The economy of the United States after 1952 was the economy of a well-fed, almost fully employed people. Despite__1__alarms, the country escaped any postwar depression and lived in a__2__of boom. An economic survey of the year 1955, a typical year of the 1950's, may be typical as__3__the rapid economic growth of the decade. The national output was__4__at 10 percent above that of 1954(1955 output was estimated at 392 billion dollars). The production of manufactures was about 40 percent more than it had__5__ in the years immediately following World War I . The country's business spent about 30 billion dollars for new factories and machinery. National income __6__ for spending was almost a third greater than it had been in 1950. Consumers spent about 256 billion dollars; that is about 700 million dollars a day, or about twenty-five million dollars every hour, all round the __7__ . Sixty-five million people held jobs and only a little more than two million wanted jobs but could not find them. Only agriculture__8__that it was not sharing in the boom. To some observers this was a sad reflection of the mid-1920's. As farmers' share of their products__9 __ , marketing costs rose. But there were, among the observers of the national economy, a few who were not as confident as the majority. Those few seemed to fear that the boom could not last long and would__10__lead to the opposite—depression.4 L" _4 l, E, j. K( X W
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Key:I. H 2. D 3. O 4. E 5. B 6. N 7. M 8. L 9. G 10. A |