16、I agreed with most of what you said, but I didn’t agree with ______
A
everything B anything C something D nothing
Reading comprehension
We live in a technological
society where most goods are mass-produced by unskilled labor. Because of this,
most people think that craft (手艺) no longer exists.
One of the ways these people wrongly support their view is by pointing
to 100-year-old homes which are still solid, and arguing that it is the
craftsmanship that is responsible for their durability(持久性)。
“Homes in those days are well built,”
they say. No doubt these homes were well-built, but what these people
have done is mix up the quality of material used in the house with the quality
of the craftsmanship.
Homes today could be built to last just as long as those old homes if
people were willing or able to pay the price. For example, most people can no
longer afford solid oak stairways, although they were once fairly common in
older homes. Nor can they afford the high labor cost of employing a carpenter(木匠) to built the stairway. Yet if
someone can pay the high cost, there are still plenty if carpenters around able
to make those stairways. And not only would these carpenters know hoe to build
them, they would probably do a better job than carpenters of old.
One thing the modern carpenter has which enables him to do a better job
is much more advanced tools. Such tools as laser beams and powerplanes
help them lay out a house better and make more precision cuts(精确切割) on the wood. Also, it is not
uncommon any more to find carpenters with college degrees and carpenters with a
solid knowledge of mathematics, which would enable them to deal with more
difficult house designs.
The problem of modern quality, then, really bolls down to the problem of
material, for the modern carpenter is just as able to produce craftsmanship as
the carpenter of fifty years ago, but only if given proper material.