Deck 21: Prosperity and Change in the Twenties

Question 1

The Twenties ushered in new ways of doing business,as companies began to

A) run out of new customers.
B) produce goods to last only a few years, in order to get "repeat" customers.
C) manufacture items that were connected with some other product, to encourage repeat sales - as with the phonograph and records for playing on it.
D) compete with each other in earnest for customers.
E) stimulate demand by allowing consumers to purchase goods on the installment plan.

Answer 1

E

Question 2

What did the 18th Amendment do?

A) It gave women the right to vote.
B) It made prohibition the law of the land.
C) It set standards for presidential cabinet members.
D) It made unions and the open shop available in all industries.
E) It limited immigration to America.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

All of the following are true statements about the Great Migration of African Americans except

A) There were a series of race riots in various states, north and south.
B) African Americans were surprised to discover racism was as prevalent in the North as it was in the South.
C) White workers feared blacks would work for less and push them from their jobs.
D) Blacks found cities like Chicago to be among the most welcoming.
E) Fears of race mixing - and accusations that black men sexually assaulted white women - increased.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Marcus Garvey is best known for

A) promoting African American music and culture.
B) fighting to end Jim Crow segregation.
C) spearheading the anti-lynching movement.
D) encouraging blacks to own businesses and assisting them in the back-to-Africa movement.
E) founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Question 5

The Sacco and Vanzetti trial,conviction,appeals,and executions highlighted for many observers

A) the hypocrisy of Americans.
B) the public's fears of foreigners and Communists.
C) the flaws in the American justice system.
D) the intensity with which the American public followed lurid news stories.
E) what was certainly a case of innocent men sent to their deaths on flimsy evidence.

Question 6

It has been estimated that by the end of the 1920s,there was one car for every ____ people in America.

A) Five
B) Three
C) Fifty
D) Ten
E) 100

Question 7

All of the following are true statements about Prohibition except

A) Most people embraced it as a solution to the social problems caused by alcohol and alcoholism.
B) It turned more law-abiding citizens into lawbreakers than any other piece of legislation had ever done.
C) It made rural Baptists and Methodists in the South and Midwest happy.
D) Immigrants resisted and sold their own alcohol.
E) It lasted 15 years.

Question 8

Which of the following best describes "welfare capitalism"?

A) Low wages.
B) Part of modern corporate responsibilities was to put workers in touch with social groups that helped them through hard times.
C) When a worker was killed on the job, it was only fitting that the company pay for the funeral service.
D) By providing better working conditions, better pay, and other benefits, owners had happier, more productive workers who were less interested in unionization.
E) Providing workers with company unions kept most socialists out of the employees' ranks.

Question 9

The term "Americanization" referred to

A) the movement to restrict immigration.
B) a labor initiative to encourage employers to hire native-born workers rather than immigrants.
C) a program adopted by the KKK promoting the image of America as an all-white nation.
D) the efforts of settlement house workers to assist new immigrants in adjusting to America.
E) the notion that immigrants should leave behind the ways of the old world and blend into American culture.

Question 10

Which of the following is true about the mutual fund?

A) It provided a sense of security to investors because of the variety of stocks in each fund.
B) Early mutual funds lacked any form of professional management.
C) A fund singled out one particular stock at a time.
D) The mutual fund tended to put the risk on managers and protected owners.
E) Mutual funds prevented a rush of cash boosting scores at Wall Street and for that reason were responsible for the sound economic climate.

Question 11

The consumer economy of the United States looked very good during the 1920s,as evidenced by the fact that

A) unemployment was just below 10 percent on average.
B) per capita incomes in the United States grew by about 10 percent during the decade.
C) most people enjoyed rising wages and rising standards of living.
D) one out of every two privately owned cars in the world belonged to Americans.
E) industries in America produced 8 percent more during the Twenties than in the years just prior to the war.

Question 12

Which of the following was not true of the Red Scare that hit America after the Communist takeover in Russia?

