Chapter 15

Which of the following statements about nineteenth-century Chinese immigrants to the United States is accurate?

By 1880, three-fourths of Chinese immigrants lived in California, where many worked on farms.

Looking Backward was the first book to popularize socialist ideas for an American audience.

False

The Social Gospel movement focused on attacking individual sins such as drinking and Sabbath-breaking.

False

Voter participation during the Gilded Age was never over 60 percent.

False

According to the authors of the Dawes Severalty Act, what constituted a civilized life for Native Americans in the later nineteenth century?

Individual property ownership and farming on family plots.

Why did western territories take longer than eastern territories to achieve statehood?

Many easterners were wary of granting statehood until white and non-Mormon settlers counterbalanced the large Latino and Mormon populations.

Which of the following properly assesses the significance of wage labor in industrializing America during the Gilded Age?

More and more Americans experienced wage labor as a permanent condition on the edge of poverty.

Why was the Hollywood version of the western "cowboy" based more on fantasy than reality?

Most cowboys were low-paid workers, some of whom even went on strike for higher wages.

An example of what the economist and social historian Thorstein Veblen meant by "conspicuous consumption" is:

Mrs. Bradley Martin's costume ball.

What did William G. Sumner believe social classes owed each other?

Nothing at all

What criticism did Henry Demarest Lloyd leverage against Rockefeller's Standard Oil in Wealth against Commonwealth (1892)?

Standard Oil was undermining fair competition in the marketplace.

Which of the following properly assesses the significance of the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890?

The law established a precedent that the national government could regulate the economy in the interest of the public good.

Which of the following properly assesses the significance of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?

The railroad strike signaled the nation's shift from southern reconstruction to the question of labor and class tensions.

How were skilled workers able to secure new freedoms for themselves in rapidly expanding industries?

Their knowledge allowed them to control the production process and the training of apprentices.

Lochner v. New York voided a state law establishing ten hours per day, or sixty per week, as the maximum hours of work for bakers, claiming that it infringed on individual freedom.

True

Which of the following does NOT describe the impact of corporations on the American West?

Urban populations in California declined as people moved to the centers of agricultural production.

Which of the following properly compares the U.S. Supreme Court's approach to organization in business and labor during the Gilded Age?

While the Court applied the Sherman Antitrust Act to break down unions, it proved unwilling to endorse any regulation of big business.

In the late nineteenth century, social thinkers such as Edward Bellamy, Henry George, and Laurence Gronlund offered numerous plans for change, primarily because they were alarmed by a fear of:

class warfare and the growing power of concentrated capital.

The Interstate Commerce Commission was established in 1887 to:

ensure that railroads charged farmers and merchants reasonable and fair rates.

The nineteenth-century labor movement argued that:

extremes of wealth and poverty threatened democracy.

In How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis:

focused on the wretched conditions of New York City slums.

One significant economic impact of the second industrial revolution was:

frequent and prolonged economic depressions

The Greenback-Labor Party:

wanted the federal government to stop taking money out of circulation.

The Knights of Labor:

was an inclusive organization that advocated for a vast array of reforms.

The Social Gospel:

was another term for Social Darwinism.

By 1890, the majority of Americans:

worked for wages.

Chinese immigrants to the West:

worked in shoe and cigar factories in western cities.