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.
[c]
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
[d]
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.
[b]
4. Which foreign source of capital proved crucial for American industrial development?
a. b. c. d. [c]
gold deposits stored by German mercantile houses the riches of Venetian traders
surplus wealth of British investors
royal treasures of European monarchies
5. Which of the following industries provided the model in trust organization?
a. b. c. d. [c]
textiles wheat
oil
machine tools
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.
1
d. Their fortunes were simply a matter of luck. [b]
7. What communication system first made possible the coordination of nationwide shipments?
a. telegraph
b. newspapers
c. the pony express
d. the telephone
[a]
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
[a]
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.
[b]
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.
[b]
11. Assess the state of European industrialization at the time of American industrial expansion in the late 19th 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.
2
[a]
12. Which of these factors contributed most commonly to the pressured, regimented atmosphere of the American workplace?
a. b. c. d. [d]
violent and abusive foremen police oversight overbearing unions piecework payments
13. What was the cause of “brown lung” disease?
a. b. c. d. [c]
work in coal mines smoking
work in textile mills work in steel mills
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.
[c]
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
[b]
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 [a]
17. The great Railroad strike of 1877
a. began when railroad workers demanded significant wage increases.
3
b. remained limited to radical bastions in Pittsburgh and Boston.
c. triggered the depression of the 1870s.
d. left more than 100 people dead.
[d]
18. The Knights of Labor opposed
a. immigration.
b. women in the workplace.
c. wage labor.
d. the steel industry.
[c]
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.
[b]
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.
[d]
21. During the Gilded Age, farmers generally focused their anger on
a. department stores.
b. railroads.
c. British competitors.
d. cheap immigrant labor.
[b]
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.
[a]
4
23. How did American window glass workers respond to French, English, and Belgium imports in the 1880s?
a. b.
c. d.
They boycotted French, English, and Belgian stores in Boston and other major cities. They pressured their employers to retaliate by exporting into those European countries.
They convinced foreign workers to boycott the production of exports to the US.
Most of them quit their jobs and found employment in unskilled factory work
elsewhere. [c]
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
[d]
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.
[d]
26. Which author produced popular stories for boys that stressed the importance of individual effort and morality for success?
a. b. c. d. [b]
Henry Demarest Lloyd Horatio Alger
Edward Bellamy Henry George
27. Who established the University of Chicago? a. Richard W. Sears
b. J.P. Morgan
c. John D. Rockefeller d. Montgomery Ward [c]
28. A new genre of reporting emerged at the turn-of-the-century, derided by critics as
5
a. gossiping.
b. muckraking.
c. hobnobbing
d. editorializing.
[b]
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.
[c]
30. Why did Bellamy clubs emerge in Asia and Africa and 1930s?
a. b. c. d. [d]
His book was finally translated into the relevant foreign languages.
Colonial powers had prohibited the distribution of his book until then.
Bellamy had opposed the distribution of his work abroad in his lifetime.
The Great Depression revised the interest in his utopian alternative to capitalism.
1. 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.
[d]
2. Compared to the commercial capitalism of the early nineteenth century, the economic system at the end of the 1800s is best described as
a. b. c. d. [b]
financial capitalism. industrial capitalism. free market economy. socialism.
3. 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
6
c. the typewriter
d. fhe factory system [a]
4. 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
[c]
5. 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.
[a]
6. Who was chiefly responsible for popularizing the theory of Social Darwinism?
a. Henry Demarest Lloyd
b. Horatio Alger
c. Herbert Spencer
d. Edward Bellamy
[c]
7. 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
[c]
8. Why was the catalog of Sears, Roebuck, and Company also commonly known as “The Farmer’s Friend”?
a. Sears specialized in farm implements at the time.
b. The prices at Sears were within reach for the poorer rural population.
c. Sears labeled its catalog this way to emphasize its strength in the mail-order business.
7
d. The less fashionable goods at Sears were ridiculed by urbanites as country fare. [c]
9. 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.
