Deck 19: Immigration, Urbanization, and Everyday Life, 1860-1900

Question 1

During the 1880s and 1890s, which new obligation was added to the traditional middle-class woman's role as director of the household?

A) She had to cultivate her special maternal gifts, especially her sensitivity toward children and her aptitude for religion.
B) She had to seek outlets for her creative energies outside the home.
C) She had to foster an artistic environment that would nurture her family's cultural improvement.
D) She had to foster a home environment which would encourage her husband to share both his breadwinning duties and her homemaking duties
E) She had to be the moral beacon shining light across a sea of male decadence

Answer 1

She had to foster an artistic environment that would nurture her family's cultural improvement.

Question 2

What major change took place during the late nineteenth century in the teaching of medicine, architecture, engineering, and law?

A) College faculties were purged of anyone who was not a native-born American.
B) Colleges refused to train these professionals because the American public had demonstrated strong prejudice against them.
C) Standards were raised and practice was professionalized.
D) State boards of education agreed that training for such professions would best be accomplished at European universities.
E) Admissions standards dropped as the professions tried to compete with the higher-paying business world.

Answer 2

Standards were raised and practice was professionalized.

Question 3

Why did young farm women lead the exodus from rural areas to cities?

A) They were seeking husbands.
B) Farm work was increasingly becoming male work because of mechanization.
C) They were fleeing their strict upbringings for the freedom of the cities.
D) Greater availability of beer in rural areas had led to more wife beating by husbands.
E) They were turning their backs on a way of life that demanded their labor for subsistence tasks.

Answer 3

Farm work was increasingly becoming male work because of mechanization.

Question 4

Why did leisure-time activities become increasingly important to the working class during the late nineteenth century?

A) Factory labor was growing more routine and impersonal, and social interactions at the workplace were increasingly inhibited.
B) Working-class Americans viewed leisure activity as a method of rising to middle-class status.
C) American employers were increasingly emphasizing leisure and relaxation as a method of keeping their work force happy and healthy.
D) Leisure-time activities brought Americans of all ethnicities together and therefore contributed to a process of Americanization that most workers desired.
E) Factory workers were working shorter days and weeks and had more time to play.

Question 5

Which of the following is a valid conclusion to draw about the ways in which immigrants adjusted to urban life in their new society?

A) Skilled workers and immigrants familiar with Anglo-American customs had relatively few problems adjusting, but for others, adjusting was difficult.
B) Immigrants had little desire to become Americanized.
C) Immigrants came to the United States to try to become like Americans.
D) Immigrants were ashamed of their native culture.
E) The dominant American culture made assimilation impossible.

Question 6

Who was known as the king of ragtime?

A) Elvis Presley
B) George Gershwin
C) Scott Joplin
D) Daniel Devito
E) John Sullivan

Question 7

Which statement best represents urban residential patterns among ethnic groups?

A) Immigrants preferred to mix with the general population in order to assimilate more quickly into American culture.
B) Immigrants tended to live in shabby tenements until they could afford better housing.
C) Religion was the primary factor in ethnic residential patterns because immigrants congregated around their churches.
D) Common language was the primary factor in ethnic residential patterns, regardless of national origin.
E) Immigrants tried to blot out their memories of the Old Country by living among different kinds of people.

Question 8

Which of the following people established an inner-city church to reach out to the poor?

A) Josephine Shaw Lowell
B) William S. Rainsford
C) Josiah Strong
D) Robert M. Hartley
E) William Graham Sumner

Question 9

Anthony Comstock was a

A) Chicago gangster
B) founder of an elegant Chicago department store
C) birth-control advocate
D) New York City political boss
E) moral-purity crusader

Question 10

In 1890, approximately what portion of the population of greater New York had been born abroad or were children of foreign parents?

A) One out of five
B) Almost one-third
C) Approximately one-half
D) Four out of five
E) Five percent

Question 11

In what type of building did most urban poor people live in the late 19th century?