A) The U.S. attorney general created a government agency that sought out and deported hundreds of foreigners.
B) Socialism was limited to the Northeast.
C) Many American politicians and businessmen began to fear for the American capitalist system.
D) Anarchists bombed court houses, police stations, churches, and even people's homes.
E) Many towns elected socialist mayors, and in the 1920 presidential election, socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs won almost one million votes.

Question 13

Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile industry by developing the

A) touring car.
B) Model A.
C) United Auto Workers Union.
D) assembly line.
E) first roadster.

Question 14

An "open shop" meant that

A) owners could not discriminate in any way in their hiring practices.
B) owners were legally bound to keep all escape routes open, and they were fined frequently when they did not.
C) no one could be forced to join a union as a condition for working at a given company.
D) no unions were allowed on the premises.
E) workers had voted to ban all union activity from their particular workplace.

Question 15

All of the following is true about the 1920s,except

A) A series of Republican presidents promised to facilitate business expansion and turn their back on Progressive legislation.
B) Americans witnessed an intensification of the mass consumer culture that had been growing since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
C) Americans invested themselves heavily in foreign policy experiments in Latin America and Asia.
D) Both Democrats and Republicans were exhausted by constant efforts and had given up on progressive reform.
E) The United States became the richest society in the history of the world.

Question 16

In the improving American economy of the 1920s,

A) many Americans were still living in poverty, especially the factory workers.
B) the percentage of national wealth that went to the poorest 60 percent fell by almost 13 percent during the 1920s, causing the wealthy to increase their wealth at the expense of the poor.
C) it was easier for poor farmers to rise out of poverty.
D) the wealth of the Roaring Twenties was a come-and-go phenomenon.
E) Latinos living and working in the American Southwest were gradually ascending into the middle class.

Question 17

Eugene V.Debs's book about Jesus,which portrayed Jesus as a socialist carpenter,indicates that Debs was a(n)

A) socialist Christian pacifist.
B) atheist revolutionary.
C) Christian anarchist.
D) socialist pacifist.
E) socialist progressive revolutionary.

Question 18

The seemingly robust economy of the 1920s was founded on

A) Democratic legislation.
B) bipartisan legislation.
C) Republican policies.
D) government control of big business.
E) Keynesian economic principles.

Question 19

Starting with Harding,three successive Republican administrations pursued all of the following,except

A) Conservative tax policies
B) High tariffs
C) The rights of labor
D) Immigration restrictions
E) An actively interventionist and regulatory economic role for the federal government

Question 20

Which of the following is not true about working conditions in 1920s America?

A) Business-friendly courts had overturned federal child-labor restrictions and abusive forms of child labor persisted, particularly in the South.
B) Union membership declined from 4 million to 2.5 million at the end of the decade.
C) Union organizers used a blacklist to intimidate other workers into joining the union.
D) Working conditions in steel mills and coal mines remained atrocious.
E) Factory workers now routinely faced monotonous and alienating work on the assembly line.

Question 21

What developments led to a growing consumerism in America during the 1920s? What were some of the new products,how did people learn about them,and how did they manage to purchase them?

Question 22

The Man Nobody Knows was a book about Henry Ford.

Question 23

The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was proposed in 1923 and approved by Congress in ____,but never ratified by the requisite three-quarters of the states.

A) 1942.
B) 1952.
C) 1972.
D) 1992.
E) 2002.

Question 24

An influential group of disillusioned writers were so put off by the American lifestyle in the Twenties that they

A) were known as the "Lost Generation."
B) moved to Europe to be away from America's "vulgar" commercialism.
C) wrote highly evocative American literature while residing in places like London and Paris.
D) formed intellectual expatriate communities abroad.
E) All of these choices.

Question 25

Who were some of the artists and writers who became expatriates in Europe during the 1920s? What were their reasons for leaving?

Question 26

Most of the changes that took place in America could be described as a shifting "inward," away from the international community.

Question 27

The inventor of the phonograph was

A) Thomas Edison.
B) Henry Bessemer.
C) Douglas Fairbanks.
D) H.L. Mencken.
E) Rudolph Valentino.

Question 28

What was the Harlem Renaissance? What made it such a special place and time? Who were some of its more famous participants?