[d]
10. Between 1870 and 1910 the number of blue-collar workers
a. declined steadily.
b. remained stable despite a growing population.
c. doubled.
d. quadrupled.
[d]
11. 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.
[a]
12. 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
[b]
13. 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.
[c]
14. For working men, social life centered on the
a. racetrack.
b. saloon.
c. union hall
8
d. sports club. [b]
15. Approximately what share of immigrant men working in the Pennsylvania steel industry were killed or seriously disabled between 1877-1900?
a. b. c. d. [c]
5 percent 15 percent 25 percent 45 percent
16. 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.
[c]
17. 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.
[a]
18. 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. [d]
19. 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.
[a]
20. Which event notably hastened the growth of the National Guard?
a. the Paris Commune of 1871
9
b. the Great Railroad Strike of 1877
c. the Haymarket Riot of 1884
d. the end of Reconstruction in 1877
[b]
21. 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.
[c]
22. 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 [c]
23. 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.
[d]
24. Which of the following did the American Federation of labor NOT exclude?
a. women
b. African-Americans
c. Germans
d. unskilled workers
[c]
25. 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
[c]
26. Which of the following was common in coal mining towns?
a. pay in company “scrip”
10
b. free healthcare for workers
c. union shops
d. grocery co-ops
[a]
27. 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
[b]
28. 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
[c]
29. 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.
[b]
30. 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.”
[a]
1. 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.
[c]
11
2. 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
[c]
3. Identify a fitting example for the practice of vertical integration:
a. Standard oil
b. Singer sewing machines
c. Carnegie Steel
d. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad
[c]
4. 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.
[c]
5. 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
[c]
6. 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.
[b]
7. Why did European migrants come to United States?
a. They were tired of cold and miserable weather.
b. Their lives lacked adventure.
12
c. The faced overpopulation and the scarcity of land. d. They resented the welfare systems in their countries. [c]
8. 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.
[a]
9. Early salesmen were also known as a. hucksters.
b. drummers.
c. foremen.
d. brainworkers. [b]
10. 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
[a]
1. 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.
[a]
2. Through what channels did Andrew Carnegie imagine the rich would benefit society? a. philosophy
b. philology
c. philanthropy d. psychology [c]
3. Why did workers in France not have to deal with the cheap and abundant pool of unskilled labor that existed in the United States?
13
a. All French workers were skilled.
b. France suffered from a serious labor shortage.
c. France did not experience the same degree of immigration.
d. France only admitted immigrants with high labor skills.
[c]
4. What was the slogan of the national People's party formed in 1892?
a. “Equal rights to all, special privilege to none”
b. “More rights to farmers, less gold for Morgan”
c. “We shall have our cake and eat it too”
d. “40 acres and a mule for everyone”
[a]
5. How did the farmers alliance of the 1870s help its members?
a. It provided cheap loans.
b. It set prices for commodities.
c. It established cooperative stores and warehouses.
d. It lobbied congress for the introduction of the gold standard.
[c]
6. George Pullman built a model factory town outside of Chicago in order to
a. create a socialist utopian community.
b. avoid the high taxes in the city.
c. demonstrate his company's ability to build housing for the masses.
d. curb the excesses of industrialization and win the workers’ compliance.
[d]
7. The head of the American Federation of labor was
a. Eugene Debs.
b. Samuel Gompers.
c. Edward Bellamy.
d. Henry Clay Frick.
[b]
8. Which of the following best describes wages for workers in the second half of the 19th century?
a. They declined dramatically across the board.
b. Real wages increased and were high compared to those in Europe.
c. High levels of inflation eroded all wage gains in this time period.
d. Wages remained flat and never reached the levels of those in Europe.
[b]
9. What was of the most common recourse for workers unhappy with their jobs?
14
a. They went on strike.
b. They complained to government factory inspectors.
c. They filed a petition with the union.
d. They quit and looked for a new job.
[d]
10. Which of the following businesses was not a multinational corporation with significant markets abroad?
a. Montgomery Ward
b. Singer Sewing Machines
c. Kodak
d. Heinz
[a]
15