When we ask the question what millions do, our question is answered by the verb phrase, do live. So do live is the simple predicate, and the skeleton of our sentence, the simple subject and the simple predicate, is millions do live. The subject millions is modified by the adjective phrase of modern men.
Then we ask, how do men live? And we find our question answered by they live miserably. But we are told how miserably they live by the adverb more and the adverb clause, than the cave-man lived, both modifying the adverb miserably. So we have our complete predicate, do live more miserably than the cave-man lived.
This interrogative sentence is introduced by the interrogative adverb why.
Do not drop this subject until you are able to determine readily the subject and predicate in every sentence and properly place all modifying words. There is nothing that will so increase your power of understanding what you read, and your ability to write clearly, as this facility in analyzing sentences.
Exercise 3
The following is Elbert Hubbard's description of the child-laborers of the Southern cotton-mills. Read it carefully. Notice that the sentences are all short sentences, and the cumulative effect of these short sentences is a picture of the condition of these child-workers which one can never forget. The subjects and predicates are in italics. When you have finished your study of this question, rewrite it from memory and then compare your version with the original version.
I thought that I would lift one of the little toilers. I wanted to ascertain his weight. Straightway through his thirty-five pounds of skin and bone there ran a tremor of fear. He struggled forward to tie a broken thread. I attracted his attention by a touch. I offered him a silver dime. He looked at me dumbly from a face that might have belonged to a man of sixty. It was so furrowed, tightly drawn and full of pain. He did not reach for the money. He did not know what it was. There were dozens of such children in this particular mill. A physician who was with me said that they would probably all be dead in two years. Their places would be easily filled, however, for there were plenty more. Pneumonia carries off most of them. Their systems are ripe for disease and when it comes there is no rebound. Medicine simply does not act. Nature is whipped, beaten, discouraged. The child sinks into a stupor and dies.
Exercise 4
In the following sentences, mark the simple sentences, the complex sentences and the compound sentences, and analyze these sentences according to the rules given for analyzing simple sentences, complex sentences and compound sentences: