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The idea of public works projects as a device to prevent or control depression was designed as a means of creating job opportunities for unemployed workers and as a "pump priming" device to aid business to revive. It was conceived during the early years of the New Deal Era ( 1933 -- 1937). By 1933, the number of unemployed workers had reached about 13 million. This meant that about 50 million people -- about one-third of the nation -- were without means of support. At first, direct relief in the form of cash Or food was provided these people. This made them recipients of government charity. In order to remove this stigma and restore to the unemployed some measure of respectability and human dignity, a plan was devised to create governmentally sponsored work projects that private industry would not or could not provide. This would also stimulate production and revive business activity.
The best way to explain how this procedure is expected to work is to explain how it actually worked when it was first tried. The first experiment with it was the creation of the Works Project Administration (WPA). This agency set up work projects in various fields in which there were many unemployed. For example, unemployed actors were organized into theater projects, orchestras were organized for unemployed musicians, teaching projects for unemployed teachers, and even writers’ projects for unemployed writers. Unemployed laborers were put to work building or maintaining roads, parks, playgrounds, or public buildings. These were all temporary work relief projects -- rather than permanent work opportunities.
More substantial work projects of a permanent nature were organized by another agency, the Public Works Administration (PWA). This agency undertook the planning of construction of schools, houses, post offices, dams, and other public structures. It entered into contracts with private construction firms to erect them, or it loaned money to local or state governments which undertook their constructions. This created many jobs in the factories producing the material as well as in the projects themselves, and greatly reduced the number of unemployed.
Still another agency which provided work projects for the unemployed was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). This agency provided job opportunities for youths aged 16 to 20 to work in national parks or forests clearing land, guarding against fires, building roads, or doing other conservation work. In the event of a future depression, the federate government might revive any or all of the above methods to relieve unemployment and stimulate business.

By using the expression "pump priming" as a description of public works projects, the author implies that it（）

A:was pouring money down the drain B:lowered human dignity C:avoided direct charity D:provided business with initial impetus which would make it self sufficient

The elephants of Thailand used never to be short of work hauling timber. But most of the country’s forests have been cut down, and logging is now banned to save the few that are left. The number of domesticated elephants left in the country is now only 2,500 or so. down from about 100,000 a century ago. Though being the national animal of Thailand earns an elephant plenty of respect, this does not put grass on the table. Thai elephants these days take tourists on treks or perform in circuses, and are sometimes to be seen begging for bananas on the streets of Bangkok.
Some of the 46 elephants living at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre, a former government logging camp near Lampang, have found a new life in music. The Thai Elephant Orchestra is the creation of two Americans, Richard Lair, who has worked with Asian elephants for 23 years, and David Soldier, a musician and neuroscientist with a taste for the avant-garde. They provided six of the center’s elephants, aged 7 to 18, with a variety of percussion and wind instruments. Those familiar with Thai instruments will recognize the slit drums, the gong, the bow bass, the xylophone-like rants, as well as the thunder sheet. The only difference is that the elephant versions are a bit stronger.
The elephants are given a cue to start and then they prepare. They clearly have a strong sense of rhythm. They flap their ears to the beat, swish their tails and generally rock back and forth. Some add to the melody with their own trumpeting. Elephant mood-music could have a commercial future, Mr. Soldier believes. He has even produced a CD on the Mulatta label—it is available at www.mulatta. org—with 13 elephant tracks. It is real elephant music, he says, with only the human noises removed by sound engineers. But is it music Bob Halliday, music critic of the Bangkok Post, says it is. He commends the elephants for being "so communicative". Anyone not knowing that it was elephant music, he says, would assume that humans were playing.
Some of the elephants in the band have also tried their hand at painting, tending to favor the abstract over the representational style. Their broad-stroke acrylic paintings last year helped raise some $25,000 at a charity auction at Christie’s in New York, and a London gallery has also taken some of their work. These art sales, together with profits from the CD, are helping to keep the centre going. A second CD is on the way. It will be less classical, more pop.
The elephants, do not make money from______.

A:getting charity from visitors B:selling their paintings C:selling their own CDs D:all their entertainment work

Work looks a better cure for poverty than welfare Especially as fewer and fewer countries will be able to afford to pay potential workers to stay at home a Victorian idea is back in favour: many poor people are better off when they are pulled back into the labour market. The idea revived first in the United States. There, in its harshest form, the unemployed work in exchange for welfare. But countries with governments to the left of America’s, including Labour Australia and Socialist France, are now also exploring ways to link income support and employment policy.
Coming from different directions, the right and the left are gradually finding new common ground. For the right, it seems deplorable to encourage the poor to rely on the state for cash, because they get hooked on government help and accustomed to being poor. For the left, it seems deplorable to allow workers to drop out of the job market for long periods, because it makes it harder for them to find new jobs. For both, the answer is to get the poor to work.
Most industrial countries have a two-tier system of social protection: a social-security scheme, where workers and their bosses make regular contributions in exchange for payments to workers when they are unemployed, sick or retired; and a safety-net, to give some income to those poor people who have exhausted their social insurance or who have none The former is usually not means-tested but, for the unemployed, is of limited duration; the latter is almost always tied to income The public tends to approve of contributory benefits, which is what designers of such schemes intended.
Safety-net benefits carry no such sense of entitlement, and are less popular. Yet they have grown more rapidly in large part because the 1980-82 recession increased the number of people of working age who had exhausted their right to contributory benefits. And an increasing proportion of the poor are people for whom the contributory systems were never designed: the young and lone mothers. In consequence, payments which carry a clear entitlement have become less significant, compared with those which appear to depend purely on state charity.
The rise in the bill for the unpopular kind of social protection comes at a time when governments want to curb state spending. It comes, too, at a time when many countries have done almost everything they can think of to protect the poor. A decade ago many on the left argued that poverty was usually caused by circumstances outside the control of the poor—a lack of jobs, disability, old age, racial discrimination, broken marriages. One way or another, governments have tried to tackle most of these problems. Still the poor remain.
A safety-net benefit system is one______.

