Benefit Payments to American Workers German Chancellor (首相)Otto Von Bismarck may be most famous for his military and diploma

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问题                   Benefit Payments to American Workers
    German Chancellor (首相)Otto Von Bismarck may be most famous for his military and diplomatic talent, but his legacy (遗产) includes many of today’s social insurance programs. During the middle of the 19th century, Germany, along with other European nations, experienced an unprecedented rash of workplace deaths and accidents as a result of growing industrialization. Motivated in part by Christian compassion (怜悯)for the helpless as well as a practical political impulse to undercut the support of the socialist labor movement.’ Chancellor Bismarck created the world’s first workers’ compensation law in 1884.
    By 1908, the United States was the only industrial nation in the world that lacked workers’ compensation insurance. America’s injured workers could sue for damages in a court of law, but they still faced a number of tough legal barriers. For example, employees had to prove that their injuries directly resulted from employer negligence and that they themselves were ignorant about potential hazards in the workplace. The first state workers’ compensation law in the country passed in 1911, and the program soon spread throughout the nation.
    After World War Ⅱ, benefit payments to American workers did not keep up with the cost of living. In fact, real benefit levels were lower in the 1970s than they were in the 1940s, and in most states the maximum benefit was below the poverty level for a family of four.  In 1970, President Richard Nixon set up a national commission to study the problems of workers’ compensation. Two years later, the commission issued 19 key recommendations, including one that called for increasing compensation benefit levels to 100 percent of the states’ average weekly wages.
    In fact, the average compensation benefit in America has climbed from 55 percent of the states’ average weekly wages in 1972 to 97 percent today. But, as most studies show, every 10 percent increase in compensation benefits results in a 5 percent increase in the numbers of workers who file for claims. And with so much more money floating in the workers’ compensation system, it’s not surprising that doctors and lawyers have helped themselves to a large slice of the growing pie.
One of the problems the American injured workers faced in getting compensation in the early 19th century was that______.

选项 A、they had to produce evidence that their employers were responsible for the accident
B、America’s average compensation benefit was much lower than the cost of living
C、different state in the U.S. had totally different compensation programs
D、they had to have the courage to sue for damages in a court of law

答案A

解析 第二段指出“美国受伤工人可以因伤害而在法庭起诉,但他们仍然面临大量艰难的法律障碍,如:受雇者必须证明他们的伤是由雇主的疏忽直接造成的,他们自己对车间潜在的危险一无所知”,故A正确。
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