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Child-care workers
, for example,
give
much more to society than they take from it,
generating almost 10 times as great a social product as they capture in private wages.
例如，幼教工作者对社会的贡献远大于他们从社会中得到的回报，他们创造的社会产品的价值几乎是他们得到的工资的价值的十倍。
generating ... 现在分词作伴随状语
1896年7月，在阿拉斯加，一个勘探者在克朗代克河的一条支流中发现在基岩板之间有很多黄金，看起来像奶酪三明治。他为自己和一些家庭成员确立了所有权，长途跋涉三天来到40英里的定居点，提交法律文件，并引发了美国历史上最大的“克朗代克”淘金热。
“
Stampede
: Gold Fever and Disaster in the Klondike” is journalist Brian Castner’s exhilarating account of the story of the three-year Klondike Gold Rush. In dramatic detail, he tells the story of the 100,000 or so would-be prospectors who attempted the
arduous
journey through southeast Alaska to the Yukon Territory in northwestern Canada in search of riches.
记者布莱恩·卡斯特纳在《热潮：克朗代克的淘金热与灾难》这本书中言语激昂地描述了为期三年的克朗代克淘金热的故事。通过各种充满戏剧性的细节，他讲述了10万余名自称勘探者的人，试图穿越阿拉斯加东南部到加拿大西北部的育空地区寻找财富的艰辛旅程。
In the late 1890s, the country
was ripe for
“Klondicitis,” as the gold fever was known. The demise of the Gilded Age, with its gross materialism and blatant political corruption, led to the Panic of 1893, the worst depression the nation had ever endured. Thousands of businesses, including 600 banks and 150 railroads, went bankrupt.
19世纪90年代末，人们已经非常了解淘金热，所以这个国家出现“淘金热”的时机已经成熟。因为严重的物质主义和公然的政治腐败，镀金时代走向了灭亡，导致了1893年的恐慌，这是美国经历过的最严重的大萧条。包括600家银行和150家铁路公司在内的数千家企业走向破产。
Desperate unemployed workers headed West, as Americans had often done, but found no new opportunities there, as the Panic had not
spared
the economies of California and Washington. The discovery of gold in Alaska seemed to be the answer to all of the nation’s problems.
绝望的失业工人就像大多数美国人经常做的那样前往西部，但并没有在那里发现新的机会，因为加利福尼亚和华盛顿的经济也没能在大恐慌中幸免于难。在阿拉斯加发现的黄金似乎是这个国家所有问题的答案。
Most of the Klondikers set out north with a
lust for
wealth and an abundance of
hubris
, but no knowledge or experience in mining or wilderness survival. Most were hopelessly unprepared for what was in store. Getting to the gold required transporting as much as 1,000 pounds of gear and provisions by one of two main routes, both of them treacherous.
大多数克朗代克人带着对财富的渴望和极度的傲慢向北进发，但他们对采矿或野外生存没有任何知识储备和经验。大多数人对将要发生的事情毫无准备。去淘金有两条主要路线，他们需要通过其中一条路线运输多达1000磅的装备和补给，这两条路线都很危险。
Of those who participated in the stampede, Castner estimates, 75 percent “were shipwrecked, shot, suffocated, frozen, starved, drowned, or demoralized to the point they gave up and went home.” Few made it to the gold and far fewer struck it rich. So much for the wisdom of crowds.
Castner tells the story largely through the experiences of some of the survivors, among whom Jack London, the “twenty-one-year-old nobody
tramp
from Oakland, California'' is today the best known.
卡斯特纳估计，在那些参与淘金热的人中，75%的人“遭遇了海难、被枪杀、窒息、冻伤、饥饿、溺水，或者意志消沉决定放弃并回家”。很少有人能找到金子，发财的人就更少了。群众的智慧不过如此。
翻译划线句，长按文末小程序码打卡，答案下期公布~
本文节选自：Christian Science Monitor（基督教科学箴言报）
发布时间：2021.05.13
作者：David Conrads
原文标题：How a nation desperate for wealth fell prey to ‘gold fever’