A:based on the recipient’s prior contributions B:of limited duration C:that depends on state charity D:that pays according to the claimant’s social insurance

Text 3

The elephants, do not make money from______.

A:getting charity from visitors B:selling their paintings C:selling their own CDs D:all their entertainment work

Work looks a better cure for poverty than welfare Especially as fewer and fewer countries will be able to afford to pay potential workers to stay at home a Victorian idea is back in favour: many poor people are better off when they are pulled back into the labour market. The idea revived first in the United States. There, in its harshest form, the unemployed work in exchange for welfare. But countries with governments to the left of America’s, including Labour Australia and Socialist France, are now also exploring ways to link income support and employment policy.
Coming from different directions, the right and the left are gradually finding new common ground. For the right, it seems deplorable to encourage the poor to rely on the state for cash, because they get hooked on government help and accustomed to being poor. For the left, it seems deplorable to allow workers to drop out of the job market for long periods, because it makes it harder for them to find new jobs. For both, the answer is to get the poor to work.
Most industrial countries have a two-tier system of social protection: a social-security scheme, where workers and their bosses make regular contributions in exchange for payments to workers when they are unemployed, sick or retired; and a safety-net, to give some income to those poor people who have exhausted their social insurance or who have none The former is usually not means-tested but, for the unemployed, is of limited duration; the latter is almost always tied to income The public tends to approve of contributory benefits, which is what designers of such schemes intended.
Safety-net benefits carry no such sense of entitlement, and are less popular. Yet they have grown more rapidly in large part because the 1980-82 recession increased the number of people of working age who had exhausted their right to contributory benefits. And an increasing proportion of the poor are people for whom the contributory systems were never designed: the young and lone mothers. In consequence, payments which carry a clear entitlement have become less significant, compared with those which appear to depend purely on state charity.
The rise in the bill for the unpopular kind of social protection comes at a time when governments want to curb state spending. It comes, too, at a time when many countries have done almost everything they can think of to protect the poor. A decade ago many on the left argued that poverty was usually caused by circumstances outside the control of the poor—a lack of jobs, disability, old age, racial discrimination, broken marriages. One way or another, governments have tried to tackle most of these problems. Still the poor remain.

A safety-net benefit system is one（）

A:based on the recipient’s prior contributions B:of limited duration C:that depends on state charity D:that pays according to the claimant’s social insurance

Wall Street is the name of a street in New York and very famous in the whole world. Ii is the financial center of the USA, exerting a significant influence upon the world’s economy. Hetty Green, who was born in 1835, was nicknamed the Wizard(奇才) of Wall Street. She became almost a legendary figure in Wall Street, because she made a lot of money buying and selling shares in companies.
Hetty Green began making money when her father died and she inherited all his money. By investing it wisely, she soon built up her fortune to over 100 million dollars. However, she hated spending money on herself or on her family. Actually, she hated spending money on everything except buying shares. She was so mean that when her son Edward broke his leg, she would not send for a doctor. She did not want to have to pay a doctor’s bill. She refused to send her son to a good hospital Instead, she took the boy to a free charity hospital. There he did not get very good treatment and, to save his life, he had to have his leg cut off. Still his mother would not pay for proper hospital treatment. She sent for a doctor who cut off the boy’s leg in her sitting room. It’s incredible, isn’t it

When her son broke his leg, Hetty Green（）

A:sent him to a large hospital . B:sent for a doctor C:didn't pay the bill for the doctor D:took him to, a charity hospital

Wall Street is the name of a street in New York and very famous in the whole world. Ii is the financial center of the USA, exerting a significant influence upon the world’s economy. Hetty Green, who was born in 1835, was nicknamed the Wizard(奇才) of Wall Street. She became almost a legendary figure in Wall Street, because she made a lot of money buying and selling shares in companies.
Hetty Green began making money when her father died and she inherited all his money. By investing it wisely, she soon built up her fortune to over 100 million dollars. However, she hated spending money on herself or on her family. Actually, she hated spending money on everything except buying shares. She was so mean that when her son Edward broke his leg, she would not send for a doctor. She did not want to have to pay a doctor’s bill. She refused to send her son to a good hospital Instead, she took the boy to a free charity hospital. There he did not get very good treatment and, to save his life, he had to have his leg cut off. Still his mother would not pay for proper hospital treatment. She sent for a doctor who cut off the boy’s leg in her sitting room. It’s incredible, isn’t it

When her son broke his leg, Hetty Green（）

A:sent him to a large hospital . B:sent for a doctor C:didn't pay the bill for the doctor D:took him to, a charity hospital

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The National Trust is ______.

A:a rich government department B:a charity supported mainly by the public C:a group of areas of great natural beauty D:an organization supported by public taxes