Deck 23: From New Era to Great Depression, 1920-1932

Question 1

Federal authorities sent Al Capone to prison on what charge?

A) Murder
B) Income tax evasion
C) Bootlegging alcohol
D) Armed robbery

Answer 1

Income tax evasion

Question 2

The National Woman's party supported which of the following?

A) An Equal Rights Amendment
B) Special legal protection for women
C) Laws against black voting
D) Laws allowing child labor

Answer 2

An Equal Rights Amendment

Question 3

Which of the following statements describes the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, which gave federal assistance to states seeking to reduce high infant mortality rates?

A) It was the first of a long string of women's political successes in the 1920s.
B) It demonstrated the political powerlessness of women.
C) It was a minor achievement for women in politics.
D) It was women's only significant national legislative success in the 1920s.

Answer 3

It was women's only significant national legislative success in the 1920s.

Question 4

What was Detroit's second largest industry during the 1920s?

A) Illegal alcohol sales
B) Automobile manufacturing
C) Steel production
D) Railroad construction

Question 5

What did the presidential election of 1924, in which Calvin Coolidge defeated John W. Davis and Robert La Follette, reveal about American voters?

A) Their lack of support for labor unions, the regulation of business, and the protection of civil liberties
B) Their strong support for government regulation of industry and for other progressive principles
C) Low turnout showed that their interest in consumer goods far outweighed their interest in politics
D) Their strong support for the candidate who was more physically attractive, despite his lack of political experience

Question 6

Which element of the American economy during the 1920s lay at the heart of its fundamental lack of stability?

A) Production
B) Increasing wages
C) Consumption
D) Employment

Question 7

Who was responsible for the creation of "welfare capitalism" in the 1920s, and why did they use it?

A) The government created welfare capitalism to address the needs of the less fortunate.
B) Traditional labor unions established welfare capitalism to assist workers.
C) Businesses created welfare capitalism to encourage workers' loyalty to the company.
D) Socialists designed welfare capitalism to bring apolitical workers into the radical fold.

Question 8

Which relatively new industry in the 1920s linked the possession of material goods to the fulfillment of spiritual and emotional needs?

A) The automobile industry
B) Public relations
C) Chemical manufacturing
D) Advertising

Question 9

Which industry formed the keystone of the American economy in the 1920s?

A) The housing industry
B) The steel industry
C) The banking industry
D) The automobile industry

Question 10

What factor diluted the influence of women in politics in the 1920s?

A) A lack of unity around the issues
B) A major crime wave, which kept women from venturing to the polls
C) Required literacy tests for all new women voters
D) Laws prohibiting women from joining the major political parties

Question 11

What was the purpose of the Dawes Plan, instituted in 1924?

A) It authorized the mobilization of U.S. military forces to ensure that Germany would pay reparations.
B) It cut Germany's annual reparations payments in half and initiated fresh American loans to Germany.
C) It called for the United States to join the League of Nations in order to enforce the Kellogg-Briand pact.
D) It made provisions for the United States to assume Germany's war debts in exchange for their commitment to peace.

Question 12

What did President Calvin Coolidge's economic policy include?

A) Advocacy for government regulation of corporate America
B) Reductions in government regulation of business
C) Support for higher taxes for American businesses
D) Pressure on the courts to prosecute companies that violated antitrust laws

Question 13

In its effort to create prosperity at home, the Harding administration supported

A) high tariffs to protect American businesses.
B) nationalization of American agriculture.
C) tight government regulation of industry.
D) a large public works program called Teapot Dome.

Question 14

What was the outcome of the shift toward repetitive assembly-line work and specialized management divisions in the 1920s?

A) Lower enrollment in college and university managerial training programs
B) A worsening of safety and sanitary conditions in American factories
C) Massive layoffs of American workers in all heavy industries
D) A tremendous increase in business productivity and overall efficiency

Question 15

What did the authors of Middletown conclude from their study of life in a small midwestern town in the 1920s?

A) Modern America was by and large producing remarkably well-adjusted citizens.
B) America's basic moral and spiritual framework had been virtually untouched by rapid modernization.
C) The United States had developed a culture in which everything hinged on money.
D) The United States' technological revolution did not lead to significant social dislocation.

Question 16

President Harding's administration was characterized by

A) ongoing government control of industry.
B) financial wrongdoing on the part of the president.
C) scandals that touched many members of his administration.
D) an aggressive foreign policy.

Question 17

What characterized the period Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover described as a New Era in 1920?

