History 132 - Mid-Term Study Guide

The mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed a rise of cities, industry, and immigration, making America more urban and less rural. From 1880 to 1920, the number of workers located in industrial centers grew from 2.5 million to over:

10 million

Railroad lines, by the end of the nineteenth century, were established throughout the United States. By the end of the Civil War, Americans had witnessed a significant increase in the number of rail lines, from 35,000 miles of lines to over ______.

200,000

The influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States, between 1820 and 1849, was gradual and produced only 650 immigrants total by 1849. However, within two years, nearly 25,000 more immigrants had arrived by 1852 and by 1880 that total jumped to over:

300,000

From 1840 to 1870, the United States continued to encourage citizens to expand westward following various trails. At the peak of the westward migration, between 1845-1870, over _______ people had traveled along the Oregon Trail alone.

400,000

The telephone was first patented in 1876 by Thomas Edison, but Alexander Graham Bell created a more modernized version of the telephone that is similar to the models used today.

False

Using credit lines offered by a variety of stores, working class Americans could now strive to live a middle-class lifestyle. However, growing debt combined with tight personal finances led many to work fewer hours in order to improve their standard of living.

False

Violence in the West was precisely depicted in the dime store novels of that time and these sources verified that violence occurred wherever there was a struggle for resources.

False

Which of the following does not represent one of the ways in which William Jennings Bryan appealed to Populists?

He advocated for higher tariffs.

Which statement best describes the underlying reason for Andrew Johnson's impeachment?

He showed leniency towards the former Confederate states after the Civil War.

The promise of a better future, often romanticized, was tempered by the reality of urban life and the struggle to tackle a variety of challenges that include:

Language, Low Wages, Poor Sanitation

As people in the late nineteenth century relied less on homemade goods and increasingly purchased manufactured goods from a variety of stores, businesses began to compete more using advertisements in order to draw in customers.

True

Nineteenth century America also produced several novelists and journalists, who created works like "Huckleberry Finn" and "The Gilded Age." Each of these works sought to portray the realities of society and life in the nineteenth century.

True

Once the Civil War came to an end, American life underwent several dramatic transformations. One of these major changes was the way factories structured the work day according to the "principles of scientific management."

True

Poor housing and sanitation conditions in growing urban areas led to an increase in disease outbreaks, such as Cholera and Yellow Fever.

True

Thanks to the creation of Chain Stores and Mail-Order Catalogs, nineteenth century rural American's could purchase a larger variety of goods than they would find at the local General Store.

True

The Comstock Lode, named after Henry T. Comstock during the Gold Rush, produced more than $300 million in shafts, which extended hundreds of feet into the mountain.

True

The Depression of 1893 was caused by the railroad investment bubble that was created by investors and banks who continued to put money into railroads that cost more money to build and maintain than they produced in profits.

True

The Industrial Age also led to an increase in child labor. The number of children who worked in factories tripled during the last three decades of the nineteenth century and were often paid very low wages.

True

Which agency was founded as a result of the Reconstruction effort?

the Freedmen's Bureau

What is generally considered to be the greatest failure of the Freedmen's Bureau?

helping former slaves obtain land

The Electrical Building, built in 1892, was America's first introduction to alternating current and gas lights.

False

The Populist Party fell into decline following the elections of 1896 and the spirit of reform that drove the movement disappeared as well.

False

What is generally considered to be the greatest success of the Freedmen's Bureau?

insuring education for former slaves

In an attempt to find relief from the chaos of urban life, new forms of entertainment became available to the working class in the form of:

All of the Above

The Chicago World's Fair was very important during the Industrial Age, since it promoted:

All of the Above

As pioneer settlers began to work the land they received following the Homestead Act, they ran into several obstacles, including:

All of the above

While acquiring land was fairly easy, thanks to the Homestead Act, maintaining and developing a successful farm still carried a heavy cost and many farmers suffered large debts due to the:

All of the above

The new processes in factory management caused the number of women who joined the industrial workforce to double between 1870 and 1900.

False

Which president made significant steps towards civil service reform?

Chester A. Arthur

While steel was readily available during the nineteenth century, it took the invention of ______ before buildings could be built higher. Thus introducing Americans to the "sky-scrapper craze."

Elevators

Which of the following is true of late nineteenth-century southern and eastern European immigrants, as opposed to their western and northern European predecessors?

Ellis Island was the first destination for most southern and eastern Europeans.

According to Figure 2 in Chapter 19, rural demographics continued to decrease as population numbers grew in urban areas from 1860 to 1920.

False

American citizens who lived in the cities often protected immigrants from the "ills of the cities."

False

American farmers faced a serious number of problems in the nineteenth century, including low taxes on items they purchased, growing personal debts, rapidly declining farm prices, and foreign competition.

