Deck 19: The City and Its Workers, 1870-1900

Question 1

Which of the following factors contributed significantly to the astonishing growth in America's urban population between 1870 and 1900?

A) The annexation of the rural areas surrounding America's major cities
B) The migration of people from the rural areas of Europe and the United States
C) The dramatic increase in the American birthrate
D) The combination of a rising birthrate and urban annexation

Answer 1

The migration of people from the rural areas of Europe and the United States

Question 2

What late-nineteenth-century development did New York City's Brooklyn Bridge symbolize?

A) A developing labor shortage
B) The rapid decline of immigration to the United States
C) The ascendancy of urban America
D) America's frontier spirit

Answer 2

The ascendancy of urban America

Question 3

How did most new women immigrants come to the United States in the late-nineteenth century?

A) As wives, mothers, or daughters
B) As single, unskilled wage laborers
C) As single, skilled workers
D) As part of educated, well-off families

Answer 3

As wives, mothers, or daughters

Question 4

By 1900, the population in New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia had each grown to exceed

A) 100,000.
B) 500,000.
C) 1 million.
D) 2 million.

Question 5

The racism directed at ethnic immigrant groups in America in the late nineteenth century

A) diminished as each new group of immigrants reached the country and diversified the population.
B) was the product of the perception that ethnic and religious differences were racial characteristics.
C) was directed only at those ethnic groups that had dark skin.
D) divided the immigrant workforce between skilled laborers from Southern and Eastern Europe and unskilled laborers from Northern and Western Europe.

Question 6

Which of the following describes the world economy at the turn of the twentieth century?

A) An intense rivalry between the rapidly growing American industrial machine and the newly revived Western European manufacturing complex
B) Three interlocking but intensely competitive geographic regions made up of the United States and Latin America, Europe and Africa, and Asia
C) An industrial core, an agricultural domain, and a third world tied to the industrial core by economic colonialism
D) Stagnant, as the nations hovered on the brink of a world war

Question 7

In the late nineteenth century, some established immigrant groups viewed more recent immigrants as

A) not being a part of the white race.
B) being more dependent on government aid.
C) having an easy time assimilating to life in the United States.
D) being too critical of the United States.

Question 8

Working as a skilled craftsman in America in the late nineteenth century

A) meant guaranteed wages and year-round work.
B) did not ensure financial security.
C) was not much different from being a common laborer.
D) required a secondary education.

Question 9

Along with the horse car, which mode of transportation first allowed late-nineteenth-century cities to expand into the suburbs?

A) Electric streetcar
B) Automobile
C) Subway
D) Bus

Question 10

As middle- and upper-class urbanites moved to new areas of their cities in the late nineteenth century, poor city dwellers

A) also moved to the outskirts of the industrial cities.
B) became socially segregated from the wealthy.
C) gained increasing economic and political power.
D) saw the quality of their daily lives improve dramatically.

Question 11

Which statement describes the immigrant experience in late-nineteenth-century American cities?

A) Irish and Swedish immigrants were prohibited from obtaining secondary school educations.
B) Jews were involuntarily confined to ghettos.
C) Polish and German workers were excluded from the burgeoning labor union movement.
D) Asian immigrants on the West Coast were made economic scapegoats.

Question 12

What circumstances enabled U.S. industrialists to hire cheap labor from around the world in the 1870s?

A) Only immigrants were willing to work as hard as the industrialists demanded.
B) Native-born Americans refused to work for the low wages industrialists offered.
C) There were no political barriers to hiring immigrants from northern Europe.
D) Railroad expansion and low steamship fares brought many immigrants to America.

Question 13

Which of the following describes the majority of immigrants' lifestyles in the United States after 1900?

A) They lived in cities because jobs were available there and because they did not have the money to buy land.
B) The majority had left overcrowded conditions in their homeland to settle in America's farmlands.
C) They had come to America to escape harsh economic conditions in Germany and Ireland.
D) They lived in temporary housing in the United States and soon returned to their homes.

Question 14

Which group constituted the backbone of the American labor force throughout the nineteenth century?

A) Skilled laborers
B) Factory laborers
C) Common laborers
D) Sweatshop laborers

Question 15

What did Jacob Riis achieve with his best-selling How the Other Half Lives (1890)?

A) He produced the first internationally recognized American novel.
B) He empowered the occupants of New York City's Lower East Side tenements.
C) He forced middle-class Americans to acknowledge the degraded reality of the poor.
D) He convinced established immigrant groups that new immigrants deserved respect.

