2018年8月25日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Economic Changes in Late-Nineteenth-Century Europe

2018年8月25日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Economic Changes in Late-Nineteenth-Century Europe

In 1873, Europe’s economy tilted sharply downward – prices, interest rates, and profits all fell, and remained low in many regions until the mid-1890s. Contemporaries referred to this as the Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture. In hindsight, “great depression” may seem an inaccurate label for a period that saw a continuing rise in world production and growing levels of foreign investment in new industrial economies, but to many Europeans living in these decades, this depression seemed depressing indeed. Both agriculture and business were hit hard. By the 1890s, the price of wheat had fallen to only one-third of what it had been in the 1860s. Business owners found that their profit margins were squeezed as the prices of finished products fell, often by as much as 50 percent, while labor and production costs tended to remain much more static.

1. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

A) In hindsight, “Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture” is an inaccurate label since world production and levels of foreign investment rose during these decades.

B) During the decades of the Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture, many Europeans were very unhappy with the state of their economy.

C) It is surprising that so many Europeans were depressed during a period of continuing economic expansion and investment in industrial production.

D) Even though the Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture saw a rise in world production and foreign investment, it was an economically difficult time for many Europeans.

2. In paragraph 1, the author states that “By the 1890s, the price of wheat had fallen to only one-third of what it had been in the 1860s” to

A) explain why the great depression did not affect people’s ability to buy food

B) establish the extent to which farming was affected during the great depression

C) explain why labor costs declined so much by the 1890s

D) provide evidence that by the 1890s agriculture was less profitable than trade

What caused this depression? Ironically, it was rooted in the very success of the Industrial Revolution. Cheaper transportation costs opened the fertile plains of the American Midwest and Ukraine to European consumption. ¢ With wheat and other agricultural goods now flooding the market, farmers were forced to accept increasingly lower prices for their products. ¢ More generally, as regions and nations industrialized, they of course produced more goods. ¢ Yet many industrial workers, agricultural laborers, and landowning peasants still stood on the very edge of subsistence, with little money to spend on industrial products. ¢ Thus in many regions of Europe production exceeded consumption, and the result was a long-term agricultural and industrial depression.

3. According to paragraph 2, which of the following caused the downturn in the European agricultural economy?

A) Many peasants and agricultural laborers moved into factory work, causing a labor shortage.

B) Landowning peasants did not have sufficient funds to grow large amounts of grain.

C) Many people moved into the region and agricultural production could not keep up.

D) Competition with large amounts of grain from the United States and Ukraine lowered prices for grain grown in Europe.

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