托福閱讀真題Official 54 Passage 1（二）

托福閱讀真題Official 54 Passage 1（二）

The Commercialization of Lumber

In nineteenth-century America,practically everything that was built involved wood.Pine was especially attractive for building purposes.It is durable and strong,yet soft enough to be easily worked with even the simplest of hand tools.It also floats nicely on water,which allowed it to be transported to distant markets across the nation.The central and northern reaches of the Great Lakes states—Michigan,Wisconsin,and Minnesota—all contained extensive pine forests as well as many large rivers for floating logs into the Great Lakes,from where they were transported nationwide.

By 1860,the settlement of the American West along with timber shortages in the East converged with ever-widening impact on the pine forests of the Great Lakes states.Over the next 30 years,lumbering became a full-fledged enterprise in Michigan,Wisconsin,and Minnesota.Newly formed lumbering corporations bought up huge tracts of pineland and set about systematically cutting the trees.Both the colonists and the later industrialists saw timber as a commodity,but the latter group adopted a far more thorough and calculating approach to removing trees.In this sense,what happened between 1860 and 1890 represented a significant break with the past.No longer were farmers in search of extra income the main source for shingles,firewood,and other wood products.By the 1870s,farmers and city dwellers alike purchased forest products from large manufacturing companies located in the Great Lakes states rather than chopping wood themselves or buying it locally.

The commercialization of lumbering was in part the product of technological change.The early,thick saw blades tended to waste a large quantity of wood,with perhaps as much as a third of the log left behind on the floor as sawdust or scrap.In the 1870s,however,the British-invented band saw,with its thinner blade,became standard issue in the Great Lakes states’lumber factories.Meanwhile,the rise of steam-powered mills streamlined production by allowing for the more efficient,centralized,and continuous cutting of lumber.Steam helped to automate a variety of tasks,from cutting to the carrying away of waste.Mills also employed steam to heat log ponds,preventing them from freezing and making possible year-round lumber production.

For industrial lumbering to succeed,a way had to be found to neutralize the effects of the seasons on production.Traditionally,cutting took place in the winter,when snow and ice made it easier to drag logs on sleds or sleighs to the banks of streams.Once the streams and lakes thawed,workers rafted the logs to mills,where they were cut into lumber in the summer.If nature did not cooperate—if the winter proved dry and warm,if the spring thaw was delayed—production would suffer.To counter the effects of climate on lumber production,loggers experimented with a variety of techniques for transporting trees out of the woods.In the 1870s,loggers in the Great Lakes states began sprinkling water on sleigh roads,giving them an artificial ice coating to facilitate travel.The ice reduced the friction and allowed workers to move larger and heavier loads.

But all the sprinkling in the world would not save a logger from the threat of a warm winter.Without snow the sleigh roads turned to mud.In the 1870s,a set of snowless winters left lumber companies to ponder ways of liberating themselves from the seasons.Railroads were one possibility.At first,the remoteness of the pine forests discouraged common carriers from laying track.But increasing lumber prices in the late 1870s combined with periodic warm,dry winters compelled loggers to turn to iron rails.By 1887,89 logging railroads crisscrossed Michigan,transforming logging from a winter activity into a year-round one.

Once the logs arrived at a river,the trip downstream to a mill could be a long and tortuous one.Logjams(buildups of logs that prevent logs from moving downstream)were common—at times stretching for 10 miles—and became even more frequent as pressure on the northern Midwest pinelands increased in the 1860s.To help keep the logs moving efficiently,barriers called booms(essentially a chain of floating logs)were constructed to control the direction of the timber.By the 1870s,lumber companies existed in all the major logging areas of the northern Midwest.

3.The word“commodity”in the passage is closest in meaning to

A.product

B.problem

C.opportunity

D.advantage

正確答案：A

題目詳解

題型分類：詞匯題

選項分析：

原文為殖民者和后來的工業(yè)家都將木材看作是commodity。而原文前一句說lumbering became a full-fledged enterprise（伐木業(yè)變成一個成熟的事業(yè)）；這說明木材應該是一種商品，enterprise呼應A選項product“產(chǎn)品”。

B選項problem：問題；

C選項opportunity：機會；

D選項advantage：優(yōu)勢。

4.What can be inferred from paragraph 2 about timber in America before the year 1860?

A.Farmers of the American West earned most of their income by selling timber to newly arrived settlers.

B.Timber came primarily from farmers who wished to supplement their income.

C.Timber was much more expensive before the year 1860 because it was less readily available.

D.Timber came primarily from large manufacturing companies in the East.

正確答案：B

題目詳解

題型分類：推論題

原文定位：第二段前半部分都在講the year 1860，根據(jù)選項定位。

選項分析：

B選項對應倒數(shù)第二句尋求額外收入的農(nóng)民不再是木瓦、木柴和其他木制品的主要來源。這里是倒裝語序，句子主體是Farmers were no longer the main source，也就是說1860年前，木材主要來自于尋求額外收入的農(nóng)民。B選項supplement their income對應原文in search of extra income。

A選項，American West出自第一句，但是第一句沒有說到Farmers earned most of their income，無中生有。

C選項，more expensive無中生有，第二段沒有討論木材的價格。

D選項，第一句說timber shortages in the East，所以不可能是美國東部制造木材。

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