問題詳情

Questions 20-28During the second half of the nineteenth century, the production of food and feed cropsin the United States rose at an extraordinarily rapid rate.Com production increased by fourand a half times, hay by five times, oats and wheat by seven times. The most crucial factorLine behind this phenomenal upsurge in productivity was the widespread adoption oflabor-saving machinery by northern farmers. By 1850 horse-drawn reaping machines thatcut grain were being introduced into the major grain-growing regions of the country.Horse-powered threshing machines to separate the seeds from the plants were already ingeneral use. However, it was the onset of the Civil War in 1861 that provided the greatstimulus for the mechanization of northern agriculture. With much of the labor forceinducted into the army and with grain prices on the rise, northern farmers rushed to availthemselves of the new labor-saving equipment. In 1860 there were approximately 80,000reapers in the country; five years later there were 350,000.After the close of the war in 1865, machinery became ever more important in northernagriculture, and improved equipment was continually introduced. By 1880 a self-binding(15) reaper had been perfected that not only cut the grain, but also gathered the stalks andbound them with twine. Threshing machines were also being improved and enlarged, andafter 1870 they were increasingly powered by steam engines rather than by horses. Sincesteam-powered threshing machines were costly items-running from $ 1,000 to $4,000-they were usually owned by custom thresher owners who then worked their way fromfarm to farm during the harvest season. “Combines” were also coming into use on thegreat wheat ranches in California and the Pacific Northwest. These ponderous machines—sometimes pulled by as many as 40 horses – reaped the grain, threshed it, and baggedit, all in one simultaneous operation.The adoption of labor-saving machinery had a profound effect upon the sale ofagricultural operations in the northern states-allowing farmers to increase vastlytheir crop acreage. By the end of century, a farmer employing the new machinerycould plant and harvest two and half times as much corn as a farmer had using handmethods 50 years before.
20. What aspect of farming in the United States in the nineteenth century does the Passage mainly discuss?
(A) How labor-saving machinery increased crop Production
(B) Why southern farms were not assuccessful as Successful as northern farms
(C) Farming practices before the Civil War
(D) The increase in the number of peoplefarming

參考答案

答案：A
難度：適中0.666667
統計：A(2),B(0),C(1),D(0),E(0)

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