(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein. And I'm Steve Ember. The stock market crash of nineteen twenty-nine marked the beginning of the worst economic crisis in American history. Millions of people lost their jobs. Thousands lost their homes. During the next several years, a large part of the richest nation on earth learned what it meant to be poor. Workers lost their jobs as factories closed. Business owners lost their stores and sometimes their homes. Farmers lost their land as they struggled with falling prices and natural disasters. And Americans were not the only ones who suffered. This week in our series, we talk about the economic crisis that became the Great Depression.
One of America's greatest writers, John Steinbeck, described the depression this way: "It was a terrible, troubled time. I can't think of any ten years in history when so much happened in so many directions. Violent change took place. Our country was shaped, our lives changed, our government rebuilt." Steinbeck, winner of the nineteen sixty-two Nobel Prize in literature, said: "When the market fell, the factories, mines, and steelworks closed and then no one could buy anything, not even food." An unemployed auto worker in Detroit, Michigan, described the situation this way: "Before daylight, we were on the way to the Chevrolet factory to look for work. The police were already there, waving us away from the office. They were saying, 'Nothing doing! No jobs! No jobs!' So now we were walking slowly through the falling snow to the employment office for the Dodge auto company. A big, well-fed man in a heavy overcoat stood at the door. 'No! No!' he said. There was no work."
One Texas farmer lost his farm and moved his family to California to look for work. "We can't send the children to school," he said, "because they have no clothes." The economic crisis began with the stock market crash in October nineteen twenty-nine. For the first year, the economy fell very slowly. But it dropped sharply in nineteen thirty-one and nineteen thirty-two. And by the end of nineteen thirty-two, the economy collapsed almost completely. During the three years following the stock market crash, the value of goods and services produced in America fell by almost half. The wealth of the average American dropped to a level lower than it had been twenty-five years earlier. All the gains of the nineteen twenties were washed away. Unemployment rose sharply. The number of workers looking for a job jumped from three percent to more than twenty-five percent in just four years. One of every three or four workers was looking for a job in nineteen thirty-two.
Those employment numbers did not include farmers. The men and women who grew the nation's food suffered terribly during the Great Depression. This was especially true in two states, Oklahoma and Texas. Farmers there were losing money because of falling prices for their crops. Then natural disaster struck. Year after year, little or no rain fell. The ground dried up. And then the wind blew away the earth in huge clouds of dust. "All that dust made some of the farmers leave," one Oklahoma farmer remembered later. "But my family stayed. We fought to live. Despite all the dust and the wind, we were planting seeds. But we got no crops. We had five crop failures in five years." Falling production. Rising unemployment. Men begging in the streets. But there was more to the Great Depression. At that time, the federal government did not guarantee the money that people put in banks. When people could not repay loans, banks began to close.
In nineteen twenty-nine, six hundred fifty-nine banks with total holdings of two-hundred-million dollars went out of business. The next year, two times that number failed. And the year after that, almost twice that number of banks went out of business. Millions of persons lost all their savings. They had no money left. The depression caused serious public health problems. Hospitals across the country were filled with sick people whose main illness was a lack of food. The health department in New York City found that one of every five of the city's children did not get enough food. Ninety-nine percent of the children attending a school in a coal-mining area of the country reportedly were underweight. In some places, people died of hunger. The quality of housing also fell. Families were forced to crowd into small houses or apartments to share costs. Many people had no homes at all. They slept on public streets, buses or trains.
One official in Chicago reported in nineteen thirty-one that several hundred women without homes were sleeping in city parks. In a number of cities, people without homes built their houses from whatever materials they could find. They used empty boxes or pieces of metal to build shelters in open areas. People called these areas of little temporary houses "Hoovervilles." They blamed President Hoover for their situation. So, too, did the men forced to sleep in public parks at night. They covered themselves with pieces of paper. And they called the paper "Hoover blankets." People without money in their pants called their empty pockets "Hoover flags." People blamed President Hoover because they thought he was not doing enough to help them. Hoover did take several actions to try to improve the economy. But he resisted proposals for the federal government to provide aid in a major way. And he refused to let the government spend more money than it earned.
Hoover told the nation: "Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive decision." Many conservative Americans agreed with him. But not the millions of Americans who were hungry and tired of looking for a job. They accused Hoover of not caring about common citizens. One congressman from Alabama said: "In the White House, we have a man more interested in the money of the rich than in the stomachs of the poor." On and on the Great Depression continued. Of course, some Americans were lucky. They kept their jobs. And they had enough money to enjoy the lower prices of most goods. Many people shared their earnings with friends in need. Years later, John Steinbeck wrote: "It seems odd now to say that we rarely had a job. There just weren't any jobs." But, he continued, "Given the sea and the gardens, we did pretty well with a minimum of theft. We didn't have to steal much." Farmers could not sell their crops, he explained, so they gave away all the fruit and vegetables that people could carry home. Other Americans reacted to the crisis by leading protests against the economic policies of the Hoover administration. In nineteen thirty-two, a large group of former soldiers gathered in Washington to demand help. More than eight thousand of them built the nation's largest Hooverville near the White House. Federal troops finally removed them by force and burned their shelters. Next week, we will look at how the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties affected other countries.
重点解析
1.millions of 成百万的；数以百万计
The problem is millions of people are unemployed.
问题是，大批的人都失业了。
2.look for 寻找；探索
Look for software that's flexible enough for a range of abilities.
寻找功能多、适用性强的软件。
3.out of business 歇业；停业
This is going to put them out of business.
这将会使他们破产。
4.refuse to 不肯；拒绝
I refuse to act that way when my kids fight.