False

Between 1860 and 1875, as many as forty thousand cowboys roamed the Great Plains, hoping to work for local ranchers.

False

By the mid-nineteenth century, farmers found new opportunities to pursue "Manifest Destiny" in the "Old West" where new American pioneers traveled.

False

Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perce Tribe, hoped to lead his tribe to Mexico in order to avoid war with the United States in 1877, but was unsuccessful.

False

During the Gold Rush in the nineteenth century, there was a group known as "The Original Forty-Niners" who purchased gold from individual prospectors who panned for it using sluice boxes.

False

Factory workers who lacked the assets and legal protection they needed to organize, became deeply complacent. This eventually led to a decrease in violence throughout the working communities.

False

Following the Presidential elections, the discovery of large silver deposits in Alaska during the 1890s helped stabilize the US economy and made it possible for America to prosper with a silver standard currency.

False

Following the end of the Civil War, nearly 2 million African American's fled the South in what is known as the "Great Migration." Four cities in particular drew two thirds of this migrant population, as African American's sought a better life and new economic opportunities.

False

John Dewey, another nineteenth-century theorist, supported the concept of "instrumentalism." This theory advocated that educational reform would improve American society by making American citizens less informed.

False

One example of violence in the new West was the infamous Fence Cutting War, where "cowboys began destroying fences that several ranchers erected along public lands: land they had every right to enclose."

False

To crush his competition, Rockefeller established a monopoly over the refining industry. By merging with other companies and acquiring others, using the method known as _____________, he managed to gain control of at least 90 percent of the refining industry within 7 years.

Horizontal Integration

How did the Great Compromise of 1877 influence the election?

It encouraged southern states to support Hayes.

Which of the following was a disadvantage of machine politics?

Taxpayers ultimately paid higher city taxes due to graft.

What is the era towards the end of the nineteenth century, characterized by great transformation, commonly called today?

The Gilded Age

The Newlands Reclamation Act led to:

The construction of dams for irrigation systems

Which of the following statements accurately represents Thorstein Veblen's argument in The Theory of the Leisure Class?

The middle class was overly focused on its own comfort and consumption.

How were members of Coxey's Army received when they arrived in Washington?

They were arrested.

As pioneer settlers continued to expand westward, they invariably came in contact with Native Tribes. This led to a rise in fear-based stereotypes in American culture that defined Natives as "savage" and as the local militias became increasingly involved, the tribes were devastated due to a lack of arms and group unity as armed forces helped settlers claim the land.

True

By the late nineteenth century, "Sears, Roebuck & Company supplied much of America's hinterland with products ranging from farm supplies to bicycles, toilet paper to automobiles."

True

Charles Darwin wrote On the Origins of Species (1859) and it argued that evolution occurred "through natural selection, not through divine intervention." This argument drew many critics from the religious communities, while most of scientific community continued to agree with Darwin's theory. This theory remained controversial in public discussion for a long time after its initial publication.

True

Close to half of all Americans today have ancestors who immigrated, at one time, to the country and came in through Ellis Island.

True

Communication, by 1858, had dramatically improved in speed with the establishment of transatlantic cable lines that allowed telegraphed messages to be exchanged between Europe and the United States within a few hours rather than a few weeks, which was typical with steamships.

True

Corruption in the Gilded Age revealed that congressmen would often accept stock bribes or cash in exchange for some kind of benefit. Both parties claimed that they would "champion reform," but did not and this caused many Americans to feel disillusioned with the way government ran.

True

During the Depression that followed 1893, the rest of the American population learned the lesson that American farmers had already been faced with. That a weak government built on a Spoils System and Patronage was unable to help American citizens with the ensuing economic crisis. This led to several public protests and growing support for the Populist Party.

True

Edward Moran's painting "Unveiling the Statue of Liberty (1886)," celebrates the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty and what it represented to millions of immigrants coming to America in the nineteenth century.

True

Factory owners justified paying women lower wages, because they believed that women "should be under the care of a man and did not require a living wage."

True

Herbert Spenser took Darwin's theory and used it to support his concept of "Social Darwinism," which suggested that people evolved like other natural organisms through their ability to adapt. That a person's ability to succeed or fail was based on their own merits, as long as the opportunity to do so was available. However, this theory became less popular by the 1930s and 1940s when Eugenicists began to align the theory of "Social Darwinism" with "racial theories of genetic superiority."

True

In 1845, a magazine editor named John O'Sullivan declared that "Manifest Destiny" was the American citizen's right to forge westward, in the name of Providence, in order to exercise their freedom to prosper.

