The Midwestern senior vice-president not only visits each store to make suggestions, but also comes back unannounced to check on the implementations of changes.
Mr. Brown’s immediate objective is to increase business from present customers. He estimates an increase in volume of over 100 million if sales per customer can be improved by only 10 per cent. Once sales are up and stores are operating smoothly, Brown plans to renovate about sixty-five of Good Food’s largest stores, a move that should bring in an additional 6 - 7 million in weekly sales. Finally, the older and smaller Good Food stores will be given a facelift with the increased revenue from the redone larger stores. Value Mart intends to feed its profits back into the entire operation to keep it going and constantly moving ahead.

What was the principal reason for Value Mart’s interest in the declining the Good Food chain?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

When one company acquires another, the larger firm usually takes over the smaller one. There are exceptions to the rule, however, such as the Good – Value Mart merger.
Once the leading chain of supermarkets in New England, Good Food Stores have been steadily declining for twenty years. Their sales fell from 25 per cent to 5 per cent of the market. During the same period (1958–1978), earning plunged from over 8 million to a loss of 23 million. With such a track record, Good Food stores hardly seemed a likely candidate for acquisition.
But the Midwest - based Value Mart chain acquired Good Food earlier this year with high hopes of turning around the New England chain. Value Mart is a privately owned chain of supermarkets, with approximately sixty stores throughout the Midwest. The average sales for last year ran a little over 6 million per store. On the other hand, Good Food is a publicly held company that averaged sales of 4 million in each of its 230 stores. In the last five years, Value Mart’s earnings reached nearly 15 million, while Good Food lost 40 million during that same period.
The chairman of Value Mart, Harold Brown, is an old hand at putting ailing supermarkets back on their feet. In 1963, Mr. Brown helped turn around an old Cincinnati chain; he changed it from an unprofitable, out of date store to a market leader with a profit of 7 million in just six years. After leaving the Cincinnati chain, Brown, along with thirty other investors, bought Value Mart and turned it around, so that in the past year it has surpassed even the Cincinnati chain in sales. Brown’s two success stories now account for 60 per cent of the supermarket business in the Cincinnati area.
Although Brown’s track record has been good (and was, in fact, the reason Value Mart was able to obtain the necessary funds to acquire Good Food), there has been some speculation on whether Value Mart has undertaken more than it can handle. A powerful New England trade member wonders whether Value Mart has the know-how and strength to take on the leading established New England chains. Good Food’s problems started in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they failed to follow their competitors move to the suburbs and large shopping centres. This put Good Food behind in market share.
Good Food then made another bad move in 1962 in an attempt to regain some of its lost market share. They acquired a wavering division of supermarkets in the New York area and tried to establish themselves there, while maintaining a policy of low investment and high prices back home in New England. The strategy did not work, and consequently Good Food had to pull out of New York. In addition, Good Food has lost customers in New England. Good Food’s woes were increased by mismanagement. Complacent task forces were formed to “study” problems instead of dealing with them immediately. Coupled with this was a group of directors who were, for the most part, not industry experts but bankers and lawyers.
