Passage Summary: In the 1800s, big houses had skinny floorboards and small houses had wide ones. Since rich people owned the big houses, historians think skinny boards were a way to show off how much money you had.

Conclusion: Narrow floorboards were likely a status symbol used to display wealth in the early nineteenth century.

Reasoning: Historians observed that larger houses, typically owned by wealthier individuals, consistently featured narrower floorboards than smaller houses.

Analysis: To strengthen this argument, we need to find a reason why narrow boards would actually signal wealth. In the world of construction, sometimes the more difficult or labor-intensive option is the one that becomes a status symbol. If narrow boards were more expensive to produce or required more time to install, that would explain why only the rich opted for them. Look for an answer that provides a cost or labor justification for why narrow boards were a luxury choice rather than just a random architectural quirk.