Passage FourThe roots of the sev

Passage Four

The roots of the seven-day- week can betraced back about4,000 years,to Babylon. The Babylonians believed there wereseven planets in the solar system, and the number seven held such power to themthat they planned their days around it. Their seven-day, planetary week spreadto Egypt, Greece, and eventually to Rome, where it turns out the Jewish peoplehad their own version of a seven-day week. At the very latest, the seven-dayweek was firmly entrenched in the Western calendar about 250 years beforeChrist was born.

The earliest recorded use of the word"weekend" occurred in 1879 in an English magazine called Notes andQueries Some 19th-century Britons used the week's seventh day for merrimentrather than for the rest prescribed by Scripture. They would drink, gamble, andenjoy themselves so much that the phenomenon of"Saint Monday, "inwhich workers would skip work to recover from Sunday gallivanting, emerged.English factory owners later compromised with workers by giving them a half-dayon Saturday in exchange for guaranteed attendance at work on Monday.

It took decades for Saturday to changefrom a half-day to a full day's rest. In 1908, a New England mill became thefirst American factory to institute the five-day week. It did so to Jewishworkers, whose observance of a Saturday Sabbath (the day of rest andworship)forced them to make up their work on Sundays, offending some in theChristian majority. The mill granted these Jewish workers a two-day weekend,and other factories followed this example. The Great Depression cemented thetwo-day weekend into the economy, as shorter hours were considered a remedy tounderemployment.

Nearly century later, mills have beenovertaken by more advanced technologies, yet the five-day workweek remains thefundamental organizing concept behind when work is done. Its obsolescence hasbeen foretold for quite a while now: A 1965 Senate subcommittee predictedAmericans would work 14-hour weeks by the year 2000, and before that, back in1928, John Maynard Keynes wrote that technological advancement would bring theworkweek down to 15 hours within 100 years.

There's reason to believe that aseven-day week with a two-day weekend is an inefficient technology: A growingbody of research and corporate case studies suggests that a transition to ashorter workweek would lead to increased productivity, improved health. andhigher employee-retention rates.

Moreover, there's some anecdotal evidencethat a four-day workweek might increase productivity. Beyond working moreefficiently, a four-day workweek appears to improve morale and well-being.

The five-day workweek might already haveso much cultural inertia that it can't be changed. Most companies can't justtell employees not to come in on Fridays, because they'd be at a disadvantagein a world that favors the five-day workweek.

 
The Babylonians' planetary week has something to do with_____
A、the Western calendar
B、their belief in the number seven
C、the movement of the solar system
D、the Jewish version of seven-day week
【正确答案】：B