托福阅读真题Official 54 Passage 1（六）

托福阅读真题Official 54 Passage 1（六）

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.

Question 11 of 14

In paragraph 5,why does the author include the information that 89 logging railroads crisscrossed Michigan by 1887?

A.To argue that Michigan had replaced other Great Lakes states as the center of the lumbering industry

B.To provide evidence of the growing importance of logging railroads to the lumbering industry

C.To support the claim that Michigan winters had become more severe in the late 1800s than they had been earlier

D.To challenge the idea that climate discouraged the laying of track

正确答案：B

题目详解

题型分类：修辞目的题

题干分析：考察句子之间的关系,根据89 logging railroads定位到最后一句。

选项分析：

最后一句说1887年，89条伐木铁路纵横交错于密歇根，因为铁路消除了季节影响，使伐木从冬季活动转变为全年活动。上一段说到伐木业受到季节的限制，只能在下雪的冬天进行；这一段说铁路解除了这种限制，说明了铁路对伐木的重要性。而本段最后一句的大量的伐木铁路证明了这种重要性，即B选项。

A选项the center of the lumbering industry无中生有。

C选项more severe in the late 1800s无中生有。

D选项climate discouraged the laying of track无中生有，第四句只说了the remoteness of the pine forests discouraged common carriers from laying track。

Question 12 of 14

According to paragraph 6,the construction of booms benefited the logging industry by

A.reducing the pressures placed on the northern Midwest pinelands in the 1860s

B.reducing the length of the downstream trip to a mill by as much as 10 miles

C.increasing the number of logs that could be floated down a river at a single time

D.allowing logs to move downstream more quickly and easily

正确答案：D

题目详解

题型分类：事实信息题

原文定位：根据题干关键词booms到倒数第二句。

选项分析：

原句为，为了使木头高效地移动，叫做boom的屏障被建立来控制木材的方向。D选项quickly and easily对应原句efficiently。

A选项信息出自第二句，但二句讨论的是Logjams，而不是boom。

B选项length of the downstream trip无中生有。

C选项increasing the number of logs无中生有。