我的孩子们打起架来时，我不会那样做。
参考译文
欢迎收听VOA慢速英语之建国史话节目。我是史蒂夫·恩伯。1929年的股市崩盘标志着美国历史上最严重的经济危机的开始。数百万人失业，成千上万的人失去了家园。在接下来的几年里，地球上最富有的国家中有很大一部分人了解到了贫穷的含义。工厂关闭，工人失业。企业主失去了他们的商店，有时也失去了他们的家园。农民在与价格下跌和自然灾害作斗争时失去了土地。美国人并不是唯一受难的国家。在本周的系列节目中，我们将讨论演变成大萧条的经济危机。
美国最伟大的作家之一约翰·斯坦贝克这样描述大萧条：“那是一段可怕、混乱的时期。我想不出历史上有哪十年发生了这么多事情，发生了剧烈的变化。我们的国家受到影响，人们的生活发生了改变，我们也重建了政府。”1962年诺贝尔文学奖获得者斯坦贝克说：“当市场下跌时，工厂、矿山和钢铁厂关闭，然后没有人能买任何东西，甚至食物也买不了。”密歇根州底特律市一名失业的汽车工人对情况做了这样的描述：“天亮前，我们正在去雪佛兰工厂找工作的路上。警察已经到了，挥手示意我们离开办公室。他们说，“什么都做不了！没有工作！没有工作！”所以，现在我们正在雪中慢慢行走，来到道奇汽车公司的就业办公室。一个衣食无忧、穿着厚大衣的大个子男人站在门口，他说：“不！没有工作。”
得克萨斯州一位农民失去了农场，举家搬到加州找工作。“我们不能送孩子们上学，”他说，“因为他们没有衣服。”经济危机始于1929年10月的股市崩盘。第一年，经济下滑非常缓慢。但在1931年和1932年，则急剧下降。到1932年底，经济几乎完全崩溃。在股市崩盘后的三年里，美国生产的商品和服务价值下降了近一半。普通美国人的财富下降到比25年前更低的水平。20世纪20年代的所有经济收益都被冲走了。失业率急剧上升。在短短的四年时间里，找工作的工人人数从3%猛增到25%以上。1932年，每三四个工人中就有一个人在找工作。
这些就业数字不包括农民。在大萧条时期，为国民种植粮食的人们遭受着巨大的苦难。在俄克拉荷马州和德克萨斯州，情况尤其突出。那里的农民因农作物价格下跌而亏损，随后发生了自然灾害。年复一年，几乎没有下雨，地面干涸了。后来，风把尘土刮起，成为了巨大的尘埃云。一位俄克拉何马州农民后来回忆说：“尘土遮天让一些农民离开了，但我的家人留下来。我们为生存而战。尽管风沙交加，我们仍在播种。但是我们没能收获庄稼，我们在五年中有五次庄稼歉收。”庄稼产量下降，失业率上升，人们上街乞讨。但是，出现大萧条还有更多的原因。当时，联邦政府并没有对对人们存入银行的钱做出担保，当人们无法偿还贷款时，银行开始倒闭。
1929年，共有659家银行倒闭，总资产达两亿美元。第二年，翻倍数量的银行倒闭。在那之后的一年里，几乎四倍数量的银行倒闭。数百万人失去了全部积蓄，他们没有钱款了。大萧条造成了严重的公共卫生问题，全国各地的医院挤满了病人，他们的疾病主要是缺乏食物。纽约市卫生部门发现，该市每五个孩子中就有一个没有足够的食物吃。据报道，在该国一个煤矿区上学的孩子中，99%体重不足。在一些地方，人们死于饥饿。住房质量也下降了。家人被迫挤在小房子或公寓里，为了分担费用。许多人根本没有家，他们睡在公共街道、公车或火车上。
芝加哥的一位官员在1931年报告说，几百名无家可归的妇女睡在该市的公园里。在许多城市，没有房子的人用他们能找到的任何材料建造房子，使用空盒子或金属片在空旷的地方搭建庇护所。人们称这些地区的小型临时房屋为“胡佛村”。他们指责，是胡佛总统让他们沦入此境地。晚上被迫睡在公园里的人们情况也一样。他们用几张纸把自己盖住，他们把纸叫做“胡佛毯”，囊中羞涩的人把空空的口袋叫做“胡佛旗。”人们指责胡佛总统，因为他们认为他没有采取足够的措施来帮助他们。胡佛确实采取了一些行动试图改善经济，但他拒绝了联邦政府提供主要援助的提议。他拒绝让政府透支消费。
胡佛告诉全国人民：“经济萧条不能通过立法或行政决定来解决。”许多保守的美国人都同意他的观点，但并不是数百万饥肠辘辘、厌倦找工作的美国人。他们指责胡佛不关心普通公民。一位来自阿拉巴马州的国会议员说：“在白宫有一个人，他对富人拥有的钱财比穷人的肚子更感兴趣。”大萧条持续不断。当然，有些美国人很幸运，他们保住了自己的工作。他们有足够的钱享受大多数商品的低廉价格。许多人把收入分给有需要的朋友。几年后，约翰·斯坦贝克写道：“现在说我们很难找到工作似乎很奇怪，现在就是没有工作了。”但是，他接着说：“考虑到大海和花园，我们干得不错，只不过少了一点偷窃。我们不需要偷盗太多东西。” 他解释说，农民们不能出售他们的庄稼，所以他们把水果和蔬菜都分给别人，让他们带回家其他美国人对这场危机的反应是带头抗议胡佛政府的经济政策。1932年，一大群前士兵聚集在华盛顿请求援助。超过八千人在白宫附近建造了美国最大的胡佛村，联邦军队最终以武力将他们赶走并烧毁了这些避难所。在下期节目中，我们将探讨20世界30年代的大萧条对其他国家造成的影响。
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