Causation in the Age of Industrialization Practice Test

A scholarly overview states that industrial employers increasingly hired women and children because they could be paid less and were seen as suited to repetitive machine tending; this lowered labor costs and boosted profits, but also provoked criticism from reformers who linked factory labor to family disruption and moral danger. Which response most directly resulted from the situation described?

A historian contends that the spread of railways after 1840 shortened travel times and integrated national markets; by lowering freight costs for bulky goods, rail networks enabled firms to source raw materials widely and sell to distant consumers, intensifying competition and standardizing prices. Which development was most likely an effect of the process described?