Although the US is so big and its people have so many different racial backgrounds, it is in some ways less varied than Europe．The English language is used almost everywhere in its American form．The American way of speaking has developed independently of English and is on the whole closer to what can be heard in Ireland.
Another example of uniformity(一致)is in habits and ways of living．From Boston to Los Angeles it is as far as from France to Central Asia, and from east to west there are five time zones; but everywhere people get up and go to bed at about the same time, eat the same kind of food, buy in the same kind of shops, work and rest at the same time of the day and have the same pattern of holidays．In most of the things that matter there is less difference between rich people and ordinary people or between town and country, than in any single European nation.
Although far more food is produced than the present population needs, America is actually an urban society．Less than a tenth of the people are engaged in (从事) agriculture and most of the rest live in or around towns large and small．Here the traditional picture is changing; most Americans do not live in small towns any more．Half the population now live in some thirty metropolitan (大城市的) areas.
The fact that the United States has always been a single economic unit has contributed to uniformity．Modern industry favors large organization, and it is no accident that the world’s biggest commercial firms are American．The people can choose between the products of competing manufacturers (制造商) but the products are all much alike.
小题1:In describing the uniformity in the U.S．the author does not mention that the American people .
A．get up and go to work at the same time
B．spend their holidays in the same pattern
C．buy and eat the same kind of food
D．have more or less the same income小题2:What can we learn from the passage about the U.S．agriculture?
A．The American farmers need more land.
B．Americans are interested in farming.
C．It is now going backward.
D．It is quite developed.小题3:The last paragraph suggests that ___ .
A．the production size in the United States is very big
B．a single economic unit produces the same kind of products
C．there are more and more competing manufactures
D．people can choose from all kinds of products that are similar.小题4:The underlined part “In most of the things that matter” probably refers to .
A．in most basic things such as food, clothing and houses
B．in the more expensive things such as cars, TV sets, etc
C．in their land, housing and bank savings
D．in their wealth and income