Deck 18: American Society in the Industrial Age

Question 1

Which of the following describes most middle-class families of the late nineteenth century?

A) Almost no middle-class families were able to afford servants.
B) They lost some of the reforming zeal and moral fervor they typically had before the Civil War.
C) They continued the trend of an increasing birth rate.
D) Children were encouraged to be independent and were often unsupervised.

Answer 1

They lost some of the reforming zeal and moral fervor they typically had before the Civil War.

Question 2

In Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) he

A) praised the middle class for their contributions to economic growth of the United States.
B) stated that consumption was a noble way to escape the vagrancy of urban life.
C) theorized that middle-class consumption was done mainly for superficial purposes.
D) believed that the material culture was solid in its foundation.

Answer 2

theorized that middle-class consumption was done mainly for superficial purposes.

Question 3

In general, ________ workers were usually well-off as a result of late-nineteenth-century industrialization.

A) skilled industrial
B) unskilled
C) traditional craft
D) domestic

Answer 3

skilled industrial

Question 4

As a result of late-nineteenth-century industrial development,

A) personal contact between employer and employee tended to disappear.
B) workers rose rapidly from the ranks of labor to become manufacturers.
C) swings in the business cycle became more moderate.
D) artisans' bargaining power with their employers increased.

Question 5

In the new types of work women found in the late nineteenth century, they

A) were still generally unable to enter the male-dominated professions of teaching and nursing.
B) earned less as clerks and "typewriters" than they did as unskilled factory workers.
C) had less pleasant working conditions as clerks than they did as unskilled factory workers.
D) were often hired as salespersons in department stores because managers considered them easier to control than men.

Question 6

In the late nineteenth century, educated, middle-class women dominated the new profession of

A) home economics.
B) journalism.
C) nursing.
D) college teaching.

Question 7

Early social workers who visited working-class homes in the late nineteenth century discovered

A) poverty and degradation primarily among the skilled workers in new industries.
B) uniform prosperity among all working-class families and occupations.
C) uniform poverty and degradation among all working-class families and occupations.
D) considerable differences in the standard of living among families in the same occupation.

Question 8

Which of the following statements about society in the late 1800s is true?

A) The gap between rich and poor was growing.
B) The rich were growing richer and the underprivileged class shrank to lowest levels ever witnessed.
C) Recession caused the upper class to shrink significantly.
D) The balance between the rich and the poor was about even in an increasingly egalitarian society.

Question 9

Census records reveal that the average urban American of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

A) experienced considerable geographical mobility.
B) was a "new" immigrant.
C) lived on starvation wages.
D) had a realistic chance of going from rags to riches.

Question 10

After 1870, American public education

A) finally stabilized after 40 years of enormous change.
B) underwent a revolution in teaching methods which stressed strict discipline and rote learning.
C) was most forward-looking in the South.
D) changed steadily in response to the many social and economic changes of the era.

Question 11

In the late 1800s secondary education

A) was not yet available.
B) became widely available to the masses.
C) was available mostly only to Northerners.
D) was accessible to those with special abilities or from well-off families.

Question 12

Real-life rags-to-riches experiences, like those of Andrew Carnegie, were

A) almost universal.
B) fairly common.
C) nonexistent.
D) rare exceptions.

Question 13

The main reason for immigration to the United States during the late nineteenth century was the

A) industrial revolution in northern Europe.
B) religious persecution in southern Europe.
C) desire for economic betterment.
D) collapse of the peasant economy in northern Europe.

Question 14

Before 1882, Americans restricted ________ from immigrating to the United States.

A) almost no one
B) Irish Catholics
C) the Japanese
D) political revolutionaries

Question 15

Both the "new" immigrants of the 1880s and the "old" Irish immigrants of the 1840s were mostly

A) factory workers.
B) peasants.
C) children.
D) political refugees.

Question 16

The so-called "birds of passage" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were

A) a majority of all who entered the United States.
B) generally poor workers.
C) usually Englishmen and Scotsmen.
D) a minority of all who entered the United States.

Question 17

One of the causes which eventually led to restrictions on immigration was the

A) strong Protestantism of the "new" immigrants.
B) immigrants' unwillingness to work hard for low wages.
C) social Darwinists' fears that immigrants would undermine American "racial purity."
D) overwhelming number of immigrants who took advantage of the Homestead Act.

Question 18

Criticisms of immigrants as "longhaired, wild-eyed, bad-smelling, atheistic, reckless foreign wretches" and as "Europe's human and inhuman rubbish" were characteristic of

A) internationalists.
B) labor unionists.
C) nativists.
D) birds of passage.

Question 19

The new nativism of the late nineteenth century was exemplified by the

A) Knights of Labor.
B) Grand Army of the Republic.
C) American Protective Association.
D) Know-Nothing party.

Question 20

Although there were additional factors as well, by the final decades of the nineteenth century the chief cause of urban growth was

A) rural discontent and migration.
B) natural increase among urban families.
C) the expansion of industry.
D) the improving quality of city life.

Question 21

The "new" immigrants from eastern and southern Europe

A) moved west as quickly as possible.
B) usually came with some funds in reserve.
C) could generally read and write English.
D) settled in ethnic neighborhoods in the urban centers.

Question 22

The urban ethnic neighborhoods of the late nineteenth century were

A) ghettos in the European sense.
B) crowded and unhealthy.
C) destroyers of traditional immigrant culture.
D) model communities with high living standards.

Question 23

In 1910, which region of the country had the largest proportion of immigrants?

A) the Pacific Northwest
B) the Mid-Atlantic
C) the Upper Midwest
D) the Deep South

Question 24

What city was a pioneer in regulating city house construction and sanitation?

