在
托福阅读真题再现：
16世纪，artisans的繁荣发展被削弱，一些技术的发展使得成本上升，手工艺人无法承担，原料的买卖大权掌握在大商人手中，穷的手工艺人只能依靠便宜的当地材料，很多独立的生产者沦落为大商人的employee。同时他们又担心乡下地区的发展，因为那里成本消费更低，更好招人。
TPO相似文章练习推荐：TPO 25: The Decline ofVenetian Shipping
相关背景：
Before 1815manufacturing in the United States had been done in homes or shops by skilledartisans. As master craft workers, they imparted theknowledge of their trades to apprentices and journeymen. In addition, womenoften worked in their homes part-time, making finished articles from rawmaterial supplied by merchant capitalists. After 1815 this older form ofmanufacturing began to give way to factories with machinery tended by unskilledor semiskilled laborers. Cheap transportation networks, the rise of cities, andthe availability of capital and credit all stimulated the shift to factoryproduction.
The creationof a labor force that was accustomed to working in factories did not occureasily. Before the rise of the factory, artisans had worked within the home.Apprentices were considered part of the family, and masters were responsiblenot only for teaching their apprentices a trade but also for providing themsome education and for supervising their moral behavior. Journeymen knew thatif they perfected their skill, they could become respected master artisans withtheir own shops. Also, skilled artisans did not work by the clock, at a steadypace, but rather in bursts of intense labor alternating with more leisurelytime.
The factorychanged that. Goods produced by factories were not as finished or elegant asthose done by hand, and pride in craftsmanship gave way to the pressure toincrease rates of productivity. The new methods of doing business involved anew and stricter sense of time. Factory life necessitated a more regimentedschedule, where work began at the sound of a bell and workers kept machinesgoing at a constant pace. At the same time, workers were required to discardold habits, for industrialism demanded a worker who was alert, dependable, andself-disciplined. Absenteeism and lateness hurt productivity and, since workwas specialized, disrupted the regular factory routine. Industrialization notonly produced a fundamental change in the way work was organized; ittransformed the very nature of work.
The firstgeneration to experience these changes did not adopt the new attitudes easily.The factory clock became the symbol of the new work rules. One mill worker whofinally quit complained revealingly about "obedience to the ding-dong ofthe bell-just as though we are so many living machines." With the loss ofpersonal freedom also came the loss of standing in the community. Unlikeartisan workshops in which apprentices worked closely with the masterssupervising them, factories sharply separated workers from management. Fewworkers rose through the ranks to supervisory positions, and even fewer couldachieve the artisan's dream of setting up one's own business. Even well-paidworkers sensed their decline in status.
In this newlyemerging economic order, workers sometimes organized to protect their rightsand traditional ways of life. Craft workers such as carpenters, printers, andtailors formed unions, and in 1834 individual unions came together in theNational Trades' Union. The labor movement gathered some momentum in the decadebefore the Panic of 1837, but in the depression that followed, labor's strengthcollapsed. During hard times, few workers were willing to strike* or engage in collective action. And skilled craft workers,who spearheaded the union movement, did not feel a particularly strong bondwith semiskilled factory workers and unskilled laborers. More than a decade ofagitation did finally bring a workday shortened to 10 hours to most industriesby the 1850’s, and the courts also recognized workers' right to strike, butthese gains had little immediate impact.
Workers wereunited in resenting the industrial system and their loss of status, but theywere divided by ethnic and racial antagonisms, gender, conflicting religiousperspectives, occupational differences, political party loyalties, anddisagreements over tactics. For them, the factory and industrialism were notagents of opportunity but reminders of their loss of independence and a measureof control over their lives. As United States society became more specializedand differentiated, greater extremes of wealth began to appear. And as the newmarkets created fortunes for the few, the factory system lowered the wages ofworkers by dividing labor into smaller, less skilled tasks.
(编辑：Sally)