Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #691

Historian Evelyn Ward argues that the rapid industrialization of the 19th-century British textile industry was primarily driven by the sudden availability of cheap, unskilled labor rather than by breakthrough technological innovation. She points to the fact that Edmund Cartwright's power loom was patented in 1785 but saw limited commercial adoption until the 1820s, a period coinciding with a massive influx of migrant agricultural workers into urban centers. Conversely, economic historian Thomas Reed posits that it was the expiration of early restrictive patents and the subsequent sharp decline in machine manufacturing costs that spurred mass adoption, making the technology financially viable for mill owners regardless of the local labor supply. Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken Reed's argument?