A) New York
B) Chicago
C) Philadelphia
D) San Francisco

Question 25

A residential apartment building, common in New York in the late 1800s, that was built on a tiny lot without consideration of proper lighting and ventilation was known as a

A) settlement house.
B) halfway house.
C) tenement.
D) slum.

Question 26

Urban transportation was revolutionized and urban development was redirected in the 1880s by

A) subway systems.
B) horse carts.
C) electric trolleys.
D) concrete paving of streets.

Question 27

The first electric trolley car line in America was installed by Frank J. Sprague in

A) Brooklyn, New York.
B) Richmond, Virginia.
C) Boston, Massachusetts.
D) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Question 28

As a result of the streetcar, American cities

A) were able to preserve their unique character as "walking cities."
B) were able to postpone the development of suburbs until the late 1940s.
C) expanded their geographical area enormously as the upper and middle classes fled city centers.
D) experienced a renaissance of their downtown commercial districts.

Question 29

Late-nineteenth-century spectator sports were notable for their

A) prohibitions on gambling and betting.
B) mixture of upper- and working-class interests.
C) predominantly rural audiences.
D) church sponsorship and high moral tone.

Question 30

In 1891, James Naismith invented the game of

A) basketball.
B) monopoly.
C) water polo.
D) baseball.

Question 31

Walter Camp played a major role in establishing

A) baseball as a major sport.
B) the role of religion in education.
C) football as a major sport.
D) the Boy Scouts of America.

Question 32

How did Roman Catholic Church leaders respond to the problems of industrialism?

A) They were deeply concerned with the social causes of urban vice and misery.
B) They tended to see vice as a personal matter and poverty as an act of God.
C) They dominated the Social Gospel movement.
D) They strongly defended the right to strike.

Question 33

The lay evangelist of the late nineteenth century who conducted vigorous campaigns to convince the poor to abandon their sinful ways was

A) Henry Ward Beecher.
B) Dwight L. Moody.
C) Washington Gladden.
D) Charles Grandison Finney.

Question 34

Social Gospelers believed

A) the church should focus on improving the spiritual lives of the poor by conducting massive religious revivals.
B) God would provide for the faithful.
C) the church should focus on improving the lives of the poor, ending child labor, and regulating the power of big corporations.
D) poverty grew out of sin and therefore the poor were being punished for their evil ways.

Question 35

The most influential preacher of the Social Gospel Movement was

A) Washington Gladden.
B) Dwight L. Moody.
C) William D. P. Bliss.
D) Henry Ward Beecher.

Question 36

Characters asked themselves, "What would Jesus do?" in Charles M. Sheldon's best-selling Social Gospel novel,

A) Applied Christianity.
B) How the Other Half Lives.
C) In His Steps.
D) A Life for Christ.

Question 37

The community centers started by idealistic young people to guide and help the urban poor were

A) Chautauquas.
B) lyceums.
C) Social Gospel centers.
D) settlement houses.

Question 38

The first example of a settlement house in America was established in New York by

A) Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.
B) Robert A. Woods.
C) Jacob Riis.
D) Dr. Stanton Coit.

Question 39

The founder of Chicago's Hull House was

A) Jane Addams.
B) Dr. Stanton Coit.
C) Henry Ward Beecher.
D) Lillian Wald.

Question 40

Settlements houses were

A) sufficiently funded by private beneficence.
B) completely funded by the state.
C) funded by private beneficence but in need of state support.
D) privately funded and most administrators did not want to deal with the regulations of state support.

Question 41

By the 1890s, how did most Americans respond to the changes of industrialization and urbanization?

A) They feared the country worshipped material success as its god.
B) They were disgusted by the lawlessness and power of modern corporations.
C) They continued to be optimistic and uncritical admirers of American civilization.
D) They blamed these changes for the increasing rates of divorce, heart disease, and mental illness.

Question 42

The response of American intellectuals such as Walt Whitman and Henry Adams to the new industrial civilization was to

A) denounce it as leading to the worship of money and material success.
B) view it as evidence of the continuing progress of the human race.
C) unite the workers to fight for socialism.
D) call for Christian revivals to refocus Americans on eternal values.

Question 43

Thorstein Veblen attacked late-nineteenth-century middle-class culture and its emphasis on conspicuous consumption.

Question 44

One advantage of industrialization for workers was that it tended to moderate the swings of the business cycle.

Question 45

In the late nineteenth century, middle-class women replaced men as grade school teachers.

Question 46

In the late nineteenth century, the economic gap between the very rich and the ordinary citizen grew narrower.

Question 47

One of the "push" factors causing the "new" immigration of the late nineteenth century was the collapse of the peasant economy in central and southern Europe.

Question 48

In the 1890s, the Immigration Restriction League focused on excluding Chinese immigrants.

Question 49

In the late nineteenth century, the number of saloons declined as they became places where the whole family went.

Question 50

Lillian Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement House in New York City.

Question 51

Summarize the major characteristics of the lives of late-nineteenth-century women in both working-class and middle-class families.

Question 52

Describe the major characteristics of working-class life and attitudes in the late nineteenth century.

Question 53

Describe the "new" immigrants in the late nineteenth century. Explain where they emigrated from and why they emigrated. Summarize to what extent they were accepted by American citizens.

Question 54

Summarize the late-nineteenth-century secular and religious criticisms directed at America's urban and industrial growth and the solutions these critics provided.

Question 55

What is the definition of the following key term:
-new immigration:

Question 56

What is the definition of the following key term:
-tenement: