Nonfiction · Level 2 · 161 words

The Shopping Cart

Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.

In 1937, a grocer in Oklahoma named Sylvan Goldman noticed where his sales stopped. Customers quit shopping when the basket got heavy. The limit on a sale was not money, and it was not appetite. It was arms.

So Goldman put wheels on a folding chair frame and set baskets where the seat had been. Now the store carried the weight. A customer could buy as much as a cart held, which was far more than two hands could.

At first, almost nobody would push one. Men thought the cart made them look weak. Women said it looked like a baby carriage. Goldman hired people to wheel carts around the store and pretend to shop, until pushing one looked normal. It worked.

The cart then quietly redrew the store around itself. The aisles grew wider so carts could pass. Packages grew larger to fill the extra room. A basket asks what you can carry. A cart asks how much you want.

Comprehension questions

Choose an answer, then check your work. Nothing is saved or sent.

4 questions
1. What is the passage mainly about?

Show answer for question 1

D. How the shopping cart removed a limit on buying and reshaped the store.
The passage moves from the problem, arms as the limit, to the invention, the resistance, and the store changing around it. Only the last choice covers that whole arc.

2. Why did Goldman hire people to push carts and pretend to shop?

Show answer for question 2

B. Shoppers copy what looks normal, and the cart's problem was its image, not its use.
The complaints in the passage are about appearance: looking weak, looking like a baby carriage. Hired shoppers attacked exactly that problem, "until pushing one looked normal."

3. In this passage, "redrew" most nearly means

Show answer for question 3

C. changed the shape and layout of
The sentences after "redrew" list physical changes: wider aisles, larger packages. The store's design was changed, not put on paper.

4. According to the passage, what did Goldman build the first cart from?

Show answer for question 4

A. A folding chair frame with wheels and baskets.
The passage says he "put wheels on a folding chair frame and set baskets where the seat had been." The baby carriage is what critics said it resembled, not what it was.

Source: Written for Fluency. Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.