The choices facing Good Food in 1976 were as follows: sell, if possible; liquidate; or push onwards. The decision was made to seek a merger partner, and Value Mart was contacted through Good Food’s investment counselor. Given Good Food’s unpromising situation, it seems surprising that Value Mart was interested. Mr. Brown, however, fresh out of a Cincinnati price war, realised that his home market was saturated and that acquisition or territorial expansion was the necessary means for growth.
Value Mart took charge of the situation and began to reorganise even before the merger was completed. Their top executives took over key positions in the Good Food organisation, a move that included ousting Good Food’s president. In an attempt to drastically cut down on administrative expenses, over two hundred jobs at the management level were abolished. (It is expected that this alone resulted in savings of over 3 million.)
Another change was placing control of grocery merchandising and buying in the hands of those at the corporate level, rather than dividing this function amongst Good Food’s store managers and executives. This facilitated the introduction of Value Mart’s tried-and-true policy of “deal buying,” or taking advantage of cut-rate prices to buy huge quantities of canned or packaged goods. Because “buying” in such quantity necessitates ample inventory space, construction was begun the day after the merger, to increase Good Food’s warehousing facilities to the tune of 7 million. The new warehouse will be the largest supermarket warehouse in the United States, and it is expected to save in cost and avoid out-of-stock problems.
The Value Mart strategy for turning around the New England chain also involves deemphasizing non food items and hence attracting customers by placing emphasis on the quality of its produce (fruits and vegetables) and meats. Problems at the store level are being corrected by extending work hours at individual stores, cleaning up dirty premises (Good Food had reduced personnel in its stores in an attempt to cut labour costs, resulting in dirty stores and low morale among the employees), and teaching store managers how to repackage and maintain their fresh produce. Visits to each Good Food store by a Value Mart senior vice-president of operations resulted in control and, equally as important, a demonstrated and direct interest by top management in individual store operations.
This top-level involvement in daily store routine is a far cry from the old Good Food “hands off” approach. The Midwestern senior vice-president not only visits each store to make suggestions, but also comes back unannounced to check on the implementations of changes.
Mr. Brown’s immediate objective is to increase business from present customers. He estimates an increase in volume of over 100 million if sales per customer can be improved by only 10 per cent. Once sales are up and stores are operating smoothly, Brown plans to renovate about sixty-five of Good Food’s largest stores, a move that should bring in an additional 6 - 7 million in weekly sales. Finally, the older and smaller Good Food stores will be given a facelift with the increased revenue from the redone larger stores. Value Mart intends to feed its profits back into the entire operation to keep it going and constantly moving ahead.

