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  3. The Businessman of the Century Led by people who could take an idea and turn it into an industry, our world reached unheard-

The Businessman of the Century Led by people who could take an idea and turn it into an industry, our world reached unheard-

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问题                        The Businessman of the Century
    Led by people who could take an idea and turn it into an industry, our world reached unheard-of levels of productivity and prosperity. From Henry Ford at one end of the century to Bill Gates at the other, they influenced lives far beyond the business world. American magazine FORTUNE lists four most influential businessmen of the past 100 years and selects one of them to be the Businessman of the Century. The following is how the man is chosen.
What the Business of the Century is Like?
    To select one man to be the Businessman of the Century is to look back upon almost unimaginable change. Organization Man rose to challenge the robber baron (强盗式贵族，强盗式资本家). The railroad and telegraph had created mass markets. New machines had made mass production possible. Business had to change to exploit these opportunities; big far-flung enterprises simply couldn’t be financed or run by one tycoon(大亨), however rich or brilliant. He needed share-holders, executives, business units, and staff. "Thus came into being," writes historian Alfred D. Chandler, "a new economic institution, the managerial business enterprises, and a new subspecies of economic man, the salaried manager."
    The 20th century was the Century of the Manager.
Who is Better, the Manager or the Entrepreneur?
    It’s impossible to think of America,-without the restless entrepreneurial (企业家的) desire to go someplace new, do something new, become someone new. The peculiar gift of American capitalism seems to be its ability to keep both the manager and the entrepreneur in the ring (拳击场), fighting forever, neither gaining a permanent advantage over the other. At mid-century, the popular ideal of business might have been the manager, but at the century’ s beginning -- and certainly now at its conclusion -- our heroes are builder, founders, risk takers.
What Makes the Businessman of the Century?
    How to pick one to stand above the rest? He should, dearly, be someone who was well known at the time he labored and is still famous today -- that is, a person who was noticeably successful in both the short run and the long. He should have been captain of an enterprise of some scale (规模). And we concluded that Businessman of the Century should have been part of an industry that is characteristic of his time.
Why Must the Businessman of the Century be Selected from Car and Computer Industries?
    We narrowed the search to a final four. Each was the dominant businessman of a quarter of this century; each created or built a corporation that is still greatly influential today; each played a major role in automobiles or computers, the two industries that, more than any others, distinguish this century from those of the past. As it happens, the men are equally divided between entrepreneurs and managers: Two of them founded great concerns but also managers who brought enormous growth and wealth to their employers. Now, the four candidates were:
     HENRY FORD (1865--1946): Founder of Ford Motor Co.
     ALFR1ED P. SLOAN JR. (1876--1966): CEO of GM
     THOMAS J. WATSON JR. (1914--1993): CEO. of IBM
     WILLIAM H. GATES (1955--): Founder of MICROSOFT
What’s the Difficulty in Choosing One Out of the Four?
    How can one pick among these four men, each being extraordinary leader, each amazingly successful, each the founder of a legacy that has -- or will have -- long outlived him?
    Of the four men, Watson -- businessman, pilot, sailor, diplomat -- had the most soul and probably the most fun. If size mattered most, then Sloan or Watson might win the nod -- Microsoft is no smaller, but it’ s only No. 109 on the FORTUNE 500. And it was Sloan who showed the world how to build a giant corporation and make it work. Sloan has the added merit of having competed directly with one of his fellow finalists, leaving Henry Ford sucking GM’s exhaust. Indeed, the only one of these men who’s alive to vote for the Businessman of the Century -- Gates -- says Sloan would be his choice; Gates once said he hung a photograph of Henry Ford in his office to remind himself how the mighty can fall.
What Do Ford and Gates Have in Common?
    It is the entrepreneurs who inspire us, and it is from our two entrepreneurs that FORTUNE has chosen the Businessman of the Century. Curiously, their visions are much alike, if you have heard what they said. Thus Henry Ford: "I will build a motor ear for the man in the street". And Gates: "A computer on every desktop and in every home." Both are very American sentiments, democratic in their promise of opportunities, optimistic in their view that life is a journey to an ever new frontier.
What’s Their Difference?
    Gates’ story is far from over, of course -- a lot could happen to polish (褒奖) or stain(玷污)his memory. Ford is stained already. In his latter years he surrounded himself with stupid persons, aroused hatred against Jews and left his company in terrible condition. He was, without question, the worst manager of those four people -- yet he was also the greatest managerial thinker. No fewer than three of the biggest management brainstorms of the century happened in Ford’ s head. The oil industry, the highway construction industry, nearly universal homeownership -- all these things, from Big Oil to Big Macs, can trace their parentage to the model T Ford. The American Dream itself is closely linked to the automobile.
Who Got Voted for the Businessman of the Century?
    The Businessman of the Century was the builder of an industry that transformed the very land we live on, the first to create a mass market as well as the means to satisfy it, as great an entrepreneur as we’ ye ever seen. He was old-fashioned and had-tempered -- a man with all the prejudices of his time, who has as well the kind of genius that endures. He is Henry Ford.
The author of this passage first discusses the considerations for choosing the businessman of the century and then comes up with conclusion that Henry is the person that met the criteria.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案A
解析 该题考查学生对于全文中心思想的把握。文章依次讨论了20世纪企业的特点、世纪企业家的特点以及行业等评选条件以后，提出了四个候选人，接着又把候选人的范围缩小到Ford和Gates，最后比较二者的优势和贡献以后，确定了Ford为20世纪的杰出商业人士。该题文阐述概括了上述过程，故，答案为[Y]。
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