Inquisitive - Chapter 16: America's Gilded Age, 1870—1890

Analyze the table below. Identify the statements that describe the economic changes that occurred between 1870 and 1920.

Correct Answer(s) -Between 1870 and 1920, the percentage of people employed in agriculture decreased significantly. -The GNP per capita between 1870 and 1920 more than doubled. -Between 1870 and 1920, the percentage of people employed in industry grew significantly. Incorrect Answer(s) -Although agricultural employment increased between 1870 and 1920, the number of farms decreased significantly.

Read the excerpt from the Speech of Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé Indians, in Washington, D.C. (1879). What are Chief Joseph's complaints about the treatment of his people? Click here to read the full excerpt from the textbook.

Correct Answer(s) -Despite his view that all men are brothers, the white men do not treat Indians as equals. -The white men do not keep their word to his men. Incorrect Answer(s) -The white men refuse to live on Indian land with the Indians. -The white men only paid for part of the country they took from the Indians, not all of it.

Identify the statements that describe working conditions and policies during the Gilded Age in America.

Correct Answer(s) -Many industrial workers labored with no pensions, compensation for injuries, or protections against unemployment. -"The miner's freedom" consisted of work rules that left skilled miners free of managerial supervision on the job. Incorrect Answer(s) -American factory workers were some of the worst paid workers in the industrial West. -High wages allowed most working-class families to survive comfortably with only a male breadwinner providing for the family.

Identify the statements that describe the Knights of Labor.

Correct Answer(s) -The Knights of Labor included women in its membership. Incorrect Answer(s) -Asians on the West Coast were welcomed as members of the Knights of Labor. -The Knights of Labor never questioned the inequality of wealth in the capitalist system. -The Knights of Labor membership was only strong in New York state and numbered at its peak 80,000 members.

Watch the video featuring author Eric Foner. In this video, Eric Foner discusses court decisions held against labor on the grounds of individual freedom, specifically liberty of contract. What were the most important decisions made by the Court?

Correct Answer(s) -The Supreme Court ruled that state laws regulating corporate behavior, limiting the number of hours a person could work, were unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. -The Supreme Court overturned laws that made it illegal for companies to pay their employees in scrip that could only be used at certain stores on the grounds it violated the right of property of these corporations. Incorrect Answer(s) -The Supreme Court defended the rights of workers, ensuring that they did not face oppressive or dangerous working conditions.

Analyze the following map titled "Indian Reservations, ca. 1890," and then match each indigenous tribe below to its correct reservation circa 1890.

Arizona Territory -Hopi Indian Territory -Cherokee Montana Territory -Crow

Identify the statements that describe the Haymarket Affair.

Correct Answer(s) -Eight men were charged with carrying out the bombing. -Four strikers were killed by police on May 3, 1886, when they clashed with strikebreakers. Incorrect Answer(s) -Police refused to believe labor leaders, and organizations were involved in the bombing. -The Haymarket Affair led to legislation making it illegal for companies to hire strikebreakers and private security forces during labor unions' strike actions.

Identify the statements that describe "robber barons."

Correct Answer(s) -John D. Rockefeller was considered by many to be the worst of the robber barons. -Ironically, many of the "robber barons" rose from modest backgrounds and seemed examples of how creative genius and business sense enabled Americans to seize success. Incorrect Answer(s) -They were instrumental in instituting the eight-hour workday for employees. -They were industrial leaders who hoarded their fortunes to pass on to their family for generations.

Identify the statements that describe liberal reformers during the Gilded Age.

Correct Answer(s) -Liberal reformers feared that as lower classes looked to use government to further their own interests, democracy was becoming a threat to individual liberty and the rights to property. -Some liberal reformers urged a return to property qualifications for voting. Incorrect Answer(s) -Many liberal reformers saw the industrial system as the very embodiment of the American dream. -Liberal reformers advocated for an activist government that would address social needs.

Identify the statements that describe examples of Christian moral reform and its successful attempts to stamp out sin.

Correct Answer(s) -Mann Act of 1910 -Women's Christian Temperance Union -Gambling, prostitution, polygamy, and birth control were all targets of the legislation attempts to control or eliminate by Evangelical Christians in the Gilded Age. Incorrect Answer(s) -Christian reformers forced through a law banning all business on Sundays.

Identify the statements that describe Social Darwinism.

Correct Answer(s) -Social Darwinists believed that the poor were essentially responsible for their own fate. -Evolution was a natural process of survival of the fittest; as such, the government must not intervene to aid the less fortunate. Incorrect Answer(s) -Social Darwinists were tireless advocates for equality throughout the Gilded Age. -Social Darwinists supported efforts by American cities to offer comprehensive programs to aid the poor and downtrodden.

Identify the events and conditions that led to the second industrial revolution that took place between the Civil War and the early twentieth century.

Correct Answer(s) -The country had a growing supply of labor and an expanding market for manufactured goods. -There was money available for investment. -The federal government enacted tariffs that protected American industry from foreign competition. Incorrect Answer(s) -The exportation of technical innovations, most notably the automobile, generated a significant influx of revenue into the United States.

In 1879, the United States went off the gold standard to help debt-ridden farmers

False

In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner gave a celebrated lecture, "The Insignificance of the Frontier in American History," in which he argued the West had acted as a destabilizing and chaotic force in American history.

False

Most of the farms on the Great Plains were bonanza farms that covered thousands of acres and employed large numbers of agricultural wage workers.

False

During the Gilded Age, the federal government sought to define the place of Native Americans in society and address questions of indigenous citizenship. Place the following events in chronological order.

1)Congress eliminated the treaty system with the native tribes 2) The U.S. Supreme Court ruled In Elk v. Wilkins that citizenship did not apply to Native Americans. 3)The Dawes Act was passed, dividing tribal land into parcels of land open to white settlement. 4) Congress extended citizenship to all Native Americans.

The task of social science according to iron manufacturer Abram Hewitt was to devise ways to redistribute wealth "... in a fair and humane manner to the benefit of the health of the nation."

False

The era from 1870 to 1890 was called the Gilded Age because it suggested that outward appearances were misleading, and one needed to look under the surface to understand what was happening.

True

As the United States matured into an industrial economy, Americans struggled to make sense of a new social order that included "better classes," "respectable classes," and "dangerous classes." Identify the statements that describe the nation's social problems during the Gilded Age.

Correct Answer(s) -There was a growing permanent factory population living on the edge of poverty alongside a growing class of millionaires, which posed a sharp challenge to traditional definitions of freedom. -Throughout the United States, state and local governments set up investigative committees to inquire into the relations between labor and capital in the face of increasing unrest. Incorrect Answer(s) -The iron law of wages was referred to by economists often to explain how wealth would eventually trickle down to the workers over time. -The international worker's movements espoused the idea that the laboring classes must find justice in the capitalist system.

The conquest of the American West was a unique phenomenon in global history, whereby settlers moved boldly into the interior of regions of a great continent with a temperate climate, bringing their families, crops, and livestock, and establishing mining and other industries.

False