Although the U.S. is so big and its people have so many different ethnic (racial) backgrounds, it is in some ways less varied than Europe. The English language is used almost everywhere in its American form. The American way of speaking has developed independently of England and is on the whole closer to what can be heard in Ireland.
American instance of uniformity（一致性） is in habits and ways of living. From Boston to Los Angeles it is as far as from France to Central Asia, and from east to west there are five time zones; but everywhere people get up and go to bed at about the same time, eat the same kind of food, buy in the same kind of shops, work and rest at the same times of the day and have the same pattern of holidays. In most of the things that matter there is less difference between rich people and ordinary people, or between town and country, than in any single European nation.
Although the United States covers so much land and the land produces far more food than the present population needs, its people are by now almost entirely an urban society. Less than a tenth of the people are engaged in agriculture, and most of the rest live in or around towns, large and small. Here the traditional picture is changing; most Americans do not live in small towns any more. Half the population now live in some thirty metropolitan（大城市的） areas.
The fact that the United states has always been a single economic unit has contributed to uniformity. Modern industry favors large organizations, and it is no accident that the world’s biggest commercial firms are American. The people can choose between the products of competing manufacturers, but the products are all much alike.
小题1:In describing the uniformity in the U.S. the author does not mention that
A．the American people get up and go to work at the same time.
B．the American people spend their holidays in the same pattern.
C．the American people buy and eat the same kind of food.
D．the American people have more or less the same income.小题2:What can we learn from the passage about the U.S. agriculture?
A．The American farmers need more land than before.
B．More and more Americans are interested in farming.
C．It is quite modernized.
D．It is now going backward.小题3:What is the feature of the U.S. modern industry according to the last paragraph?
A．The production scale and the organizational scale are very big.
B．It is a single economic unit that manufactures the same kind of products.
C．There are more and more competing manufacturers.
D．There are always a variety of products to choose from.小题4:What does “most of the things” in the second paragraph refer to?
A．food, clothing and houses.
B．Cars, computers and TV sets.
C．Their wealth and income.
D．Land, housing and bank savings.