According to the passage, what is “deal buying”?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

When one company acquires another, the larger firm usually takes over the smaller one. There are exceptions to the rule, however, such as the Good – Value Mart merger.
Once the leading chain of supermarkets in New England, Good Food Stores have been steadily declining for twenty years. Their sales fell from 25 per cent to 5 per cent of the market. During the same period (1958–1978), earning plunged from over 8 million to a loss of 23 million. With such a track record, Good Food stores hardly seemed a likely candidate for acquisition.
But the Midwest - based Value Mart chain acquired Good Food earlier this year with high hopes of turning around the New England chain. Value Mart is a privately owned chain of supermarkets, with approximately sixty stores throughout the Midwest. The average sales for last year ran a little over 6 million per store. On the other hand, Good Food is a publicly held company that averaged sales of 4 million in each of its 230 stores. In the last five years, Value Mart’s earnings reached nearly 15 million, while Good Food lost 40 million during that same period.
The chairman of Value Mart, Harold Brown, is an old hand at putting ailing supermarkets back on their feet. In 1963, Mr. Brown helped turn around an old Cincinnati chain; he changed it from an unprofitable, out of date store to a market leader with a profit of 7 million in just six years. After leaving the Cincinnati chain, Brown, along with thirty other investors, bought Value Mart and turned it around, so that in the past year it has surpassed even the Cincinnati chain in sales. Brown’s two success stories now account for 60 per cent of the supermarket business in the Cincinnati area.
Although Brown’s track record has been good (and was, in fact, the reason Value Mart was able to obtain the necessary funds to acquire Good Food), there has been some speculation on whether Value Mart has undertaken more than it can handle. A powerful New England trade member wonders whether Value Mart has the know-how and strength to take on the leading established New England chains. Good Food’s problems started in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they failed to follow their competitors move to the suburbs and large shopping centres. This put Good Food behind in market share.
Good Food then made another bad move in 1962 in an attempt to regain some of its lost market share. They acquired a wavering division of supermarkets in the New York area and tried to establish themselves there, while maintaining a policy of low investment and high prices back home in New England. The strategy did not work, and consequently Good Food had to pull out of New York. In addition, Good Food has lost customers in New England. Good Food’s woes were increased by mismanagement. Complacent task forces were formed to “study” problems instead of dealing with them immediately. Coupled with this was a group of directors who were, for the most part, not industry experts but bankers and lawyers.
The choices facing Good Food in 1976 were as follows: sell, if possible; liquidate; or push onwards. The decision was made to seek a merger partner, and Value Mart was contacted through Good Food’s investment counselor. Given Good Food’s unpromising situation, it seems surprising that Value Mart was interested. Mr. Brown, however, fresh out of a Cincinnati price war, realised that his home market was saturated and that acquisition or territorial expansion was the necessary means for growth.
Value Mart took charge of the situation and began to reorganise even before the merger was completed. Their top executives took over key positions in the Good Food organisation, a move that included ousting Good Food’s president. In an attempt to drastically cut down on administrative expenses, over two hundred jobs at the management level were abolished. (It is expected that this alone resulted in savings of over 3 million.)
Another change was placing control of grocery merchandising and buying in the hands of those at the corporate level, rather than dividing this function amongst Good Food’s store managers and executives. This facilitated the introduction of Value Mart’s tried-and-true policy of “deal buying,” or taking advantage of cut-rate prices to buy huge quantities of canned or packaged goods. Because “buying” in such quantity necessitates ample inventory space, construction was begun the day after the merger, to increase Good Food’s warehousing facilities to the tune of 7 million. The new warehouse will be the largest supermarket warehouse in the United States, and it is expected to save in cost and avoid out-of-stock problems.
The Value Mart strategy for turning around the New England chain also involves deemphasizing non food items and hence attracting customers by placing emphasis on the quality of its produce (fruits and vegetables) and meats. Problems at the store level are being corrected by extending work hours at individual stores, cleaning up dirty premises (Good Food had reduced personnel in its stores in an attempt to cut labour costs, resulting in dirty stores and low morale among the employees), and teaching store managers how to repackage and maintain their fresh produce. Visits to each Good Food store by a Value Mart senior vice-president of operations resulted in control and, equally as important, a demonstrated and direct interest by top management in individual store operations.
This top-level involvement in daily store routine is a far cry from the old Good Food “hands off” approach. The Midwestern senior vice-president not only visits each store to make suggestions, but also comes back unannounced to check on the implementations of changes.
Mr. Brown’s immediate objective is to increase business from present customers. He estimates an increase in volume of over 100 million if sales per customer can be improved by only 10 per cent. Once sales are up and stores are operating smoothly, Brown plans to renovate about sixty-five of Good Food’s largest stores, a move that should bring in an additional 6 - 7 million in weekly sales. Finally, the older and smaller Good Food stores will be given a facelift with the increased revenue from the redone larger stores. Value Mart intends to feed its profits back into the entire operation to keep it going and constantly moving ahead.