A) The dramatic growth of the Socialist party
B) A freewheeling economy
C) The implementation of progressive reforms in a peacetime economy
D) A narrowing of the gap between rich and poor

Question 18

America's return to a peacetime economy in 1920 and 1921 was marked by

A) steady prices and economic well-being for most Americans.
B) a narrowing of the gap between rich and poor.
C) a 3.5 percent national unemployment rate, the lowest to date.
D) a 20 percent unemployment rate, the highest to date.

Question 19

During the 1920s, most American women who worked had

A) manufacturing jobs in factories.
B) office and sales jobs.
C) jobs in domestic and food service.
D) medical, legal, and financial jobs.

Question 20

What was the goal of the Washington Disarmament Conference?

A) To negotiate peace treaties with Germany, Austria, and Hungary
B) To convince Congress to authorize $25 million to compensate Mexico for the loss of its territory in the 1840s
C) To persuade England and France to forgive the reparations they wanted Germany to pay after World War I
D) To establish a balance of naval power among Britain, France, Japan, and Italy

Question 21

What was the purpose of the immigration laws of the 1920s, including the Johnson-Reed Act?

A) To open the nation's borders to an unprecedented influx of new immigrants
B) To place strict limits on immigration
C) To close off immigration to the United States from other areas of the Western Hemisphere
D) To overturn the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Question 22

How did Americans respond to Alfred E. Smith's candidacy for president in 1928?

A) Positively, which is why he came so close to defeating Hoover in the election
B) As a symbol of the traditional values of the heartland-Americanism, family, the Bible, chastity, and temperance
C) As a symbol of all they feared-Catholicism, immigration, cities, and liberal attitudes
D) With concern that he did not have the experience for the White House

Question 23

Which of the following describes the Ku Klux Klan of the mid-1920s?

A) It dominated politics in California, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Vermont.
B) It had embraced the changes that came with modernity.
C) It had stopped its attacks on foreigners and Jews and was concentrating on cleansing the nation of Negroes.
D) It had a strong influence on politics in California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas.

Question 24

What was the central issue addressed by the highly publicized Scopes trial of 1925?

A) The Ku Klux Klan's right of the to be involved in politics at the state level
B) The legality of the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in Tennessee
C) The 1920s-era conflict between fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics in America
D) The biblical evidence for human evolution from lesser primates

Question 25

Which of the following statements describes professional baseball in the 1920s?

A) It was dominated by college rivalries.
B) Games were played on weekdays, when workers could not attend.
C) It was fully integrated, both on the field and in the seats.
D) It attracted players and spectators from the working class.

Question 26

What accounted for the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States in 1915?

A) The widespread belief that blacks, immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics, and Jews threatened traditional American values
B) The notion that African Americans were gaining equality in the new world of giant corporations and needed to be kept in their place
C) The belief that the government was conspiring to subvert the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens
D) The belief that some apocalyptic event was about to occur and the Klan would bring salvation

Question 27

What did popular culture and consumer goods have in common in the 1920s?

A) Both condemned by the Catholic Church as sinful.
B) Both had become so inexpensive that most Americans could afford them.
C) Neither had penetrated the rural areas of the United States.
D) Both were mass-produced and mass-consumed.

Question 28

Who funded the rapid growth of radio in the United States between 1922 and 1929?

A) Record companies
B) The federal government
C) Sports teams
D) Advertisers

Question 29

What did the outcome of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial suggest about the United States in the 1920s?

A) The American judicial system was a model of impartiality.
B) Americans generally loathed thieves and murderers.
C) The legal appeals process often brought a fairer verdict than the original trial.
D) Antiforeign hysteria was rampant in many areas of American life.

Question 30

In the United States, the flapper of the 1920s represented

A) the determination of women to become writers and artists.
B) the hopelessness that was pervasive among American youth.
C) a youth culture that sought radical cultural and political reform.
D) a challenge to women's traditional gender roles.

Question 31

The image of the new woman in American society in the 1920s

A) reinforced the traditional concept of separate spheres.
B) created a double standard for the sexual conduct of men and women.
C) was felt by all women, even those who believed in traditional gender roles.
D) reduced acceptance of and access to birth control for most women.

Question 32

What earned Herbert Hoover the nickname "the Great Humanitarian"?

A) His managing efforts to feed civilian victims of the fighting during World War I
B) His service as secretary of commerce under the Coolidge administration
C) His reform agenda as president and his response to the Great Depression
D) His commitment to individual self-reliance, industrial self-management, and limited government

Question 33

One result of the loosening of the traditional bonds of community, religion, and family in the United States in the 1920s was

A) more crime and an increase in the number of school dropouts.
B) a rapidly increasing divorce rate in urban areas.
C) the emergence of youth as a distinct social class with their own culture.
D) a significant increase in cohabitation among young, unmarried couples.

