US History Unit 7 Lesson 13

Virtually all cowboys of the American West were white men.

False

A gun duel between a town marshal and an outlaw gunman on Main Street was a fairly common occurrence in the American West.

False

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Native Americans offered no resistance to attempts by the U.S. government to force them off their tribal lands and onto reservations.

False

Most of the settlement of the Great Plains resulted from the sale of privately owned land to settlers in 1862.

False

Texas cattle ranchers used railroads to move their herds from southern Texas ranches to cattle towns, such as Abilene and Dodge City.

False

The era of the open range, when cowboys herded cattle on long drives, extended throughout the 1800s.

False

The first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 at Promontory Point, Nevada.

False

Major immigrant groups, and where they settled, included:

Irish—large northeastern cities German and Scandinavian—cities and farms of the Midwest Eastern and Southern Europeans—mostly in the Northeast Eastern European Jews—mainly in New York City Chinese and Japanese—the West Coast and the West

As the Knights of Labor grew in membership, a Scranton railroad machinist, mayor, and photographer named _____________ became the new leader.

Terence Powderly

Andrew Carnegie and others made enormous donations to foster education, but this "Gospel of Wealth" did not stop their exploitation of workers during the era Mark Twain called "the Gilded Age."

True

Andrew Carnegie transformed steelmaking, while John D. Rockefeller dominated the oil industry.

True

Another organizer, Eugene V. Debs, formed a union of both skilled and unskilled railroad workers. Debs' union brought the Pullman Company and the railroads to a halt with a strike that required government intervention.

True

By 1880, U.S. policy shifted to one of assimilation; reformers and the government attempted to Americanize native peoples by sending American Indian children to boarding schools, and by dividing up reservations into family-owned farm plots. The goal was to break up tribal structures.

True

By World War I the only union success story was the American Federation of Labor; although the AFL made a difference in workers' wages and working conditions, much more remained to be done.

True

By the 1870s, depression, blacklisting, fear, and a railroad strike resulted in government action against organized labor as well as the rise of strong labor advocates.

True

Capitalists favored the minimal regulation offered by a laissez-faire economy that affected both blue- and white-collar workers.

True

Castle Garden was the country's first official immigration center, but it was replaced by a new facility at Ellis Island as immigration increased. Angel Island in San Francisco processed immigrants from China and Japan.

True

Cattle ranching began on the open ranges of Texas with cowboys herding longhorn cattle. After rail lines were extended into Kansas, ranchers moved their livestock on cattle drives to the new railheads of Abilene and Dodge City.

True

Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller, James Duke, and J.P. Morgan used every possible means to build and control their industries.

True

Early government attempts to regulate interstate commerce, eliminate monopolies, and protect consumers generally failed.

True

Geologists arid speculators discovered large underground oil reserves in Texas in the late 1890s.

True

Immigrant groups adopted American values and traditions while preserving their ethnic customs and identities. Tensions between immigrant parents and their American-born children often ran high and a generation gap resulted from differences in outlook.

True

Immigrant groups were held together by strong family and ethnic ties, as well as by a network of ethnic churches, synagogues, schools, newspapers, theaters, fraternal lodges, and banks.

True

Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island were treated fairly well, submitted to interviews and physical examinations, and were processed relatively quickly. Asian immigrants arriving at Angel Island were treated poorly, were processed slowly, and often were turned back.

True

Immigrants came to the United States in increasing numbers during the 1800s. They were "pushed" by factors such as the decline of small farms in Europe, famine, and religious persecution, and "pulled" by factors such as abundant work, cheap food and land, and political tolerance of religious minorities.

True

In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner delivered a paper in which he argued that the western frontier had shaped a uniquely American character.

True

In the years after the Civil War, business and industry grew, but laborers suffered under harsh living and working conditions with little compensation.

True

Increased settlement and new industries and commerce took a toll on the environment, resulting in the loss of native grasses, the clogging of rivers and streams, the pollution of soil and water, and deforestation.

True

Innovations in the railroad business were adopted in other industries and became part of modern business. These included vertical and horizontal integration, monopolies, and trusts.

