Deck 17: A New Industrial and Labor Order, 1877-1900

Question 1

The iron and steel center in the United States at the turn of the century was

A)Philadelphia.
B)Detroit.
C)Pittsburgh.
D)New Haven.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

What was new about industrial development in the United States at the end of the 1800s, compared to industrial development in the early nineteenth century?

A)the use of wage labor
B)the dependence on automation
C)the pooling of capital from several investors
D)the scale and function of industrial operations

Answer 2

D

Question 3

What did most of the manufacturing regions in the United States have in common with those in Northern Europe?

A)They were concentrated on the coastline.
B)They sat atop or near rich coal deposits.
C)They emerged in city centers.
D)They emerged in agreeable climates.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Which foreign source of capital proved crucial for American industrial development?

A)gold deposits stored by German mercantile houses
B)the riches of Venetian traders
C)surplus wealth of British investors
D)royal treasures of European monarchies

Question 5

Which of the following industries provided the model in trust organization?

A)textiles
B)wheat
C)oil
D)machine tools

Question 6

How did captains of industry like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie explain their enormous wealth and success?

A)They were simply the product of steady, hard work.
B)They were the result of their evolutionary fitness.
C)They were the product of their ruthless use of political power.
D)Their fortunes were simply a matter of luck.

Question 7

What communication system first made possible the coordination of nationwide shipments?

A)telegraph
B)newspapers
C)the pony express
D)the telephone

Question 8

What technological innovations allowed American firms to first establish international markets in Canada and Europe?

A)advances in steamship design and refrigeration
B)the telephone
C)electric light
D)the Bessemer furnace

Question 9

Why did Americans still oppose wage labor after the Civil War?

A)They felt that one could always live more comfortably when self-employed.
B)They felt that putting a man to wages was turning him into a dependent.
C)They felt that wage work was the same as plantation labor.
D)Working for wages was equivalent to the work of a domestic.

Question 10

Why were manual wage workers known as "blue collar" workers?

A)Union members wore blue scarfs to recognize each other.
B)Workers on the shop-floor wore blue shirts and overalls.
C)The white shirts of workers took on a blue sheen in the dim factory lights of the late nineteenth century.
D)The term hinted at the "blue" feeling most workers had about their social status.

Question 11

Assess the state of European industrialization at the time of American industrial expansion in the late 19^th century.

A)Small-scale, family-owned businesses with a familial concern for employees survived longer in Europe than in the U.S.
B)European businesses had no access to raw materials such as coal and steel until their African colonies supplied began to mine these.
C)European workers were far more docile and complacent than American ones and made industrialization much easier.
D)European economic development depended strongly on capital infusions from the U.S. which grew in size in the 1890s.

Question 12

Which of these factors contributed most commonly to the pressured, regimented atmosphere of the American workplace?

A)violent and abusive foremen
B)police oversight
C)overbearing unions
D)piecework payments

Question 13

What was the cause of "brown lung" disease?

A)work in coal mines
B)smoking
C)work in textile mills
D)work in steel mills

Question 14

Between 1870 and 1900 the number of children under the age of 15 in nonfarm and nonfamily businesses

A)declined by half.
B)remained the same, despite population growth.
C)doubled.
D)grew fivefold.

Question 15

Which foreign event received more American newspaper coverage than any other prior to 1871?

A)the failed German revolution of 1848
B)the Paris Commune
C)the Irish Potato Famine
D)the Opium War between Britain and China

Question 16

How did American labor unions frame their battle for improved working conditions during the Gilded Age?

A)as a fight for American values
B)as an effort at Europeanization
C)as a struggle for global human rights
D)as a battle for the destruction of capitalism

Question 17

The great Railroad strike of 1877

A)began when railroad workers demanded significant wage increases.
B)remained limited to radical bastions in Pittsburgh and Boston.
C)triggered the depression of the 1870s.
D)left more than 100 people dead.

Question 18

The Knights of Labor opposed

A)immigration.
B)women in the workplace.
C)wage labor.
D)the steel industry.

Question 19

In June of 1892, Andrew Carnegie left United States for his castle in Scotland because

A)immigration officials had harassed him over his papers.
B)he expected a violent showdown with workers whose pay he had cut.
C)he was tired of the United States and was willing to let Henry Clay Frick run US Steel.
D)he was an avid golf player and one of the first globetrotters in that sport.

Question 20

How did railroad owners counter the nationwide American Railway Union boycott of Pullman cars in the spring of 1894?

A)They fired their entire workforce and did the job with strikebreakers.
B)They hired Pinkerton detectives to shoot up union headquarters.
C)They had to concede defeat and accept union demands.
D)They coupled Pullman cars to U.S. mail trains.

Question 21

During the Gilded Age, farmers generally focused their anger on

A)department stores.
B)railroads.
C)British competitors.
D)cheap immigrant labor.

Question 22

How did the American labor movement compare to labor movements in Europe?

A)It was more conservative.
B)It was more radical.
C)It was less diverse in its membership.
D)It enjoyed more support politically.

Question 23

How did American window glass workers respond to French, English, and Belgium imports in the 1880s?

A)They boycotted French, English, and Belgian stores in Boston and other major cities.
B)They pressured their employers to retaliate by exporting into those European countries.
C)They convinced foreign workers to boycott the production of exports to the US.
D)Most of them quit their jobs and found employment in unskilled factory work elsewhere.

Question 24

Which American labor union was a model for similar organizations in France, New Zealand, Belgium, Australia, and Canada?

A)Industrial Workers of the World
B)American Federation of Labor
C)United Mine Workers
D)Knights of Labor

Question 25

How did the founder of the American Railway Union, Eugene Debs, respond to the failure of the Pullman strike in 1892?

A)He emigrated to Mexico.
B)He joined an underground organization committed to the violent destruction of capitalism.
C)He abandoned the union cause and opened a law practice.
D)He turned to politics and became the leader of the Socialist Party of America.

Question 26

Which author produced popular stories for boys that stressed the importance of individual effort and morality for success?

A)Henry Demarest Lloyd
B)Horatio Alger
C)Edward Bellamy
D)Henry George

Question 27

Who established the University of Chicago?

A)Richard W. Sears
B)J.P. Morgan
C)John D. Rockefeller
D)Montgomery Ward

Question 28

A new genre of reporting emerged at the turn-of-the-century, derided by critics as

A)gossiping.
B)muckraking.
C)hobnobbing
D)editorializing.

Question 29

The utopian novel Wealth against Commonwealth

A)advocated a free market society.
B)imagined the return to a more harmonious feudal order.
C)pictured a cooperative rather than competitive society.
D)described a nation without immigrants.

Question 30

Why did members of the middle class particularly welcome Bellamy's Looking Backward?

A)It promised a return to the "good old days."
B)It described the violent destruction of the nation's elite with lurid detail.
C)It eschewed middle-class capitalist values of individualism and innovation.
D)It promised a peaceful transition to a better economic and social order.

Question 31

How did steel towns like Pittsburgh and Homestead compare to similar communities in Great Britain?

A)Workers lived much healthier and more content lives in the U.S. than in Britain.
B)These towns were indistinguishable and looked the same wherever you went.
C)Pittsburgh was worse, but Homestead had a small-town charm British steel towns lacked.
D)Pittsburgh was hell compared to the filthy English city of Sheffield; Homestead was worse.

Question 32

Compared to the commercial capitalism of the early nineteenth century, the economic system at the end of the 1800s is best described as

A)financial capitalism.
B)industrial capitalism.
C)free market economy.
D)socialism.

Question 33

Which innovation was most important for the emergence of the new industrial order of the late nineteenth century?

A)fossil-fuel powered technologies
B)water power
C)the typewriter
D)fhe factory system

Question 34

The first company valued at a billion dollars in 1901 was

A)Standard Oil
B)Singer Sewing Machines
C)U.S. Steel
D)E. C. Knight Sugar Company

Question 35

What did the Supreme Court of the United States decide in the anti-trust case of U.S. v. E.C. Knight Co. in 1895?

A)The federal government's power of interstate commerce did not apply to E.C. Knight Co. since the company only refined in one state.
B)The company was indeed a monopoly since it controlled 98 percent of American sugar refining, the court ruled.
C)The court ruled that the federal government had no case against E.C. Knight Co. since sugar was not important enough a commodity to justify intervention.
D)The court threw the case out since E.C. Knight Co. did not have a sufficient share of the market in sugar refining to justify the government's allegations.

Question 36

Who was chiefly responsible for popularizing the theory of Social Darwinism?

A)Henry Demarest Lloyd
B)Horatio Alger
C)Herbert Spencer
D)Edward Bellamy

Question 37

In which peculiar market did English noblemen and wealthy American heiresses meet at the turn of the century?

A)antiquity trade
B)fashion industry
C)marriage market
D)real estate market

Question 38

Why did local merchants sponsor bonfires to burn Sears & Roebuck Catalogs?

A)Sears was inundating the countryside with the cheap prints, prompting the quality of the postal service to suffer.
B)They were angry that Sears & Roebuck had managed to buy up the vast majority of their stores and turn them into chains.
C)They resented the cheap out-of-town competition.
D)TEven though they owed Sears much of their success, they needed to placate local anti-merchant sentiment with rituals such as book burnings.

Question 39

Why were rural Americans also part of the global migration from farm to factory?

A)They were attracted to the high wages in manufacturing sector.
B)They were drawn in by the charms of the city.
C)They desired the independence that came with employment for cash.
D)Overpopulation and declining commodity prices pushed them off the land.

Question 40

Between 1870 and 1910 the number of blue-collar workers

A)declined steadily.
B)remained stable despite a growing population.
C)doubled.
D)quadrupled.

Question 41

Why were women office workers especially attractive to employers?

A)They did the same work for less pay.
B)They never complained about overtime.
C)Their small hands were more suitable for the typewriters of the day.
D)Most women learned office skills in school.

Question 42

Scientific managers usually carried which important instrument when they visited the shop floor?

A)a whistle
B)a stopwatch
C)a checkbook
D)a doctor's bag

Question 43

Why did American textile factories of the Gilded Age like to employ children?

A)They were willing to work nights.
B)They did not join unions and did not demand health insurance.
C)Their small hands were especially adept at changing "bobbins."
D)They wanted to teach them valuable skills for their future careers in tailoring.

Question 44

For working men, social life centered on the

A)racetrack.
B)saloon.
C)union hall.
D)sports club.

Question 45

Approximately what share of immigrant men working in the Pennsylvania steel industry were killed or seriously disabled between 1877-1900?

A)5 percent
B)15 percent
C)25 percent
D)45 percent

Question 46

Why did employers in some industries particularly seek out child laborers?

A)Children tended to be more cheerful at work.
B)Some employers wanted to help immigrant families make ends meet.
C)They could pay children less and control them more easily.
D)These employers offered jobs that were healthy and safe for children.

Question 47

After traveling to New York in the late 19th century, the British writer H.G. Wells wrote with horror about American

A)child labor.
B)prostitution.
C)traffic.
D)commercialism.

Question 48

Between 1881 in 1905 the number of strikes per year in the United States had grown to

A)370.
B)3700.
C)15,600.
D)37,000.

Question 49

How did the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 begin?

A)Reeling from the depression of the 1870s, major railroads cut wages significantly.
B)Angry over a bar brawl with police, brakemen of the Baltimore & Ohio refused to work.
C)The death of the railroad fireman in West Virginia triggered a riot amongst workers.
D)The Great Northern had tried to suppress unionization and locked out organizers.

Question 50

Which event notably hastened the growth of the National Guard?

A)the Paris Commune of 1871
B)the Great Railroad Strike of 1877
C)the Haymarket Riot of 1884
D)the end of Reconstruction in 1877

Question 51

Why did the judicial system overwhelmingly side with employers during the Gilded Age?

A)Most judges were businessmen themselves.
B)Labor organizers frequently tried to bully and threaten courts.
C)Judges feared the specter of communism, socialism, and anarchism.
D)Judges resented workers for their high pay and good benefits.

Question 52

Who did Knights of Labor leader Terrence V. Powderly label "the best men in the order"?

A)African-Americans
B)children
C)women
D)immigrants

Question 53

Why did the United States witness a surge of hysteria against the labor movement in the mid-1880s?

A)They had successfully organized well over 60 percent of American workers.
B)Union radicals were lynching business owners in every major American city.
C)Union boycotts threatened American consumers' access to basic goods and services.
D)Americans feared the infiltration of foreign radicals through the labor movement.

Question 54

Which of the following did the American Federation of labor NOT exclude?

A)women
B)African-Americans
C)Germans
D)unskilled workers

Question 55

What brought about the demise of the Japanese Mexican Labor Association?

A)the California National Guard
B)Oxnard beet growers
C)their exclusion from the AFL
D)President Theodore Roosevelt

Question 56

Which of the following was common in coal mining towns?

A)pay in company "scrip"
B)free healthcare for workers
C)union shops
D)grocery co-ops

Question 57

The Farmer's Alliance of the 1870s and 80s built on which previous organization?

A)the Ku Klux Klan
B)the Grange
C)the Populist Party of America
D)the California Workingman's Party

Question 58

Which typical element pushed Horatio Alger's books beyond the basic message that success required hard work?

A)the importance of good connections
B)the importance making a good first impression
C)the role of luck
D)the matter of race

Question 59

Andrew Carnegie argued that the benefits of industrialization clearly outweighed the problems it created in his popular work known as

A)The Theory of Evolution.
B)The Gospel of Wealth.
C)From Rags to Riches.
D)The Circle of Life.

Question 60

According to Henry Demarest Lloyd,

A)"corporations are grown greater than the State."
B)"the State has grown larger than the nation."
C)"the nation is not big enough for its corporations."
D)"corporations don't need the state."

Question 61

Identify who, what, where, when, and/or why the following are important:
1. Sheffield
2. Mark Twain
3. Cornelius Vanderbilt
4. Goodyear
5. Jenny Jerome and Lord Randolph Churchill
6. Singer Sewing Machines
7. Color bar
8. Stenographers
9. Black lung
10. H.G. Wells

Question 62

Big business spawned fears amongst many Americans because

A)big corporations were a European invention.
B)government might have to bail out big business.
C)the power of industrialists was largely unfettered by regulatory laws.
D)big corporations would make America less competitive in the world.

Question 63

Which of the following was a typical product of a modern corporation in the late 19th century?

A)shoes
B)textiles
C)packaged meats
D)flour

Question 64

Identify a fitting example for the practice of vertical integration:

A)Standard Oil
B)Singer sewing machines
C)Carnegie Steel
D)Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

Question 65

Why did an American economist conclude in the 1880s that the United States had developed its own aristocracy?

A)Wealthy Americans were marrying into British nobility to bring aristocratic ranks into American society.
B)Americans were celebrating and adoring movie stars of the silent film era as if they were nobility.
C)The United States suffered a greater inequality in wealth than England.
D)Regular Americans had been so excluded from political power that the American system amounted to a feudal order.

Question 66

Which of the following were the most likely target of the Sherman Antitrust Act in the 1890s?

A)foreign corporations
B)banks
C)labor unions
D)railroads

Question 67

As early as 1870, for the first time in its history, the majority of US laborers

A)was foreign-born.
B)worked for someone else.
C)worked in the railroad industry.
D)were children.

Question 68

Why did European migrants come to United States?

A)They were tired of cold and miserable weather.
B)Their lives lacked adventure.
C)The faced overpopulation and the scarcity of land.
D)They resented the welfare systems in their countries.

Question 69

Why did blue-collar work expand so rapidly between 1870 and 1910?

A)The increase in mechanization required more unskilled workers.
B)European demand for American goods grew rapidly.
C)American consumers were buying more and more goods.
D)Rising wages in industrial labor made blue-collar work more attractive.

Question 70

Early salesmen were also known as

A)hucksters.
B)drummers.
C)foremen.
D)brainworkers.

Question 71

Who was the first American president to send out federal troops to help break down strikes?

A)Rutherford B Hayes
B)James Garfield
C)Grover Cleveland
D)Theodore Roosevelt

Question 72

Explain the concept of "nationalism" in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward.

Question 73

According to some British and American clergy, what was wrong with philanthropy?

Question 74

What was the biggest obstacle to the solidarity in the American labor movement?

Question 75

What made in the Knights of Labor more radical than the American Federation of Labor?

Question 76

What impact did the Paris commune have on American politics?

Question 77

Discuss the reorganization of factory work in American corporations in the late 19th century and explain the consequences of scientific management for business owners and workers.

Question 78

Explain how social Darwinism legitimized the economic development of the late 19th century and how it presented itself in the self-help literature of the time.

Question 79

Identify who, what, where, when, and/or why the following are important:
1. "The Farmer's Friend"
2. Drummers
3. Piecework
4. Paris Commune
5. Japanese-Mexican Labor Association
6. United Mine Workers
7. Colored Farmers' Alliance
8. Horatio Alger
9. Henry Demarest Lloyd
10. Looking Backward

Question 80

Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward was particularly popular in nations

A)buffeted by massive industrialization.
B)dominated by feudal agriculture.
C)with established socialist regimes.
D)that lacked racial and ethnic diversity.