Question 16

Why did Congress approve a literacy test for immigrants in 1896?

A) To help schools develop curriculums for immigrant students
B) To determine new immigrants' needs for social services
C) As a means of limiting the influx of uneducated people into the country
D) As part of a program to help new immigrants learn English

Question 17

Southern blacks migrated to northern cities in the 1890s

A) to avoid conflict with migrant Mexican farmworkers.
B) to join the Socialist Democratic party.
C) for economic opportunities and safety.
D) for religious reasons.

Question 18

Which of the following developments changed the U.S. garment industry in the 1850s?

A) Independent tailors were replaced by sweatshop workers.
B) The supply of cheap labor dried up.
C) Women became the dominant force in its labor unions.
D) Foreign countries began to manufacture most of the world's clothing.

Question 19

After 1880, most new immigrants to America originated from

A) Northern and Western Europe.
B) Western Europe almost exclusively.
C) Southern Europe almost exclusively.
D) Eastern and Southern Europe.

Question 20

Employers sought to limit the control of skilled workers on the shop floor in the late nineteenth century

A) through the use of violence and intimidation.
B) by replacing people with machines.
C) by forbidding shop-floor workers from talking during the workday.
D) through hiring factory foremen to supervise every aspect of production.

Question 21

Beginning in the 1870s, American men of all classes were united in their passion for

A) baseball.
B) dance halls.
C) theater.
D) church socials.

Question 22

Which of the following describes the economic survival of the nineteenth-century American working-class family?

A) It depended on the employment of every family member.
B) It was assured as long as the male head of household was able to find a job.
C) It was assured as long as both parents worked outside the home.
D) It required the assistance of local social service agencies.

Question 23

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, middle-class American women were confined by a cultural ideology that dictated that they

A) work outside the home to make ends meet.
B) integrate workplace and home as much as possible.
C) exist within the private sphere of the household.
D) extend their sphere of influence to include charity work.

Question 24

What was the Knights of Labor?

A) The first mass organization for American workers
B) A group focused exclusively on native-born skilled workers
C) The only union to exclude blacks and women
D) A staunch ally of the American Federation of Labor

Question 25

How did the percentage of children under age fifteen working in the paid labor force in the United States change during the years leading up to World War I?

A) It gradually decreased until it fell below 5 percent of the population.
B) It dropped to virtually nothing owing to strict enforcement of child labor laws.
C) It increased decade by decade.
D) It remained much the same as it had been in 1870.

Question 26

Which statement describes the Haymarket affair of 1886?

A) It began as a rally of laborers organized by radicals.
B) It took place in Boston on the Fourth of July.
C) It involved railroad workers who wanted higher wages.
D) It made the Knights of Labor more powerful than ever.

Question 27

How did business expansion and consolidation affect the social structure in the late-nineteenth-century United States?

A) Class differences in U.S. society largely disappeared.
B) Racial differences in the U.S. workforce largely disappeared.
C) A new class of white male salaried managers emerged.
D) Women were able to earn higher wages and become managers.

Question 28

What was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?

A) A revolutionary plot by the radical Workingman's party
B) The result of a coalition of labor unions
C) A spontaneous and unorganized event
D) A plan by socialists to overthrow the government

Question 29

Where did married black women typically work to supplement their family income in the late nineteenth century United States?

A) Outside the home as domestics
B) Outside the home as typists
C) At home as pieceworkers
D) At home by taking in boarders

Question 30

How did live-in servants change households in the North by 1870?

A) They enabled middle-class white women to explore opportunities outside the home.
B) They made domestic service an honorable occupation for native-born American women to pursue.
C) They had become a fixture of almost three-quarters of all urban households.
D) They freed working women from the obligation of keeping house after working outside the home all day.

Question 31

What was the main lesson learned by workers from the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?

A) They lacked power individually but might gain it through a union.
B) Workers would never be able to fight large corporations.
C) Strikes were not an effective way to gain the attention of authorities.
D) Higher wages could be obtained through persistent and concerted action.

Question 32

Most native-born white women who worked at the end of the nineteenth century held

A) factory production jobs.
B) jobs doing piecework in their homes.
C) clerical jobs in offices.
D) clerk jobs in department stores.

Question 33

Which of the following was an outcome of the Haymarket affair?

A) The eight-hour workday became law across the nation.
B) Americans became sympathetic toward anarchists and labor unions.
C) Skilled workers turned toward the American Federation of Labor.
D) Business owners resolved to improve their relationship with labor.

