Directions: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives given. The present Industrial age is steadily placing into our hands power and…

Directions: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives given.

The present Industrial age is steadily placing into our hands power and instruments which are expected to relieve us of mechanical drudgery and give us more time for cultural and artistic pursuits. Machines have undoubtedly lightened human toil but have also added somewhat to human misery. Modern Industrialisation based on a minute sub-division of labor has robbed the worker of the sense of beauty and craft. The craftsman has become a mechanic, a mere tool for the ends of greater production. The development of intelligence and character which skilful creative work produces is now sought in other activities. The workers seek their pleasure outside their work. They claim higher wages and more leisure with opportunities for recreation and relaxation. But the leisure won after so much effort is wasted in costly amusements. Leisure is seldom used for the noble pursuits of the mind.
Besides, the industrial age has made us worshippers of wealth. In the social hierarchy anyone who has the luck or the ability to make money occupies a high place. Before the Industrial Revolution, we had different standards of social valuation. Saints, men of learning, poets and philosophers were at the top of the social scale. The days when human values like honesty, sympathy, understanding, justice and service were considered the most desirable in man are over. Money-making has become one of the most popular industries of the modern world and material progress has resulted in the creation of new wants. The consumer's appetite grows by what it feeds on. To want more and to get more, is the way of material progress. By means of this exciting competition we are concealing from ourselves the barrenness of life.
The most serious consequence of the Industrial Movement is the degradation of the values of the home. We see it in many western countries. Parents pursue their own pleasures with little consideration of their duties to their children. The poverty of an empty life drives the children into undesirable channels. Unless some corrective measures are adopted to reverse this trend, we may see in the not so distant future, a total disintegration of the family.

'drudgery' means