True

Inventors McCormick, Eastman, Bell, Edison, Westinghouse, and others paved the way for dramatic changes in science, industry, and culture.

True

Life as a homesteader in the West, and on the Plains in particular, was often difficult. Families worked long hours in difficult conditions and harsh climates. Severe weather, grasshopper invasions, and scarce water forced many settlers to return east.

True

Many immigrant groups faced discrimination, threats, and violence from nativists who saw their cultural and religious traditions as suspicious and un-American.

True

Many settlers resented the railroad companies, which sold some of the land they received from the U.S. government for profit. Land speculators bought large tracts of public land and resold it to settlers at higher prices.

True

Miners often preceded other settlers in a region, but left as mining towns grew and mining companies bought the surrounding land. Mining was common in parts of California, Nevada, Colorado, the Black Hills of Dakota, Idaho, and Montana.

True

Oil was discovered in the 1890s in California, Kansas, Texas, and Indian Territory, and supplied industry and transportation with fuel and lubricants. Some Texas cities grew and flourished in the resulting oil boom.

True

On May 1, 1886, what began as a strike turned into the Haymarket Riot. The riot wrongly identified the Knights of Labor with anarchists, causing a decline in union membership.

True

Opposition to immigration grew so intense by the turn of the century that a Congressional commission was formed to study the issue. The Dillingham Commission issued a report that denigrated immigrants from eastern and southern Europe and prepared public opinion to support new anti-immigration laws in 1920 and 1924.

True

Organizers reached out to help workers address working conditions and wages by forming unions.

True

Railroad innovations and government incentives improved the nation's rail network, but reduced competition.

True

Railroads, telegraphs, mass production, electrification, telephones, and other innovations brought major changes in how and where people worked and lived.

True

Samuel Gompers filled the gap by creating an alliance of craft unions, known as the American Federation of Labor, to bargain for wages, working conditions, and the length of the work day.

True

Socialists and other groups like the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) offered alternatives such as seeking ownership of the means of production and the formation of one large union for all workers.

True

The 1890 census showed that the American West was so heavily settled that, in effect, the frontier was closed.

True

The Homestead Act of 1862 gave away 160-acre parcels of land for settlement, and when the Oklahoma Territory was opened in 1889, the entire territory was claimed by homesteaders within a day.

True

The Knights of Labor first organized garment workers and then, under Terence Powderly's leadership, embraced all producers—both owners and workers—with goals such as an eight-hour work day, equality for women, and elimination of child labor.

True

The West attracted diverse groups of people, including immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, Germany, Scandinavia, China, Canada, and Mexico, who all shared a desire for economic opportunity and a fresh start.

True

The century of immigration to America occurred in two waves. The first was from about 1820 to 1840 and was made up mostly of immigrants from northern and central Europe. The second was from about 1880 to 1924, and was dominated by southern and eastern Europeans.

True

The era of open-range cattle ranching lasted only about twenty years and ended because of overgrazing, severe blizzards, and the fencing off of the range by farmers using barbed wire.

True

The reality of the old American West differs from the myths twentieth-century American popular culture has portrayed.

True

The second half of the nineteenth century saw continual conflict between Native Americans and the U.S. government.

True

The timber industry in the West began in Oregon and Washington as companies logged forests to supply lumber to a growing nation that used vast amounts of wood.

True

The transcontinental railroad, and other railroads that followed, spurred western settlement and the growth of the national economy. The U.S. government granted land and money to railroad companies.

True

The transcontinental railroad, completed at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869, united the nation in ways not previously imagined.

True

Until about 1880, the U.S. government forced American Indians to give up their tribal lands and relocate to reservations, where they were allowed to hunt and keep their way of life. Native American resistance to this policy led to armed conflict.

True

Virginia City grew into a thriving town of 15.000 due to the discovery of gold and silver.

True

One of the founders and leader of the Knights of Labor was _______________, a Philadelphia tailor.

Uriah Stephens

The Haymarket Riot in 1886 involved not only strikers, but also lumped in socialists and ____________.

anarchists