[Reading Comprehension]
试题详情
文章:
Line | Historians remain divided over the role of |
banks in facilitating economic growth in the | |
United States in the late eighteenth and early | |
nineteenth centuries. Some scholars contend | |
(5) | that banks played a minor role in the nations |
growing economy. Financial institutions, they | |
argue, appeared only after the economy had | |
begun to develop, and once organized, followed | |
conservative lending practices, providing aid to | |
(10) | established commercial enterprises but |
shunning those, such as manufacturing and | |
transportation projects, that were more | |
uncertain and capital-intensive (i.e., requiring | |
greater expenditures in the form of capital than in | |
(15) | labor). |
A growing number of historians argue, in | |
contrast, that banks were crucial in transforming | |
the early national economy. When state | |
legislatures began granting more bank charters | |
(20) | in the 1790s and early 1800s, the supply of |
credit rose accordingly. Unlike the earliest banks, | |
which had primarily provided short-term loans to | |
well-connected merchants, the banks of the early | |
nineteenth century issued credit widely. As Paul | |
(25) | Gilje asserts, the expansion and democratization |
of credit in the early nineteenth century became | |
the driving force of the American economy, as | |
banks began furnishing large amounts of capital | |
to transportation and industrial enterprises. The | |
(30) | exception, such historians argue, was in the |
South; here, the overwhelmingly agrarian nature | |
of the economy generated outright opposition | |
to banks, which were seen as monopolistic | |
institutions controlled by an elite group of | |
(35) | planters. |
题目:
Which of the following statements best describes the function of the last sentence of the passage?
选项:
A、It provides evidence tending to undermine the viewpoint of the scholars mentioned in line 5.
B、It resolves a conflict over the role of banks summarized in the first paragraph.
C、It clarifies some of the reasons state legislatures began granting more bank charters.
D、It qualifies a claim made earlier in the passage about the impact of banks on the American economy in the early nineteenth century.
E、It supports a claim made earlier in the passage about how the expansion of credit affected the economy.
答案:
D