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The contradictions of mass slavery and poverty side by side with boundless leisure and abundance was only one side of the picture.
From CIVILIZATION AND BEYOND Learning From History by Scott Nearing
The subject NP seems to be "the contradictions," a plural form, but the verb "was." Does the verb agree with the following singular NP?
When a subject noun becomes separated from the verb phrase, there is a tendency to forget whether the noun was plural, and treat it as singular. There is probably some limit on the number of modifications that we can hold in our head before we forget the grammatical number of the noun.
In other words, this is a mistake, but a fairly common one.