What was Value Mart’s initial move in reorganising Good Food?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

When one company acquires another, the larger firm usually takes over the smaller one. There are exceptions to the rule, however, such as the Good – Value Mart merger.
Once the leading chain of supermarkets in New England, Good Food Stores have been steadily declining for twenty years. Their sales fell from 25 per cent to 5 per cent of the market. During the same period (1958–1978), earning plunged from over 8 million to a loss of 23 million. With such a track record, Good Food stores hardly seemed a likely candidate for acquisition.
But the Midwest - based Value Mart chain acquired Good Food earlier this year with high hopes of turning around the New England chain. Value Mart is a privately owned chain of supermarkets, with approximately sixty stores throughout the Midwest. The average sales for last year ran a little over 6 million per store. On the other hand, Good Food is a publicly held company that averaged sales of 4 million in each of its 230 stores. In the last five years, Value Mart’s earnings reached nearly 15 million, while Good Food lost 40 million during that same period.
The chairman of Value Mart, Harold Brown, is an old hand at putting ailing supermarkets back on their feet. In 1963, Mr. Brown helped turn around an old Cincinnati chain; he changed it from an unprofitable, out of date store to a market leader with a profit of 7 million in just six years. After leaving the Cincinnati chain, Brown, along with thirty other investors, bought Value Mart and turned it around, so that in the past year it has surpassed even the Cincinnati chain in sales. Brown’s two success stories now account for 60 per cent of the supermarket business in the Cincinnati area.
Although Brown’s track record has been good (and was, in fact, the reason Value Mart was able to obtain the necessary funds to acquire Good Food), there has been some speculation on whether Value Mart has undertaken more than it can handle. A powerful New England trade member wonders whether Value Mart has the know-how and strength to take on the leading established New England chains. Good Food’s problems started in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they failed to follow their competitors move to the suburbs and large shopping centres. This put Good Food behind in market share.
Good Food then made another bad move in 1962 in an attempt to regain some of its lost market share. They acquired a wavering division of supermarkets in the New York area and tried to establish themselves there, while maintaining a policy of low investment and high prices back home in New England. The strategy did not work, and consequently Good Food had to pull out of New York. In addition, Good Food has lost customers in New England. Good Food’s woes were increased by mismanagement. Complacent task forces were formed to “study” problems instead of dealing with them immediately. Coupled with this was a group of directors who were, for the most part, not industry experts but bankers and lawyers.
The choices facing Good Food in 1976 were as follows: sell, if possible; liquidate; or push onwards. The decision was made to seek a merger partner, and Value Mart was contacted through Good Food’s investment counselor. Given Good Food’s unpromising situation, it seems surprising that Value Mart was interested. Mr. Brown, however, fresh out of a Cincinnati price war, realised that his home market was saturated and that acquisition or territorial expansion was the necessary means for growth.
Value Mart took charge of the situation and began to reorganise even before the merger was completed. Their top executives took over key positions in the Good Food organisation, a move that included ousting Good Food’s president. In an attempt to drastically cut down on administrative expenses, over two hundred jobs at the management level were abolished. (It is expected that this alone resulted in savings of over 3 million.)
Another change was placing control of grocery merchandising and buying in the hands of those at the corporate level, rather than dividing this function amongst Good Food’s store managers and executives. This facilitated the introduction of Value Mart’s tried-and-true policy of “deal buying,” or taking advantage of cut-rate prices to buy huge quantities of canned or packaged goods. Because “buying” in such quantity necessitates ample inventory space, construction was begun the day after the merger, to increase Good Food’s warehousing facilities to the tune of 7 million. The new warehouse will be the largest supermarket warehouse in the United States, and it is expected to save in cost and avoid out-of-stock problems.
The Value Mart strategy for turning around the New England chain also involves deemphasizing non food items and hence attracting customers by placing emphasis on the quality of its produce (fruits and vegetables) and meats. Problems at the store level are being corrected by extending work hours at individual stores, cleaning up dirty premises (Good Food had reduced personnel in its stores in an attempt to cut labour costs, resulting in dirty stores and low morale among the employees), and teaching store managers how to repackage and maintain their fresh produce. Visits to each Good Food store by a Value Mart senior vice-president of operations resulted in control and, equally as important, a demonstrated and direct interest by top management in individual store operations.
This top-level involvement in daily store routine is a far cry from the old Good Food “hands off” approach. The Midwestern senior vice-president not only visits each store to make suggestions, but also comes back unannounced to check on the implementations of changes.
Mr. Brown’s immediate objective is to increase business from present customers. He estimates an increase in volume of over 100 million if sales per customer can be improved by only 10 per cent. Once sales are up and stores are operating smoothly, Brown plans to renovate about sixty-five of Good Food’s largest stores, a move that should bring in an additional 6 - 7 million in weekly sales. Finally, the older and smaller Good Food stores will be given a facelift with the increased revenue from the redone larger stores. Value Mart intends to feed its profits back into the entire operation to keep it going and constantly moving ahead.

In the early 1960s Good Food tried to enter the New York area. Why was their strategy unsuccessful?

1. Because of low investment in their home territory
2. Because of high prices in their home territory
3. Because of lack of prior knowledge about the New York market

