Questions 40-50
Railroads reshaped the North American environment and reoriented North
American behavior. "In a quarter of a century", claimed the Omaha Daily Republican in
1883, "they have made the people of the United States homogeneous, breaking through
the peculiarities and provincialisms which marked separate and unmingling sections."
(5) The railroad simultaneously stripped the landscape of the natural resources, made
velocity of transport and economy of scale necessary parts of industrial production, and
carried consumer goods to households; it dispatched immigrants to unsettled places,
drew emigrants away from farms and villages to cities, and sent men and guns to battle.
It standardized time and travel, seeking to annihilate distance and space by allowing
(10) movement at any time and in any season or type of weather. In its grand and impressive
terminals and stations, architects recreated historic Roman temples and public baths,
French chateaus and Italian bell towers-edifices that people used as stages for many of
everyday life's high emotions: meeting and parting, waiting and worrying, planning
new starts or coming home.
(15) Passenger terminals, like the luxury express trains that hurled people over spots,
spotlight the romance of railroading. (The twentieth-Century Limited sped between
Chicago and New York in twenty hours by 1915). Equally important to everyday life
were the slow freight trans chugging through industrial zones, the morning and
evening commuter locals shuttling back ions and urban terminals, and the incessant
(20) comings and goings that occurred in the classifications, or switching, yards. Moreover,
in addition to its being a transportation pathway equipped with a mammoth physical
plant of tracks signals, crossings, bridges, and junctions, plus telegraph and telephone
lines the railroad nurtured factory complexes, coat piles, warehouses, and generating
stations, forming along its right-of-way what has aptly been called "the metropolitan
(25) corridor" of the American landscape.
【題組】41. It can be inferred from the quote from the Omaha Daily Republican (line 2-5) that railroads
(A) made all sections of the nation much
(B) brought more unity to what had been a fragmented nation
(C) reduced dependence on natural resources
(D) had no effect on the environment of the United States
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