华东师范大学
In England, along a stretch of the north-east coast which gently curves from Northumberland to the mouth of the river Tees, there was a spot, typical of many on that coast, where sea-coal collected richly and effortlessly. This coal was a coarse powder, clean and brilliant like particles of crushed jet; it seemed to bear little resemblance to the large, dirty lumps put onto the fire. Although it was coal, it was perfectly clean and it was silently deposited at high tide in a glittering carpet a kilometer long for the coal community to gather up.The gear needed for sea-coaling expeditions was a curious and traditionally proven mixture which never varied from community to community along the entire north-east coastline. Sacks were essential to put the coal in, and string to tie the neck of each sack when it was full. A wooden rake was used to scrape the coal from the beach, and it was generally made from an old broom handle with a flat piece of wood nailed on at a slight reclining angle at the end. The only alternative to the rake was a flat piece of board held in the hand, which children and other workers of additional service crouched down to use. A flat, broad shovel, to lift the raked coal into the bags, completed the portable hardware.But the most crucial item of equipment was a bicycle, a special kind of rusty stripped-down model which was the symbol of the sea-coaling craft. A lady's bike was no good because it lacked a crossbar and that was an essential element in transporting sea-coal. One full sack could be slung through the triangular format of a man’s bike, another over the crossbar and, sometimes, even a third on top of that. The beauty of this was that it not only enabled one to move the sea-coal from place to place, but the pressure of the metal bars against the full, wet sacks forced excess water out of the coal while it was being wheeled home. On a good day, the path to the beach was generally a double snail track of water that had been forced from each end of a trail of coal sacks.1.The attraction of collecting sea-coal was that it (  ).  2.The reason certain equipment was used was because (  ).3.To remove the coal from the beach, the children had to (  ).  4.To carry three sacks of coal on a bicycle it was necessary to (  ).  5.You could see where the coal had been transported from the beach by the(  ).
The relation of the sales tax to the problem of social balance is admirably direct. The community is rich in privately produced goods. It is poor in public services. The obvious solution is to tax the former to provide the latter—by making private goods more expensive, The public goods are made more abundant. Motion pictures, electronic equipment, and cigarettes are made more costly so that schools can be more handsomely supported. We pay more for soap, make-ups, and vacuum cleaners in order that we may have cleaner cities and fewer occasions to use them. We have more expensive cars and gasoline so that we may have highways and streets on which to drive them. Food being comparatively cheap and abundant, we tax it in order to have better services and better health in which to enjoy it. This straightforward solution has the further advantage that sales taxation can be employed with fair efficiency by states and even by cities. It is in the services rendered by these governments that the problem of social balance is especially severe. The yield of the sales tax increases with increasing production. As wants are planned for private goods, more benefits are provided for public use. The general property tax, the principal alternative to the sales tax, is rigid and inflexible. Since its rates must ordinarily be raised for additional services, including those that are associated with increasing income and product, the burden of proving need is especially heavy. This tax is a poor servant of social balance.1.Which of the following is NOT true?2.The word ‘handsomely’ (Line 5) means (  ).3.According to the author, the chief advantage of the sales tax is that it  (  ).  4.The property tax is not regarded as an ideal solution to social needs because (  ).  5.The author of this passage is most interested in telling us about(  ).
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