【英语语言学习】建立在战争基础上的世界

ARUN RATH, HOST:

One hundred years ago tomorrow, on July 28, 1914, Austrian troops invaded Serbia. It was the start of the First World War. The conflict would last four long years - taking down empires, creating new nations and killing¹ millions by the time it was over. Here in America, the war would not become a reality until U.S. troops joined the Allies in 1917. To mark this anniversary, we thought we'd take a look back at what life was like in the then 48 states of the union. Eric Rauchway is a professor of history at the University of California Davis and joins us from the campus there. Hi, Eric.

ERIC RAUCHWAY: Hi.

RATH: So give us a snapshot of America 100 years ago in 1914. What was it like politically, economically, militarily?

RAUCHWAY: On the eve of the First World War, the United States was a nation of about 100 million people who were evenly split between those who lived on farms and those who lived in cities. It was a rich country on both a total and per capita basis ranking at the top of the world. It wasn't particularly a military power. The United States Army was about the 11th largest in the world, below Ethiopia and just above Spain. So we're not looking at sort of a superpower in the modern sense, but we're looking at a country with a great deal of capacity because of its economic strengths.

RATH: And was this - by this time, the very much postwar, segregated² South had kind of solidified³.

RAUCHWAY: Yeah, that's right. This was the end of the period during which the South became the Jim Crow South, became the solid South. Beginning around 1889, 1890 Southern states began to disfranchise African Americans by a variety of legal and constitutional means. They rewrote their constitutions in order to prevent black voters from having any influence. This was both a racist⁴ measure and a partisan⁵ measure. And because the Democratic Party wanted to get the Republicans out and blacks were reliably Republican voters. And that was followed very closely by a process of segregation⁶. So African Americans were removed by law and custom from public spaces, as well as from the voting booths. And that ended up at around 1910.

RATH: To get a sense of the time, we've gone back through some issues of the New York Times because, you know, at that point, mass media was pretty much newspapers. There's a piece about the opposition⁷ of a woman's group to the idea of women's suffrage⁸. How strong - how prominent was the women's movement at that point?

RAUCHWAY: At this point in 1914, the Women Suffrage Campaign was picking up steam. It had succeeded at the state level, particularly throughout the further part of the American West. I think a dozen states at this point had full suffrage for women and a great many more had partial suffrage - allowed women to vote on schools issues or tax issues and in that sort of thing. But at the same time, though, there were concerns that, of course, that giving women the vote would rob them of their femininity. That they would be dragged into the public sphere where there was a great deal of corruption⁹ and where there was competition and all kinds of virtues¹⁰ or vices¹¹ that were associated with masculinity rather than femininity.

RATH: And also gathering¹² steam then was the Temperance Movement. There's an item about West Virginia as an acting¹³ prohibition¹⁴, putting the number of states who have banned alcohol up to nine.

RAUCHWAY: Yeah. There were an increasing number of states that were going to ban alcohol. You're moving sort of out of 19th-century style temperance into 20th-century style prohibition. I mean, the difference is sort of temperance is about self-control - the idea that I know that I should not drink, where prohibition is more about regulation - the idea that I know that you should not drink, particularly if you happen to be Irish Catholic. So prohibition, as I indicate there, was to some degree a stalking horse for anti- immigrant sentiment.

RATH: Turning to the advertisements in the paper, there are ads for tobacco, tuxedos¹⁶, apartments for rent in Manhattan that are $50 a month. A whole slew¹⁷ of ads for dance schools teaching the waltz, the foxtrot, other styles, passages in ocean liners. You know, am I my missing something or, you know, providing you're not a black or a woman, does life seem pretty good in the first part of the 20th century?

RAUCHWAY: (Laughing). You know, the British economist¹⁸ John Maynard Keynes famously wrote just after the war that the world before the war was a kind of economic utopia - that the average middle-class person could sit at his breakfast table and could enjoy produce fresh from all over the country, if not all over the world, the tea from distant parts of the empire, the sugar, likewise, the news that came instantaneously over electric telegraph wires. It was a world that was characterized by what we would now call globalization - the relatively¹⁹ rapid movement of information, goods and even people across international borders.

