Yet there were plainly people who were tempted to ‘forestall the market’ by buying goods outside it, and to ‘regrate’ them, that is to resell them, at a higher price. The constantly repeated rules against there practices and the endlessly recurring prosecutions mentioned in the records of all the larger towns prove that some well-informed and sharp-witted people did these things.
Every town made its own laws and if it was big enough to have craft guilds, these associations would regulate the business of their members and tried to enforce a strict monopoly of their own trades. Yet while the guild leaders, as craftsmen, followed fiercely protectionist policies, at the same time, as leading townsmen, they wanted to see a big, busy market yielding a handsome revenue in various dues and tolls. Conflicts of interest led to endless, minute regulations, changeable, often inconsistent, frequently absurd. There was a time in the fourteenth century, for example, when London fishmongers were not allowed to handle any fish that had not already been exposed for sale for three days by the men who caught it.
26. Craftsmen might prefer to trade in their own town because there they could _______.
(A) easily find good refreshment
(B) work in the open air
(C) start work very early
(D) have the well-placed stalls
27. A tradesman was not allowed to sell his goods only ________.
(A) on special market days
(B) at the annual fairs
(C) during Sunday morning services
(D) by the end of the services
28. In medieval markets there was little retail trade because ________.
(A) money was never used in sales
(B) producers sold directly to consumers
(C) there were no fixed positions for shops
(D) authorities were unwilling to make a profit
29. The expression “forestall the market” (paragraph 3) means “_________”.
(A) buy from a stall outside the market place
(B) acquire goods in quantity before the market
(C) have the best and the first stall in the market
(D) sell at a higher price than competitors
30. It can be concluded from the passage that the regulations enforced by craft guilds were often ________.
(A) unfair and unreasonable
(B) in the interest of the customers
(C) too complicated to comply with
(D) disapproved by the local authorities
SECTION 3: TRANSLATION TEST (1)
(30 MINUTES)
Direction: Translate the following passage into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.
If the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) thinks it can largely curtail the nation’s terrorism problems by focusing on college students, we all should worry.
Identification cards already are required here for most persons to enter their workplace, take an airplane flight or go into a public building, including my campus library. The idea of a national ID, however, was knocked out of earlier drafts of legislation by a coalition of civil rights and ethnic groups, who opposed a requirement that all non-citizens carry identifying documents. In some degree, they have a point.
