In a sense, the Industrial Revolution, in
the United States as in Europe, was merely an
acceleration of technological changes that had no
clear beginning. It involved the development and
increasing use of power-driven machines in industrial
production, the location of those machines in factories
that tended to grow in size and complexity, and, with
the decline of transportation costs, the distribution
of products in ever widening mass markets. As the
domestic market expanded, manufacturing enterprises
became increasingly specialized. The early textile
mills, for example, marketed their own products and
constructed their own machinery; but eventually they
concentrated on spinning and weaving, selling their
products to wholesalers and buying their machinery
from independent machine shops. The essential
features of the Industrial Revolution, then, were
mechanization, specialization, and a trend from
local to regional and national distribution.
United States industrial technology was in part
copied from Europe, especially England, and was
in part an outgrowth of the efforts of American
inventors, skilled mechanics, and entrepreneurs.
Manufacturers found an impelling incentive for
mechanization in the relative scarcity and high cost
of domestic labor. The high cost of labor was the
direct result of the high productivity of American
agriculture, which forced industry to pay wages
comparable to what could be earned on the land.
Another incentive was the presence of cheap
waterpower to which machinery could easily be
harnessed. Moreover, optimistic American
entrepreneurs, anticipating continued technological
advances, usually built cheaper machines that wore
out quickly, thus making it relatively inexpensive to
retool, that is, adapt machines for different uses.
In the United States, such conditions provided many
inducements for mechanical innovation. In addition, the
relative youth of the society meant that there were few
established political and social structures that would
be likely to impede technological change.
Q261.The word outgrowth in the passage is closest in meaning to
A.cause
B.assumption
C.description
D.result
Ans:D
我看出不出來兩個意思是相等...可以請大大幫我解答一下
謝謝啦
