2. synthesize why does the bottom level of
the bureaucratic hierarchy have the most
employees?

Any bureaucracy, to some extent, functions successfully only because it shifts the work itself from all its members in general to a minority of the apparatus — to workaholics and “workhorses,” which, of course, are found on all steps of the bureaucratic ladder, but the higher, the less. That is, almost the entire amount of "necessary" work is increasingly shifted to “simple performers,” to bureaucratic ‘lower classes,’ that is, as a rule, to people with limited experience, including limited experience of functioning within the bureaucratic system, limited knowledge, limited abilities.

Explanation:

the answer is a. since they were a huge producer of cotton and wanted the most money for it.