True

In the late nineteenth century, Chinese immigrants competed with Americans in the West for jobs. This issue, in particular, led to an increase in anti-Chinese sentiments that eventually pushed the government to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

True

In the nineteenth century, "novelists and journalists also popularized realism in literary works." One example of this kind of realism comes from the "school of thought" known as Naturalism.

True

Like the labor movements of the factory workers, "by the early 1880s, even farmers began to fully recognize the strength of unity behind a common cause."

True

Much like the European immigrants, African American migrants often found themselves living in poor, over-crowded living conditions. However, many of the immigrants feared that the African American migrants would compete for the same jobs they wanted and would work for lower wages, making it harder for the immigrants to find work.

True

New inventions and the introduction of electricity forever altered the way factories were managed. These changes caused workers to work 12-hour shifts that allowed factories to run day and night, all week long.

True

The Spoils System was the primary focus of every Presidential administration in the nineteenth century, since each President owed favors to those who helped fund their campaign. According to the Table listed in Chapter 20.2, a series of weak Presidents were elected not through popular vote but through patronage.

True

The US Patent Office, in the 1790's, documented only 276 patents. However, by 1860, over 60,000 patents had been issued, this reveals that the Industrial Age led to an increase in innovation, even though many of the inventions that were patented failed.

True

The greatest problem that farmers faced in nineteenth century America was the rapid decline in the prices of their products. The more they produced, the lower the prices were. This drove many farmers deeper into debt, since they could not earn more money, even when they produced more goods.

True

The invention of barbed wire in the nineteenth century greatly improved the settler's ability to section off their property, protect the land, and contain their livestock on farms and ranches out West.

True

The last presidential election of the nineteenth century resulted in the largest citizen turn out for an election, at that point in American History, since most American's wanted a strong leader with solid economic policies to save the nation from its financial crisis.

True

The nineteenth century pioneer movements to the West led to the development of different forms of new popular culture in America, that included the book "Little House on the Prairie," and these westward themes would continue to influence American culture on into the twentieth century.

True

To encourage westward expansion, The Homestead Act passed in 1862 gave any head of household, over the age of twenty-one, 160 acres of land. This land was given to them under the condition that in exchange for a basic filing fee, each person would agree to work towards "improve[ing] the land."

True

Unlike small scale farms in the "New West," Bonanza farms were large scale farms that hired on extra labor and were able to generate additional profits in growing communities.

True

While many African American's lacked the necessary funds to move northwards, the growing need for cheap labor led factory owners and other businesses to assist these migrants in their relocation to the North.

True

A Mugwump is ___________ .

a former member of the Republican Party

The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution did which of the following?

allowed suffrage to American males of all races

Which of the following was a popular pastime for working-class urban dwellers?

amusement parks

In the late nineteenth century, how did business owners typically respond to periods of economic stagnation?

by increasing workers' hours and responsibilities while cutting wages

How did American workers most often protest unfair labor conditions before the onset of labor unions?

by performing poor work

What name was given to northerners who moved south during Reconstruction, usually to invest in land?

carpetbaggers

Which of the following did the settlement house movement offer as a means of relief for working-class women?

childcare

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution did which of the following?

declared all people born on U.S. soil to be citizens

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution did which of the following?

ended slavery throughout the entire United States

Which was a chief goal for both northern and southern moderates during the Reconstruction Era?

establishing peace and order

What name was given to African-Americans who moved west after the U.S. Civil War to claim land under the Homestead Acts?

exodusters

Which of the following contributed directly to the plight of farmers?

overproduction

What name was given to Southerners who supported the Northern Reconstruction efforts in the South?

scalawags

Which of the following four elements was not essential for creating massive urban growth in late nineteenth-century America?

settlement houses

Which action by Andrew Johnson ultimately led to his impeachment?

showing leniency towards the former Confederate states after the Civil War

Which of the following was not an element of realism?

social Darwinism

The Reconstruction effort involved the foundation of which agency?

the Freedmen's Bureau

Which of the following was not a vehicle for the farmers' protest?

the Mugwumps

Farmers and laborers who were displeased with the actions of the Republicans and Democrats in the 1890s formed which party as a response?

the Populist Party

Which of the following did Abraham Lincoln propose as a means of reintegrating the former Confederate states back into the Union after the U.S. Civil War?

the Ten Percent Plan

Mark Twain's Gilded Age is a reference to ________.

the corrupt politics of the post-Civil War era

Which of the following was most responsible for the economic difficulties in the 1890s?

the perceived instability of the U.S. currency

Which of the following led to the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867?

the southern states' failure to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment

Why did African Americans consider moving from the rural South to the urban North following the Civil War?

to find wage-earning work

Why were the Black Codes created in the Southern states during Reconstruction?

to preserve the pre-war status of African-Americans