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

When one company acquires another, the larger firm usually takes over the smaller one. There are exceptions to the rule, however, such as the Good – Value Mart merger.
Once the leading chain of supermarkets in New England, Good Food Stores have been steadily declining for twenty years. Their sales fell from 25 per cent to 5 per cent of the market. During the same period (1958–1978), earning plunged from over 8 million to a loss of 23 million. With such a track record, Good Food stores hardly seemed a likely candidate for acquisition.
But the Midwest - based Value Mart chain acquired Good Food earlier this year with high hopes of turning around the New England chain. Value Mart is a privately owned chain of supermarkets, with approximately sixty stores throughout the Midwest. The average sales for last year ran a little over 6 million per store. On the other hand, Good Food is a publicly held company that averaged sales of 4 million in each of its 230 stores. In the last five years, Value Mart’s earnings reached nearly 15 million, while Good Food lost 40 million during that same period.
The chairman of Value Mart, Harold Brown, is an old hand at putting ailing supermarkets back on their feet. In 1963, Mr. Brown helped turn around an old Cincinnati chain; he changed it from an unprofitable, out of date store to a market leader with a profit of 7 million in just six years. After leaving the Cincinnati chain, Brown, along with thirty other investors, bought Value Mart and turned it around, so that in the past year it has surpassed even the Cincinnati chain in sales. Brown’s two success stories now account for 60 per cent of the supermarket business in the Cincinnati area.
Although Brown’s track record has been good (and was, in fact, the reason Value Mart was able to obtain the necessary funds to acquire Good Food), there has been some speculation on whether Value Mart has undertaken more than it can handle. A powerful New England trade member wonders whether Value Mart has the know-how and strength to take on the leading established New England chains. Good Food’s problems started in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they failed to follow their competitors move to the suburbs and large shopping centres. This put Good Food behind in market share.
Good Food then made another bad move in 1962 in an attempt to regain some of its lost market share. They acquired a wavering division of supermarkets in the New York area and tried to establish themselves there, while maintaining a policy of low investment and high prices back home in New England. The strategy did not work, and consequently Good Food had to pull out of New York. In addition, Good Food has lost customers in New England. Good Food’s woes were increased by mismanagement. Complacent task forces were formed to “study” problems instead of dealing with them immediately. Coupled with this was a group of directors who were, for the most part, not industry experts but bankers and lawyers.
The choices facing Good Food in 1976 were as follows: sell, if possible; liquidate; or push onwards. The decision was made to seek a merger partner, and Value Mart was contacted through Good Food’s investment counselor. Given Good Food’s unpromising situation, it seems surprising that Value Mart was interested. Mr. Brown, however, fresh out of a Cincinnati price war, realised that his home market was saturated and that acquisition or territorial expansion was the necessary means for growth.
Value Mart took charge of the situation and began to reorganise even before the merger was completed. Their top executives took over key positions in the Good Food organisation, a move that included ousting Good Food’s president. In an attempt to drastically cut down on administrative expenses, over two hundred jobs at the management level were abolished. (It is expected that this alone resulted in savings of over 3 million.)
Another change was placing control of grocery merchandising and buying in the hands of those at the corporate level, rather than dividing this function amongst Good Food’s store managers and executives. This facilitated the introduction of Value Mart’s tried-and-true policy of “deal buying,” or taking advantage of cut-rate prices to buy huge quantities of canned or packaged goods. Because “buying” in such quantity necessitates ample inventory space, construction was begun the day after the merger, to increase Good Food’s warehousing facilities to the tune of 7 million. The new warehouse will be the largest supermarket warehouse in the United States, and it is expected to save in cost and avoid out-of-stock problems.
The Value Mart strategy for turning around the New England chain also involves deemphasizing non food items and hence attracting customers by placing emphasis on the quality of its produce (fruits and vegetables) and meats. Problems at the store level are being corrected by extending work hours at individual stores, cleaning up dirty premises (Good Food had reduced personnel in its stores in an attempt to cut labour costs, resulting in dirty stores and low morale among the employees), and teaching store managers how to repackage and maintain their fresh produce. Visits to each Good Food store by a Value Mart senior vice-president of operations resulted in control and, equally as important, a demonstrated and direct interest by top management in individual store operations.
This top-level involvement in daily store routine is a far cry from the old Good Food “hands off” approach. The Midwestern senior vice-president not only visits each store to make suggestions, but also comes back unannounced to check on the implementations of changes.
Mr. Brown’s immediate objective is to increase business from present customers. He estimates an increase in volume of over 100 million if sales per customer can be improved by only 10 per cent. Once sales are up and stores are operating smoothly, Brown plans to renovate about sixty-five of Good Food’s largest stores, a move that should bring in an additional 6 - 7 million in weekly sales. Finally, the older and smaller Good Food stores will be given a facelift with the increased revenue from the redone larger stores. Value Mart intends to feed its profits back into the entire operation to keep it going and constantly moving ahead.