RATH: Eric Rauchway is a professor of history at UC Davis. If you'd like to explore some of the New York Times issues we talked about, you can view them at the TimesMachine section of their website. Professor Rauchway, thanks for joining us.

RAUCHWAY: It's my pleasure.

1 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

2 segregated   

分开的； 被隔离的

参考例句：

• a culture in which women are segregated from men 妇女受到隔离歧视的文化
• The doctor segregated the child sick with scarlet fever. 大夫把患猩红热的孩子隔离起来。

3 solidified   

（使）成为固体，（使）变硬，（使）变得坚固( solidify的过去式和过去分词 )； 使团结一致； 充实，巩固； 具体化

参考例句：

• Her attitudes solidified through privilege and habit. 由于特权和习惯使然，她的看法变得越来越难以改变。
• When threatened, he fires spheres of solidified air from his launcher! 当危险来临，他就会发射它的弹药！

4 racist   

n.种族主义者，种族主义分子

参考例句：

• a series of racist attacks 一连串的种族袭击行为
• His speech presented racist ideas under the guise of nationalism. 他的讲话以民族主义为幌子宣扬种族主义思想。

5 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

6 segregation   

n.隔离，种族隔离

参考例句：

• Many school boards found segregation a hot potato in the early 1960s.在60年代初，许多学校部门都觉得按水平分班是一个棘手的问题。
• They were tired to death of segregation and of being kicked around.他们十分厌恶种族隔离和总是被人踢来踢去。

7 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

8 suffrage   

n.投票，选举权，参政权

参考例句：

• The question of woman suffrage sets them at variance.妇女参政的问题使他们发生争执。
• The voters gave their suffrage to him.投票人都投票选他。

9 corruption   

n.腐败，堕落，贪污

参考例句：

• The people asked the government to hit out against corruption and theft.人民要求政府严惩贪污盗窃。
• The old man reviled against corruption.那老人痛斥了贪污舞弊。

10 virtues   

美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处

参考例句：

• Doctors often extol the virtues of eating less fat. 医生常常宣扬少吃脂肪的好处。
• She delivered a homily on the virtues of family life. 她进行了一场家庭生活美德方面的说教。

11 vices   

缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳

参考例句：

• In spite of his vices, he was loved by all. 尽管他有缺点，还是受到大家的爱戴。
• He vituperated from the pulpit the vices of the court. 他在教堂的讲坛上责骂宫廷的罪恶。

12 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

13 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

14 prohibition   

n.禁止；禁令，禁律

参考例句：

• The prohibition against drunken driving will save many lives.禁止酒后开车将会减少许多死亡事故。
• They voted in favour of the prohibition of smoking in public areas.他们投票赞成禁止在公共场所吸烟。

15 anti-   

pref.[前缀]表示反抗，排斥

参考例句：

• The car has many safety features,including anti - skid braking.这车配有许多特别安全装置，包括防滑制动器。
• The anti-aircraft units opened fire and hit two of the enemy planes.防空部队开炮，击中了两架敌机。

16 tuxedos   

n.餐服，无尾晚礼服( tuxedo的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Our services include design and tailoring for wedding gowns, tuxedos and party dressesfrom and American brands. 们的服务范围包括高级婚纱设计定制，高级礼服、派对装设计定制，及欧美一线品牌成衣的驳样定制。 来自互联网
• Most tuxedos are black, but some people like to wear white ones called 'morning suits'. 大多数男士无尾晚礼服是黑色的，不过有些人喜欢穿那种被称为“晨服”的白色装。 来自互联网

17 slew   

v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多

参考例句：

• He slewed the car against the side of the building.他的车滑到了大楼的一侧，抵住了。
• They dealt with a slew of other issues.他们处理了大量的其他问题。

18 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

19 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。