A) Town homes
B) Single family housing
C) Tenements
D) Skyscrapers
E) Sod houses

Question 12

According to its defenders in the late nineteenth century, college football

A) epitomized American democratic ideals, because all Americans played or watched the game.
B) was a character-building sport that could function as a surrogate frontier experience in an increasingly urbanized society.
C) was a safe sport that the nation's future business and professional leaders could undertake without fear of injury.
D) would teach students the military discipline and skills necessary as the U.S. became a world power.

Question 13

Which of the following is not an example of the impact of the department store?

A) It overcame middle- and upper-class reluctance to spend.
B) It made shopping an adventure.
C) It functioned as a kind of social club and home away from home for comfortably fixed women.
D) It convinced middle class families to buy cheaper products that they would have to replace annually.
E) It set the standard for consumption.

Question 14

Who established Hull House?

A) Susan B. Anthony
B) Jane Addams
C) Carrie Chapman Catt
D) Francis Willard
E) Harriet Tubman

Question 15

Which of the following statements accurately describes urban growth in the late 19th century?

A) While Atlantic seaboard cities like New York and Boston grew dramatically, interior cities like Cincinnati did not.
B) The population of American cities grew on average 25 percent between the Civil War and 1900.
C) Urban areas remained about the same size as people tried to stay in more rural communities.
D) Urban populations grew dramatically with cities such as Chicago growing more than fivefold.
E) City managers carefully planned and monitored urban growth before 1900.

Question 16

The Salvation Army was

A) a branch of the military formed to clean up the slums.
B) organized along pseudo-military lines to provide food, shelter, and temporary employment for families.
C) a social-welfare organization based on new ideas of gently persuading the urban poor to adopt middle-class values.
D) organized by urban immigrants to police their own ghettos.
E) formed to employ military tactics to force poor immigrants out of respectable middle class neighborhoods.

Question 17

How did the settlement-house movement distinguish itself from other urban social-welfare organizations?

A) It helped poor immigrants settle on western homesteads to relieve urban overcrowding.
B) It helped the urban poor purchase their own homes because of the belief that owning private property leads to the adoption of middle-class values.
C) It insisted that charity workers live in slum neighborhoods to better understand the living conditions of the poor.
D) It was not being concerned about the urban poor's propensity for drinking and gambling.
E) It tried to keep immigrants "settled" indoors until they could behave like Americans.

Question 18

Frances Willard was important because she

A) headed the Woman's Christian Temperance Union that pursued various reform issues.
B) became the first woman to run for president.
C) campaigned on behalf Christianity being declared the state religion of the United States.
D) fought against racial discrimination but supported gender segregation
E) chaired the National Woman's Suffrage Party and fought a woman's right to vote.

Question 19

Who were the "new immigrants" who poured into the United States between 1890 and 1920?

A) Scandinavians and Germans
B) Irish
C) English, Scottish, and Welsh
D) Chinese and Koreans
E) Southern and eastern Europeans

Question 20

The Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association were formed mainly to

A) assist rural young men and women who migrated to the city.
B) help youngsters migrate west.
C) convert Jewish immigrants.
D) convert Indians.
E) prevent young people from attending performances of ragtime music.

Question 21

The work of which of the following individuals was not an example of "modernism" in architecture or painting during the late nineteenth century?

A) Architect Frank Lloyd Wright
B) Painter Thomas Eakins
C) Architect Richard Morris Hunt
D) Painter Winslow Homer

Question 22

Which of the following is not evidence that public education in the late-nineteenth-century United States had become entangled in ethnic and class differences?

A) The proliferation of private and parochial schools
B) The controversy over compulsory education
C) The debates over classroom decorum
D) The efforts to wrest control of schools from neighborhood leaders
E) New educational theories that stressed decentralized administration, repealed compulsory attendance, and de-emphasized white European conventions such as punctuality.

Question 23

What form of theatrical entertainment drew the largest audiences in late-nineteenth-century America?

A) Vaudeville
B) Opera
C) Shakespearean comedy
D) Burlesque
E) Brass band concerts

Question 24

Which of the following was not one of the reasons that ragtime quickly become a national craze during the 1890s, especially among the working class?

