Concord staked its claim as

[CHUNX638]

Concord staked its claim as the birthplace of Independence during the celebration of "America’s jubilee" on April 19, 1825, the fiftieth anniversary of Concord Fight. At the time, Concord was an expansive town of nineteen hundred inhabitants, with thriving crafts and trade in the village and prosperous farms serving the demand from growing urban centers during the long boom that accompanied the opening phase of the Industrial Revolution in the Northeast. Concord also occupied a prominent place on the political landscape; as a shire town, where the county courts convened, it had risen into a leading center of Middlesex County, and its politicians were major players on that stage. Economic and political ambitions, as well as pride in the past, drove the insistence that Concord was the "first site of forcible resistance to British aggression."

By the mid-1830s, with over two thousand inhabitants, Concord was probably at its political and economic pinnacle. The central village hosted some nine stores, forty shops, four hotels and taverns, four doctors and four lawyers, a variety of county associations, a printing office and a post office. Manufacturing was humming, too, with a growing mill village in the west part of town, along the quick-running Assabet River, and rising production of carriages and chaises, boots and shoes, bricks, guns, bellows, and pencils.

But a good many people were left out of the prosperity. In what was still a farming town, 64 percent of adult males were landless, while the top tenth of taxpayers, some fifty men, controlled nearly half the wealth. Those who failed to obtain a stake in society, native and newcomer alike, quickly moved on. The ties that once joined neighbors together were fraying. On the farms, the old work customs—the huskings, roof-raisings, and apple bees—by which people cooperated to complete essential chores gave way to modern capitalist arrangements. When men needed help, they hired it, and paid the going rate, which no longer included the traditional ration of grog. With a new zeal for temperance, employers abandoned the custom of drinking with workers in what had been a ritual display of camaraderie. There was no point in pretending to common bonds.

With the loosening of familiar obligations came unprecedented opportunities for personal autonomy and voluntary choice. Massachusetts inaugurated a new era of religious pluralism in 1834, ending two centuries of mandatory support for local churches. Even in Concord, a slim majority approved the change, and as soon as it became law, townspeople deserted the two existing churches—the Unitarian flock of the Reverend Ripley and an orthodox Calvinist congregation founded in 1826—in droves. The Sabbath no longer brought all ranks and orders together in obligatory devotion to the Word of God. Instead, townspeople gathered in an expanding array of voluntary associations—libraries, lyceums, charitable and missionary groups, Masonic lodges, antislavery and temperance societies, among others—to promote diverse projects for the common good. The privileged classes, particularly the village elite, were remarkably active in these campaigns. But even as they pulled back from customary roles and withdrew into private associations, they continued to exercise public power.

I have trouble in figuring out this passage's structure, the heart of this passage and the function of its four paragraphs.

There are my thought:
I think the main idea is Concord's economic and political ambitions (to explain why Concord insisted that it is the birthplace of Independence).
I don't know what's function of Paragraph2.
Paragraph 3 gives detail about C's economic development.
Paragraph 4 gives detail about C's political development.

I think the passage explains that "Economic and political ambitions, as well as pride in the past, drove the insistence that Concord was the "first site of forcible resistance to British aggression".
The answer:
The passage explains that “Concord was probably at its political and economic pinnacle” and then goes on to describe the impact on societal norms: “old work customs” and unified religious worship were replaced by a labor market and “voluntary choice.”

It's right or not?

I really need you help...Thank you very much!

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Please read the forum guidelines before posting: there's another thread with a discussion of this passage (https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... tml#p33246) Also, please be sure to post the question that you're referring to, as well as the passage.

I agree with you that identifying the purpose of this passage is not at all clear as it's an unusually rambling passage. However, noticing this helps us, as the tone is definitely one of description, not arguing.

Also, this passage probably makes a lot more sense to those who attended elementary school in the US (that doesn't include me) as I believe that they learn about Concord as the revered (and likely apocryphal) site of the start of the American War of Independence. There's some nonsense about a guy carrying a message on horseback, but it's all a cock-and-bull story, as I understand it.

Anyway, the second paragraph seems to have the purpose of just giving a bit of flesh to the story and describing the kind of place Concord was in the 1830s. It also seems that there's a big distraction exercise going on here. Since the first paragraph states a claim about Concord, we might expect the rest of the passage to go on and evaluate that claim. But it doesn't; we just get more description.