2006年考试之GMAT阅读练习(6)

文章作者 100test 发表时间 2007:05:07 16:04:16
来源 100Test.Com百考试题网

Passage 1

　　Since the only 1970s， historians have begun to devote serious attention to the working class in the United State. Yet while we now have studies of working-class communties and culture， we know remarkably little of worklessness， When historians have focused on the Great Depression of the 1930s. The narrowness of this perspective ignores the pervasive recessions and joblessness of the previous decades， as Alexander Keyssar shows in his recent book. Examining the period 1870-1920， Keyssar concentrates on Massachusetts， where teh historical materials are particularly rich， and the findings applicable to other industrial areas.

　　（The unemployment rates that Keyssar calculates appear to be relatively modest， at least by Great Depression standards： during the worst years， in the 1870s and 1890s， unemployment was around 15 percent）。 Yet Keyssar rightly understands that a better way to measure the impact of unemployment is to calculate unemployment frequencies-measuring the percentage of workers who experience any unemployment in the course of a year. Given this perspective， joblessness looms much larger.

　　Keyssar also scrutinize unemployment patterns according to skill level， ethnicity， race， age， class， and gender. He finds that rates of joblessness differed primarily according to class： those in middle-class and white-collar occupations were far less likely to be unemployed. Yet the impart of unemployment on a specific class was not always the same. Even when dependent on the same trade， adjoining communities could have dramatically different unemployment rates. Keyssar uses these differential rates to help explain a phenomenon that has puzzled historians the startlingly high rate of geo-graphical mobility in the nineteenth-century United States. But mobility was not the dominant working-class strategy for coping with unemployment， nor was assistance from private charites or state agencies. Self-help and the help of kin got most workers through jobless spells.

　　While Kayssar might have spent more time developing the implications of his finding on joblessness for contemporary public policy， his study， in its thorough research and creative use of quantitative and qualitative evidence， is a model of historical analysis.

　　1. The passage is primarily concerned with

　　（A） recommending a new course of investigation

　　（B） summarizing and assessing a study

　　（C） making distinctions among categories

　　（D） criticizing the current state of a field

　　（E） comparing and contrasting two methods for calculating data

　　2. The passage suggests that before the early 1970s ， which of the following was true of the study by historians of the working class in the Unite State？

　　（A） The study was infrequent or superficial， or both.

　　（B） The study was repeatedly criticized for its allegedly narrow focus.

　　（C） The study relied more on qualitative than quantitative evidence.

　　（D） The study focused more on the working-class community than on working-class culture.

　　（E） The study ignored working-class joblessness during the Great Depression.

　　3. According to the passage， which of the following is true of Keyssars findings concerning unemployment in Massachusetts？

　　（A） They tend to contradict earlier findings about such unemployment.

　　（B） They are possible because Massachusetts has the most easily accessible historical records.

　　（C） They are the first to mention the existence of high rates of geographical mobility in the nineteenth century.

　　（D） They are relevant to a historical understanding of the nature of unemployment in other states.

　　（E） They have cause historians to reconsider the role of the working class during the Great Depression.

　　4. According to the passage， which of the follow is true of the unemployment rates mentioned in line 15

　　（A） They hovered， on averrage， around 15 percent during the period 1870-1920.

　　（B） They give less than a full sense of the impact of unemployment on working-class people.

　　（C） They overstimate the importance of middle class and white-collar unemploument

　　（D） They have been considered by many historians to underestimate the extent of working-class unemploument.

　　（E） They are more open to question when calculated for years other than those of peak recession.