2015年1月10日托福阅读真题P1+题目+答案：Artisans in Sixteenth-Century Europe

2015年1月10日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Artisans in Sixteenth-Century Europe

For centuries European artisans had operated in small, autonomous handcraft businesses, but by the sixteenth century an evolving economic system—moving toward modern capitalism, with its free-market pricing, new organization of production, investments, and so on—had started to erode their stable and relatively prosperous position. What forces contributed to the decline of the artisan?

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 the sixteenth century, the European economy moved toward a system of free-market pricing, new ways of production, and investments.

B.Before the sixteenth century, European makers of handcrafts enjoyed stability, autonomy, and relative prosperity.

C.By the sixteenth century, the rise of capitalism began to weaken the autonomy and relative prosperity of European artisans.

D.European artisans operated small, autonomous businesses before modern capitalism emerged in the sixteenth century.

In a few industries there appeared technological innovations that cost more to install and operate than artisans—even associations of artisans—could afford. For example, in iron production, such specialized equipment as blast furnaces, tilt hammers, wire-drawing machines, and stamping, rolling, and slitting mills became more familiar components of the industry. Thus the need for fixed capital (equipment and buildings used in production) soared. Besides these items, expensive in their own right, facilities for water, storage, and deliveries were needed. In addition, pig (raw) iron turned out by blast furnaces could not be forged until refined further in a new intermediate stage. In late sixteenth-century Antwerp, where a skilled worker earned 125 to 250 guilders a year, a large blast furnace alone cost 3,000 guilders, and other industrial equipment was equally or more expensive.

2. The word “Besides” in the passage is closet in meaning to A

A.In addition to

B.More important than

C.Different from

D.Together with

3. According to paragraph 2, how did technological advances contribute to the economic decline of artisans?

A.Artisans had no place to store or use the new machines.

B.Goods produced by the new technology were cheaper than those produced by artisans.

C.The fixed costs of remaining in business became very high.

D.Artisans did not know how to use the new machines.

Raw materials, not equipment, constituted artisans’ major expense in most traders, however. Whereas in 1583 an Antwerp silk weaver paid 12 guilders for a loom (and made small payments over many years to pay off the debt for purchasing the loom), every six weeks he or she had to lay out 24 guilders for the 2 pounds of raw silk required to make a piece of cloth. Thus access to cheap and plentiful primary materials was a constant preoccupation for independent producers. Using local materials might allow even the poorest among them to avoid reliance on merchant suppliers. The loss of nearby sources could therefore be devastating. As silk cultivation waned around the Spanish cities of Cordoba and Toledo, weavers in these cities were forced to become employees of merchants who put out raw silk from Valencia and Murcia provinces. In the Dutch Republic, merchants who imported unprocessed salt from France, Portugal, and Spain gained control of the salt-refining industry once exploitation of local salt marshes was halted for fear that dikes (which held back the sea from the low-lying Dutch land) would be undermined.

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