Question 29

Which of the following is not a true statement about the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s?

A) It saw itself as the embodiment of old southern and Protestant values.
B) It recruited members in the North and in cities.
C) It was demonized in D.W. Griffith's film, Birth of a Nation.
D) It was virulently anti-Catholic.
E) It gained media attention when one of its leaders was accused of the rape and murder of a woman in Indiana.

Question 30

How did especially rural and small-town Americans respond to the changes of the 1920s? What role did religion,race,and ethnicity play in their reaction?

Question 31

Which of these did not take place during the 1920s?

A) Babe Ruth became a star baseball player with the New York Yankees.
B) Radio preacher Aimee Semple McPherson upset her listeners with her involvement in a sex scandal.
C) Henry Ford pioneered the five-dollar day, paying workers so their purchasing power increased.
D) Charles Lindbergh made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.
E) Crossword puzzles became a national craze.

Question 32

The first president to make a radio broadcast was

A) Warren G. Harding.
B) Theodore Roosevelt.
C) Franklin D. Roosevelt.
D) Calvin Coolidge.
E) William Howard Taft.

Question 33

Immigration to America changed a great deal during the 1920s,as

A) the U.S. Congress adopted Americanization as the basic American policy; immigrants would be expected to leave behind old cultural ways and become fully American.
B) most Americans fell in line behind the "melting pot" theory, which stated that all cultures would contribute parts of their cultures to make a single, all-new mix of peoples who were specifically American.
C) Congress implemented a series of quotas for Mexico and Asian nations, but not for European countries.
D) Congress passed laws establishing quotas for immigrants based on their home country.
E) cultural pluralism became the dominant theme in America.

Question 34

The Harlem Renaissance was an African American movement characterized by all of the following except

A) a celebration of black literary forms.
B) a political quest for racial equality.
C) embrace of the "new Negro".
D) a "younger generation" of intellectuals and artists.
E) the flowering of jazz as a musical form.

Question 35

Most Americans readily complied with the new law of Prohibition,leaving the consumption of alcohol to those who did not mind breaking the law in other cases.

Question 36

What was life like in America during Prohibition? What groups did prohibition affect most,and why?

Question 37

In what way did Henry Ford lead the way in improving the work situation for factory workers in 1920s America? What were the main reasons that employers began to adopt these changes? What name was given to this movement toward improvement?

Question 38

After World War I,President Harding lost little time in removing governmental regulations on business and blocking or repealing political and economic aspects of Progressivism.

Question 39

The first moving picture with sound was

A) The Son of the Sheik.
B) The Jazz Singer.
C) The Roaring Twenties.
D) Birth of a Nation.
E) Babbitt.

Question 40

At the "Scopes Monkey Trial,"

A) famous defense lawyer Clarence Darrow volunteered to defend science teacher John Scopes, who was arrested for teaching evolution.
B) Scopes was accused of breaking the law by teaching that man had descended directly from Adam.
C) William Jennings Bryan came to Tennessee to assist Darrow in the defense of Scopes.
D) Scopes was convicted and fined $1,000, but the ACLU was successful in overturning the law prohibiting teaching evolution.
E) the people of Tennessee completely abandoned religious fundamentalism.

Question 41

Birth of a Nation,a film designed to show the evils of slavery,was produced and financed by the NAACP.

Question 42

Many women's rights advocates in the Twenties turned their attention to economics and the job market by focusing their advocacy efforts on political instruments such as the Equal Rights Amendment.

Question 43

Cultural pluralism is the concept that every cultural group has something worthwhile to retain,even when its members are set on becoming a part of some other group.The end result would be a melding of cultures,or a sort of "melting pot."

Question 44

Margaret Sanger's rousing speeches advocating equal rights for women focused on political rights,especially the franchise.

Question 45

One of the most prominent observers who ridiculed the anti-evolutionists at the Scopes Trial in Tennessee was H.L.Mencken,a journalist with a flair for "barbs."

Question 46

By the early 1920s,Hollywood in Southern California had grown into the center of America's rapidly growing movie industry.