Question 34

During the 1880s, the Knights of Labor advocated for

A) overtime pay, paid sick days, and paid vacations.
B) social revolution and workers' ownership of the means of production.
C) public ownership of the railroads, an income tax, and equal pay for women.
D) shorter hours for children and women who worked outside of their homes.

Question 35

What did Coney Island symbolize in the late 1800s?

A) The power of the church to control mass entertainment
B) The Statue of Liberty's attraction for tourists
C) The importance of nature as a retreat from urban life
D) The rise of mass entertainment in America

Question 36

Working-class courtship rituals in urban, industrial America in the late nineteenth century

A) remained remarkably similar to those of preindustrial America.
B) changed in that women met prospective husbands only through their families.
C) consisted of informal meetings at dance halls and other commercial settings.
D) favored working-class women who no longer had to rely on men to pay for their entertainment.

Question 37

The advent of the adding machine, typewriter, and cash register had the greatest impact on

A) literate white men.
B) literate white women.
C) immigrants who gained skills on the shop floor.
D) illiterate women who wanted to learn new skills.

Question 38

Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Labor,

A) envisioned a union that would include skilled and unskilled workers.
B) worked primarily to elect politicians who were sympathetic to labor.
C) fought for higher pay and better working conditions for skilled labor.
D) absolutely opposed strikes as a strategy for change.

Question 39

What developed as a result of the opening of department stores in the late-nineteenth-century United States?

A) A new consumer culture
B) A formal dress code for working women
C) Changes in minimum-wage laws
D) Stringent new notions of saving money

Question 40

The direction of corporate goals and policies in the late nineteenth century was increasingly shaped by

A) market forces.
B) workers' demands.
C) stockholders and financiers.
D) managers and executives.

Question 41

Why did African Americans from the rural South begin moving to northern cities in the late nineteenth century?

Question 42

Compare and contrast the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor in the 1880s.

Question 43

How did late-nineteenth-century industrialization lead to increased social segregation in cities across the United States?

Question 44

Describe the effect of the working-class economy on urban women and children.

Question 45

What happened to the World's Columbian Exposition site after it closed its doors in October 1894?

A) Chicago's unemployed and homeless took over its buildings.
B) Chicago made it an official landmark.
C) Real estate developers transformed it into a luxury housing complex.
D) Chicago ordered the buildings burned to the ground.

Question 46

How did technology transform the urban landscape of the United States in the late nineteenth century?

Question 47

What was the "Chicago school" of the late nineteenth century?

A) A coalition of mob bosses and thugs who ruled the city's politics after the Great Fire
B) A group of painters who embraced the fin de siècle impressionists in Europe
C) An assembly of scholars and reformers who sought to address the city's urban decay
D) A skilled group of architects who made commercial architecture a new art form

Question 48

How did ideas about race and racism shape the status and treatment of different ethnic groups in nineteenth-century America?

Question 49

Which of the following describes the amenities of American city life in the 1890s?

A) They came at great cost to immigrants and the poor.
B) They enriched political bosses more than urban communities.
C) They were equally available to people of all races and social classes.
D) They were not easily accessible to the poor residents of cities.

Question 50

What role did bosses play in the cities of nineteenth-century America?

Question 51

What was the White City, which was constructed in 1893, five miles down the shore from Chicago?

A) A shelter for Chicago's homeless and unemployed
B) The home of the World's Columbian Exposition
C) An art exhibit about the dangers of rapid technological advancements
D) The site of newly constructed tenements for Chicago's slaughterhouse workers

Question 52

By the turn of the twentieth century, most big-city governments were run

A) exclusively by city bosses and their cronies.
B) by a powerful mayor who controlled the city council.
C) by compromise and the accommodation of various powerful political forces.
D) by boards and commissions of experts who were appointed by the mayor.

Question 53

Describe the events leading up to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the long-term effects of the action on the strikers.

Question 54

Which statement describes late-nineteenth-century American libraries?

A) They made up the most extensive free public-library system in the world.
B) They were popular with laborers who took advantage of their free literacy programs.
C) They were found only in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City.
D) They were privately funded and open only to members who could afford to pay.

Question 55

What development led to the emergence of the modern skyscraper in the 1890s?

A) The invention of the elevator
B) The advent of structural steel
C) The decline of corporate power
D) The advent of cast iron

Question 56

In the late nineteenth century, businesses expanded and consolidated, creating the need for different types of jobs. Describe at least two of the newly created white-collar jobs.

