Question

Read the passage below and match each paragraph with the statement that best describes its primary structural role in the overall passage.

Paragraph 1:
For decades, classical economic historians contended that the transition from water power to steam power during the British Industrial Revolution was driven primarily by energy cost differentials and absolute scarcity of suitable water sites. According to this traditional view, water wheels had reached their geographical and technological limits, forcing manufacturers to adopt coal-fired steam engines to expand production capacity.

Paragraph 2:
However, recent spatial econometric analyses challenge this resource-scarcity thesis by demonstrating that suitable water power sites remained underutilized throughout northern England well into the 1840s. Furthermore, per-horsepower energy costs for water wheels remained lower than those for steam engines until late in the nineteenth century. The rapid shift to steam power, these newer studies argue, stemmed not from physical constraints on energy supply, but from steam's organizational flexibility: steam engines permitted manufacturers to relocate factories to densely populated urban centers, thereby tapping into concentrated labor pools and reducing transport overheads.

Paragraph 3:
This reinterpretation does not merely resolve a historical anomaly regarding energy pricing; it fundamentally reshapes our understanding of early industrial urbanization. By illustrating that spatial organization and labor access outweighed direct energy costs in technological selection, the modern scholarship demonstrates that urban agglomeration was a primary catalyst—rather than a mere byproduct—of the Industrial Revolution's core technological shifts.

Which of the following correctly pairs each paragraph with its primary structural function?