Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.

Question

Slave labor was valuable because it produced cheap sugar that everyone wanted to buy. But if people stopped buying that sugar, the whole slave system would collapse. In the years leading up to the American Revolution, the women of New England refused to buy English products and English tea. The loss of income made London rescind some of the taxes it had imposed on America. Now this same tactic—boycotting—was used to fight slavery. Some 400,000 English people stopped buying the sugar that slaves grew and harvested. Instead, they bought loaves of sugar that carried a label that said, "Produced by the labor of FREEMEN"—the sugar came from India.

When the English looked at the sugar they used every day, Clarkson and the other abolitionists made them see the blood of the slaves who had created it. The very fact that slave-made sugar was so popular made it harder for the English to ignore the reality of slavery. Sugar was a bridge—like the sneakers and T-shirts and rugs that, today, we know are made by sweatshop labor. If you wanted the product, abolitionists forced you to think about how it was made. Slavery—a practice as ancient as human civilization—was becoming unacceptable, a form of inhumanity people could no longer tolerate.

Which sentence best states the authors' claim in this passage?

Sugar was so cheap that it made economic sense for people in England to buy loaves of it.
It was wiser for English people to buy sugar from India instead of the Caribbean.
Slavery was so widespread that it would have been foolish for the English to oppose it.
Boycotting was an effective and persuasive tool in the fight against slavery.

Answer 1

The sentence that best states the authors' claim in this passage is:

Boycotting was an effective and persuasive tool in the fight against slavery.

This reflects the main idea of the passage, which discusses how the boycott of slave-produced sugar by English consumers played a significant role in raising awareness about slavery and challenging the system.