In the eighteenth century one of the first modern economists, Adam Smith, thought that “ the whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country” provided revenue to “three different orders of people: those who live by rent, those who live by wages, and those who live by profit”. Each successive stage of the industrial revolution, however, made the social structure more complicated.
Many intermediate groups grew up during the nineteenth century between the upper middle class and the working class. There were small-scale industrialists as well as large ones, small shopkeepers and tradesmen, officials and salaried employees, skilled and unskilled workers, and professional men such as doctors and teachers. Farmers and peasants continued in all countries as independent groups.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the possession of wealth inevitably affected a person’s social position. Intelligent industrialists with initiative made fortunes by their wits which lifted them into an economic group far higher than that of their working-class parents. But they lacked social training of the upper class, who despised them as the “new rich.”
They often sent their sons and daughters to special schools to acquire social training. Here their children, mixed with the children of the upper classes, were accepted by them, and very often found marriage partners from among them. In the same way, a thrifty, hardworking labourer, though not clever himself, might save for his son enough to pay for an extended secondary school education in the hope that he would move in a “white-collar” occupation, carrying with it a higher salary and a move up in the social scale.
In the twentieth century the increased taxation of higher incomes, the growth of the social services, and the wider development of educational opportunity have considerably altered the social outlook. The upper classes no longer are the sole, or even the main possessors of wealth, power and education, though inherited social position still carries considerable prestige.
小题1:What criterion did Adam Smith seem to go by in his classification of social groups?
A．The amount of wealth
B．The amount of money
C．The social status
D．The way of getting money小题2:If you compare the first and second paragraph, what groups of people did Adam Smith leave out in his classification?
A．Officials and employees.
B．Peasants and farmers.
C．Doctors and teachers.
D．Tradesmen and landlords.小题3:Who were the ‘new rich’ during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
A．They were still the upper class people.
B．They were owners of large factories.
C．They were intelligent industrialists.
D．They were skilled workers who made their fortune.小题4:According to the passage, what did those people do who intended to make their children move up in the social ladder?
A．They saved a lot of money for their children to receive higher education.
B．They tried to find marriage partners from the children of the upper class.
C．They made greater fortunes by their wits.
D．They worked even harder to acquire social training.小题5: In the twentieth century class differences have been partly smoothed out by ____.
A．increased income and decreased taxation
B．taxation, social services and educational opportunities
C．education, the increase of income and industrial development
D．the decrease of the upper class population
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