Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.

        Quite apart from the economic similarity between present-day automation and the mechanization, (4)_______has been proceeding for centuries, it must also be stressed that even in the United States, automation is by no means the only factor displace people from existing jobs. The increasing number of unneeded workers in recent years has been the result of much more simple and old-fashioned influences:

farm laborers have been (5)                          _________out of work by bigger tractors, miners by the cheapness of oil, and railway-men by better roads. It is quite wrong, therefore, to think of automation as some new monster whose arrival threatens the existence of employment in the same way that the arrival of myxomatosis threatened the existence of the rabbit. Automation is one aspect of technological changes (changes in tastes, changes in social patterns, changes in organization) which (6)________in certain jobs disappearing and certain skills ceasing to be required. And even in America, which has a level of technology and output per (7)______much in advance of Britain’s, there is no evidence that the pace of change is actually speeding up. Nevertheless changes in the amount of labor needed to produce a certain output are proceeding fairly rapidly in America - and in (8)_______countries - and may proceed more rapidly in future. Indeed it is one of the main objects of economic policy.

Điền vào ô 7.