Question 34

For which group of Americans did authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Sinclair Lewis speak?

A) Corporate America and the nation's consumer society
B) Their co-participants in the Harlem Renaissance
C) Critics of American anti-intellectualism and materialism
D) Republicans and supporters of prohibition

Question 35

In 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to

A) swim the English Channel alone.
B) fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.
C) drive an automobile across the United States in less than a week.
D) fly around the world.

Question 36

In the 1920s, Harold "Red" Grange was associated with

A) Madison Avenue advertising firms.
B) Calvin Coolidge's administration.
C) football.
D) boxing.

Question 37

Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association urged black Americans in the 1920s to

A) revolt against the U.S. government and their white oppressors.
B) rediscover their African heritage and take pride in their culture and achievements.
C) adopt the accommodationist stance advocated by Booker T. Washington to increase their status.
D) lobby the federal government for reparations for the time they and their ancestors spent in slavery.

Question 38

How did rural Americans perceive cities during the 1920s?

A) As the places where the truest American values of freedom and democracy were expressed
B) As the sources of vice, religious threats, and other assaults on traditional values
C) As potential suppliers of well-trained but cheap agricultural laborers
D) As idyllic places where they might go to enjoy restaurants, theater, and museums

Question 39

When Herbert Hoover took office in 1929, he brought to the presidency

A) modern ideas about how businesses should operate.
B) decades of experience in elected office.
C) few credentials to lead a prosperous nation.
D) strong opposition to progressive ideals.

Question 40

Who wrote the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, an example of Harlem Renaissance literature?

A) Langston Hughes
B) Countee Cullen
C) Claude McKay
D) Zora Neale Hurston

Question 41

What was the Harlem Renaissance? Did it have any effect on the prejudice of white society?

Question 42

Describe the factors most responsible for Henry Ford's success.

Question 43

Among the first signs of economic distress in the United States in the mid-1920s was

A) a reluctance to buy stocks on margin.
B) the tremendous increase in the number of labor strikes.
C) a decrease in the rate of unemployment.
D) a slowdown in new construction and in automobile sales.

Question 44

By the early 1930s, unemployed workers were responding to the Great Depression by

A) becoming increasingly passive and despondent, assuming that they were not worthy of jobs.
B) seeking to improve their job qualifications by enrolling in vocational training programs.
C) becoming increasingly outraged and turning toward militant forms of protest.
D) turning on one another with violence as the competition for scarce jobs became even steeper.

Question 45

How did the Great Depression affect the American family in the 1930s?

A) It caused an increase in the number of marriages among young adults whose parents could no longer support them.
B) It sparked an increase in the birthrate among middle- and upper-class whites.
C) It created resentment among men, who lost their jobs more often than women did.
D) It led to the stabilization of the birthrate, which had been increasing since the turn of the century.

Question 46

Which group sponsored a team of lawyers to defend the nine young black men in Scottsboro, Alabama, who were arrested on trumped-up rape charges in 1931?

A) The Republican party
B) The Communist party
C) The NAACP
D) The League of Women Voters

Question 47

Why did working-class Americans of the 1920s identify with sports figures like Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey?

Question 48

Describe how the Great Depression affected ordinary Americans.

Question 49

What did Americans who joined the Ku Klux Klan and those who wanted to prosecute John Scopes have in common?

Question 50

What did President Hoover do to offer a solution to the human problems of the depression in 1929?

A) He instituted a voluntary recovery plan, protective tariffs, and some government intervention, including public works projects and small federal loans to states.
B) He created a federal aid modeled after the dole in England that would provide basic food, clothing, and shelter to the unemployed.
C) He provided federal loans to private citizens who could prove that they had not participated in speculation.
D) He decided to let the depression run its course without significant government aid for either businesses or individuals.

Question 51

Explain how President Hoover's personal and political philosophies kept the government from doing more in the Great Depression.

Question 52

Which of the following characterized the U.S. economy when Hoover moved into the White House in 1929?

A) There was a huge disparity in wealth between rich and poor.
B) The country had low tariffs and a strong balance of trade with foreign nations.
C) The gap between rich and poor was narrowing.
D) Consumers were reluctant to rely on credit to fund purchases.

Question 53

What was the purpose of the President Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corporation, created in 1932?

A) Assisting the millions of Americans who had lost their jobs
B) Aiding rural black southerners who had been in an agricultural depression for years
C) Lending money to endangered American banks, insurance companies, and railroads
D) Shoring up faltering West Coast shippers plying the Pacific trade

Question 54

In what ways did Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge attempt to achieve Harding's call for a return to normalcy in America?

