The economic expansion prompted by the Second World War triggered a spectacular population boom in the West. Of course, the region was no stranger to population booms. Throughout much of its history, western settlement had been characterized by spurts, rather than by a pattern of gradual and steady population growth, beginning with the gold and silver rushes of the 1850's and 1860's. The decade after the First World War - the 1920's - witnessed another major surge of people pouring into the West, particularly into urban areas. But the economic depression of the 1930's brought this expansion to a halt; some of the more sparsely settled parts of the region actually lost population as migrants sought work in more heavily industrialized areas. By 1941 when the United States entered the Second World War and began to mobilize, new job opportunities were created in the western part of the nation.

If the expansion of industries, such as shipbuilding and aircraft manufacturing, was most striking on the pacific coast, it also affected interior cities like Denver, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City. Equally dramatic were the effects of the establishment of aluminum plants in Oregon and Washington and the burgeoning steel industry in Utah and California. The flow of people into these areas provided an enormous impetus to the expansion of the service industries - banks, health care services and schools. Although strained to the limit by the influx of newcomers, western communities welcomed the vast reservoir of new job opportunities. At the same time, the unprecedented expansion of government installations in the West, such as military bases, created thousands of new civilian openings. As land had served as a magnet for western migrants in the late nineteenth century, so wartime mobilization set in motion another major expansion of population. Indeed, it could be said that the entire western United States became a giant boomtown during the Second World War. This was especially true of California. Of the more than eight million people who moved into the West in the decade after 1940, almost one-half went to the Pacific coast. In fact, between 1940 and 1950, California's population surged by more than three million people.

It can be inferred from the passage that the principal cause of California’s population surge between 1940 and 1950 was ..........

Câu hỏi liên quan

• Which of the following is NOT true about algae?

• All of the following are true about robots EXCEPT that ............

• According to the article the Feingold diet is NOT ___________.

ZUNIA12

• People thought Merlin was a dreamer because he ..............

• According to the passage, Moby Dick is__________.

• In the Middle East, people do not use their left hands for eating because they use their left hands ................

• The word “accelerated” in paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to ______.

• Which sentence about Joseph Pulitzer is NOT true according to the reading passage?

• In line 1, the author uses the words “human assistance” to mean ............

• What is the main topic of the passage?

• What is the main point the writer is trying to make in the last paragraph?

• According to the reading passage, why did Joseph Pulitzer invent the Pulitzer Prize?

• Which sentence is NOT true about studio musicians?

• Which of the following properties is NOT mentioned as protected by copyright?

• How did Juliette Davidson benefit from the experience of her first job?

• The word “accepting” in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to________.

• What happened to the writer’s grandfathers?

• The phrase ‘suck out’ in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to which of the following?

• It can be inferred from the passage that ___________.

• The expression “readministration” in this passage refers to ................