A) The music displayed a fresh originality.
B) It was considered to have "wild" and complex rhythms.
C) It originated in brothels and was associated with blacks.
D) It was played strictly for entertainment.
E) Listening to it was considered a good route to middle class respectability.

Question 25

Which of the following ideas was not part of the central philosophy of Walter Rauschenbusch?

A) He believed a truly Christian society would unite all churches.
B) He wanted to reorganize the industrial system.
C) He believed Christians should strive for world peace.
D) He believed that the nation's urban woes needed to be addressed.
E) He believed that if working class Americans could attend plays and concerts, they would be motivated to be more religious.

Question 26

Josephine Shaw Lowell and the New York Charity Organization Society wanted

A) the federal government to take responsibility for providing for the urban poor.
B) their aid recipients to move towards self-sufficiency.
C) all aid to the urban poor to be administered through their organization.
D) all aid to the indigent should be eliminated.
E) charity to be provided in a discreet way that avoided drawing attention to those who were receiving the aid.

Question 27

During the late nineteenth century, the working-class saloon was not

A) the center for immigrant politics.
B) a meeting place for husbands and wives.
C) a place to escape the socially isolating routines of the factory.
D) a location for ethnic groups to reinforce their identities.
E) a place for a free lunch.

Question 28

Which of the following is the story of an innocent and attractive girl from Wisconsin who is seduced by a traveling salesman, moves in with the married proprietor of a fancy saloon, and eventually pursues a career in the theater?

A) Huckleberry Finn
B) The Awakening
C) Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
D) Champion Single Sculls
E) Sister Carrie

Question 29

Which of the following is not an indicator of women's changing relationship to men during the last decades of the nineteenth century?

A) The rise of bicycling as a popular activity among young women
B) The growing popularity of catalog and department stores
C) The substantial rise in the divorce rate in these years
D) The new themes found in novels by women writers
E) The growth of coeducational private colleges and public universities

Question 30

How were the new research universities of the late 19th century different from earlier colleges?

A) They stressed the importance of teaching the classical subjects like Latin and Greek.
B) They focused on teaching science and math.
C) They offered courses in a wide variety of subject areas, established professional schools, and encouraged faculty members to pursue basic research.
D) They made conscientious efforts to have both male and female students.
E) They included health-related courses like physical education and sex education.

Question 31

In the late 19th century, John L. Sullivan represented America's love affair with

A) boxing.
B) cycling.
C) football.
D) basketball.
E) racing.

Question 32

Which of the following was a typical feature of daily life in a late-nineteenth-century American city?

A) Cultural diversity
B) Racial harmony
C) Law and order
D) Political gridlock
E) All of these choices

Question 33

What did the work of Frances Willard of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union show about many women in the late nineteenth century?

A) They could rebel against the fundamental assumptions of middle-class family structure and the woman's role within the family itself.
B) They could undercut the very club movement that they professed to favor.
C) They could use a fad such as bicycling without corsets as the symbol of liberation from patriarchy.
D) They could challenge the cult of domesticity and expand women's sphere while at the same time remaining committed to women's nurturing and supportive role within the family.
E) All of these choices

Question 34

For a late-nineteenth-century unmarried working-class woman, why did amusement parks exert a powerful lure?

A) They offered opportunities to supplement meager wages through evening or weekend employment.
B) They provided opportunities for the entire family to have a wholesome outing.
C) They were places to meet friends, get away from parental supervision, and try out the latest dance steps.
D) They had employment bureaus where factory owners recruited for high-paying jobs.
E) They were places to buy bagels, baked potatoes, soda, and other foods and drinks not otherwise available.

Question 35

Who coined the term "conspicuous consumption" to describe the excessive materialism and flaunting of wealth of America's captains of industry?

A) Mark Twain
B) Annie MacLean
C) Thorstein Veblen
D) W. E. B. Du Bois
E) E. L. Godkin

Question 36

Where was baseball the most popular?

A) in the north because the integrated nature of baseball bothered many southerners.
B) in rural areas as people living in the country could best relate to the slow pace of the game.
C) in urban areas with large working-class populations.
D) in cities where the stadium was placed in middle-class neighborhoods.
E) in cities with large numbers of young adults.