Question 55

What was the attitude of most Americans toward immigration when Warren Harding took office? How did the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti illustrate that public sentiment?

Question 56

To what extent did the United States retreat into isolationism after World War I?

Question 57

What was the fundamental cause of the Great Depression in the United States?

A) The stock market crash in the fall of 1929
B) Problems in the American and international economies
C) Herbert Hoover's election to the U.S. presidency
D) Massive fraud in the New York and Chicago stock exchanges

Question 58

What were some of the unintended consequences and costs of Prohibition?

Question 59

How did the Hoover administration respond to the World War I veterans who asked for the immediate payment of their pension or bonus?

A) It ordered the U.S. army to forcibly evict them from their camp on the edge of Washington, D.C.
B) It welcomed them to Washington, thanked them for their service, and sent them home with government checks.
C) It organized a ceremony to reiterate the government's gratitude for their service and award medals.
D) It provided a hearty meal on the White House lawn but refused to pay the bonuses early.

Question 60

Which groups were hardest hit by the Great Depression?

A) East and West coast bankers and other business people
B) Union members and other industrial workers in the Northeast
C) Western miners and cattle ranchers
D) The unemployed, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers

Question 61

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
Secret society that first thwarted black freedom after the Civil War but was reborn in 1915 to fight against perceived threats posed by blacks, immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics, and Jews. The new society spread well beyond the South in the 1920s.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 62

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
The ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol that went into effect in January 1920 with the Eighteenth Amendment. The ban proved almost impossible to enforce. By the end of the 1920s, most Americans wished it to end, and it was finally repealed in 1933.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 63

In what ways did the New Woman and the New Negro reflect the dazzle and despair of the Roaring Twenties?

Question 64

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
Alternative image of womanhood that came into the American mainstream in the 1920s. The mass media frequently portrayed young, college-educated women who drank, smoked, and wore skimpy dresses. These women also challenged American convictions about separate spheres for women and men and the sexual double standard.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 65

The wealth and modern culture associated with the Roaring Twenties did not affect all Americans equally. How did urban and rural Americans experience these changes, and how did they respond to them?

Question 66

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
Nickname for scandal in which Interior Secretary Albert Fall accepted $400,000 in bribes for leasing oil reserves on public land in Wyoming. It was part of a larger pattern of corruption that marred Warren G. Harding's presidency.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 67

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
1925 trial of a biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who violated his state's ban on teaching evolution. The trial created a nationwide media frenzy and came to be seen as a showdown between urban and rural values.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 68

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
Federal agency established by Herbert Hoover in 1932 to help American industry by lending government funds to endangered banks and corporations, which Hoover hoped would benefit people at the bottom through trickle-down economics. In practice, this provided little help to the poor.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 69

The invention and mass production of the automobile was one of the most important events of twentieth-century America. Explain how the automobile both improved the quality of life for Americans and led to new tensions and uncertainties.

Question 70

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
Pact that committed Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and the United States to a proportional reduction of naval forces, producing the world's greatest success in disarmament up to that time. Republicans orchestrated its development at the 1921 Washington Disarmament Conference.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 71

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
1924 law that severely restricted immigration to the United States to no more than 161,000 persons a year with quotas for each European nation. The racist restrictions were designed to stanch the flow of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 72

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
Term referring to African Americans who challenged American racial hierarchy through the arts.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 73

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
Industrial programs for workers that became popular in the 1920s. Some businesses improved safety and sanitation inside factories and instituted paid vacations and pension plans. It encouraged loyalty to companies rather than independent labor unions.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 74

By 1932, America's economic problems had become a dangerous social crisis. Explain why this statement is true by describing the economic conditions of the time and their effects on society.

Question 75

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
Nine African American youths who were arrested for the alleged rape of two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. After an all-white jury sentenced the young men to death, the Communist party took action that saved them from the electric chair.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 76

Use the following to answer questions :
Select the word or phrase from the Terms section that best matches the definition or example provided in the Definitions section. Some terms may be used more than once; others may not be used at all.
World War I veterans who gathered in Washington, D.C., in 1932 to lobby for immediate payment of the pension promised them in 1924. Believing the pensions would bankrupt the government, President Herbert Hoover sent the U.S. Army to evict the veterans from the city.

A)Bonus Marchers
B)Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
C)Johnson-Reed Act
D)Ku Klux Klan
E)New Negro
F)new woman
G)prohibition
H)Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
I)Scopes trial
J)Scottsboro Boys
K)Teapot Dome
L)welfare capitalism

Question 77

Discuss the causes of the Great Depression. What role did the stock market crash in October 1929 play in the depression's onset?