Question 57

What new developments began to undermine the cult of domesticity in the late nineteenth century?

Question 58

In the post-Civil War United States, a "city boss" was

A) an especially effective mayor who oversaw a large city as it industrialized.
B) a professional politician who provided public works and social services for new residents.
C) a corrupt politician who served primarily to benefit himself and his family.
D) a city councilor who had served at least three consecutive terms.

Question 59

New York City's Central Park was planned to provide

A) a series of playing fields for professional athletes.
B) a delivery route for businesses on the streets lining the park.
C) a natural oasis away from the busyness of the city.
D) a concentration of plant matter to ensure sufficient oxygen production.

Question 60

What did the public school system in late-nineteenth-century American cities provide?

A) After-school programs
B) Year-round programs for all children, including babies and toddlers
C) Year-round programs and free tuition for children under age twelve
D) Free tuition and open access to all school-aged children

Question 61

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
Nineteenth-century belief that a woman's place was in the home, where she should create a haven for her family. This sentimentalized ideal led to an increase in the hiring of domestic servants and freed middle-class white women to spend time in pursuits outside the home.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 62

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
Women hired by businesses in the decades after the Civil War to keep records and conduct correspondence often using equipment such as typewriters. Secretarial work constituted one of the very few areas where middle-class women could use their literacy for wages.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 63

Compare and contrast the work of white and black women in the late nineteenth century, both inside and outside of the home.

Question 64

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
Late-nineteenth-century political organization whereby an often corrupt politician maintains an inordinate level of power through command of a political machine that distributes services to its constituents.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 65

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
This violent multicity protest began with West Virginia railroad brakemen objecting to sharp wage reductions and quickly spread to include roughly 600,000 workers. Although President Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops to successfully disband the workers, union membership surged in the aftermath.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 66

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
May 4, 1886, incident in which both workers and policemen were killed or wounded after a labor demonstration in Chicago turned violent. The incident created a backlash against labor activism.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 67

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
Organization created by Samuel Gompers in 1886 that coordinated the activities of craft unions throughout the United States. It worked to achieve immediate benefits for skilled workers.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 68

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
The first mass organization of America's working class. Founded in 1869, it attempted to bridge the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, ideology, race, and occupation to build a "universal brotherhood" of all workers.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 69

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
World's fair held in Chicago in 1893 that attracted millions of visitors. The elaborately designed pavilions of the "White City" included exhibits of technological innovation and of cultural exoticism and embodied an urban ideal that contrasted with the realities of Chicago life.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 70

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
Facility opened in 1892 in New York harbor that processed new immigrants coming into New York City. In the late nineteenth century, some 75 percent of European immigrants to America came through New York.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 71

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
Financial contributions by multiple members of a household for the survival of the family. From the late nineteenth century into the twentieth, many working-class families depended on the wages of all family members, regardless of gender or age.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 72

Discuss the impact of urbanization and industrialization on patterns of leisure in America during the nineteenth century. How were these changes related to the growing division among classes?

Question 73

Describe workers' responses to the low wages and poor working conditions they experienced in late-nineteenth-century industrial jobs. How did they try to improve their situations, and what demands did they make? How did industrialists and the U.S. government respond?

Question 74

Compare and contrast the responses of municipal governments and political bosses to the challenges that grew along with the rise of cities in the United States in the 1880s and 1890s. Which of their actions were viewed by middle-class reformers as positive and which as negative? Why?

Question 75

Describe the roles that new immigrants played in the processes of urbanization and industrialization in the United States after 1880. Why were so many old-stock Americans apprehensive about the influx of new immigrants?

Question 76

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
Movement of populations across large distances such as oceans and continents. In the late nineteenth century, large-scale immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe into the United States contributed to the growth of cities and changes in American demographics.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition

Question 77

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section.
Small room used for clothing piecework beginning in the later nineteenth century. As mechanization transformed the garment industry with the introduction of foot-pedaled sewing machines and mechanical cloth-cutting knives, independent tailors were replaced with these workers, hired by contractors to sew pieces into clothing.

A)American Federation of Labor (AFL)
B)bossism
C)cult of domesticity
D)Ellis Island
E)family economy
F)global migration
G)Great Railroad Strike
H)Haymarket bombing
I)Knights of Labor
J)sweatshop
K)"typewriters"
L)World's Columbian Exposition