Deck 18: The Gilded Age, 1865-1900

Question 1

Which of the following factors boosted nineteenth-century railroad construction in America significantly?

A) Monetary aid and land grants from federal and state governments
B) Federal restrictions of rates and railroad company competition
C) The transportation demands of homesteaders
D) The deterioration of the National Road

Answer 1

Monetary aid and land grants from federal and state governments

Question 2

Which statement describes the oil industry before John D. Rockefeller's rise to power?

A) A few large refineries controlled most of the oil business.
B) Low entry costs allowed riotous competition.
C) Small refineries worked together to minimize competition.
D) Competition was limited owing to government regulations.

Answer 2

Low entry costs allowed riotous competition.

Question 3

Why did Rockefeller ultimately reorganize Standard Oil as a holding company in the late nineteenth century?

A) To control competition by purchasing the production facilities of competitors and shutting them down
B) To purchase and hold the assets of competitors so that those competitors had no capital or collateral to use for expansion
C) To legally combine competing companies under a central administration
D) To minimize competition by investing heavily in both the production and the distribution of products

Answer 3

To legally combine competing companies under a central administration

Question 4

Carnegie Steel achieved the tremendous productivity that Andrew Carnegie insisted on

A) through the adoption of personnel policies that included profit-sharing and paid vacations.
B) by forcing employees to work long hours under extremely dangerous conditions for low pay.
C) by scheduling shifts at night, when it was cooler, which helped workers endure the high temperatures in the plant.
D) by operating the plant for only part of the year, which made the equipment last longer.

Question 5

How did Alexander Graham Bell's telephone revolutionize both communications and business in America?

A) He had an instant monopoly on the communications market when he combined telephone and telegraph services in AT&T.
B) He installed telephones in every office building in New York to facilitate communications between business and the stock exchange.
C) He used a complicated organizational structure in his new company that allowed both local and cross-country communication.
D) He sold the rights to his invention to John D. Rockefeller, who put it into national use.

Question 6

Which relatively new building material both improved railroading in the late nineteenth century and depended on it?

A) Iron extracted from steel
B) Aluminum produced by a process pioneered in France
C) Steel produced through the Bessemer process
D) Salt-treated railroad ties, which provided a substantial base for train tracks

Question 7

What was the purpose of vertical integration, which was pioneered by Andrew Carnegie in the late nineteenth century?

A) It restructured the administrative hierarchy and, in the process, revolutionized managerial productivity.
B) It focused on the systemic promotion of immigrants and African Americans who were working for Carnegie Steel.
C) It concentrated on one aspect of production to the exclusion of all others.
D) It placed all aspects of the business, from mining raw materials to marketing and transporting finished products, under the control of the chief operating officer.

Question 8

Where had electricity been put to use in the United States by the late nineteenth century?

A) Mostly in rural areas
B) Mostly in urban areas
C) Only in factories
D) Only in government offices

Question 9

What was the main purpose of crude oil in the United States before the advent of the automobile?

A) Lubrication and lighting in the form of kerosene
B) Use as an additive to make paint adhere better to plaster surfaces
C) Use as a cleaning fluid for printing and typesetting equipment
D) Use as a food additive to retard spoilage

Question 10

How was it possible that Jay Gould was described as both the world's richest man and the most hated man in America when he died in 1892?

A) Most Americans were envious of his wealth and his accomplishments.
B) He was a symbol of all the most troubling aspects of big business in America.
C) His wealth had been accumulated through criminal activity.
D) The distribution of wealth in the United States had actually become more equitable during the 1890s.

Question 11

How did Morgan achieve his stunning reorganization and consolidation of businesses in the late nineteenth century?

A) He sometimes formed holding companies to run his operations.
B) He used rebates to put his competition out of business.
C) He refused to get involved in the steel industry, which he considered too speculative.
D) He sometimes formed a community of interest comprised of a handful of directors.

Question 12

The industries that grew up around the revolutionary inventions of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison demonstrated that

A) technological know-how was vital for controlling large corporations.
B) the federal government had a tight rein on industrial development at the time.
C) large corporations were particularly committed to helping people in their everyday lives.
D) the age of the inventor was becoming the age of the corporation.

Question 13

Which of the following was true of Standard Oil in the 1890s?

A) It was not as strong as it had been in the 1880s.
B) It controlled more than 90 percent of the oil business.
C) It had cut its workforce to 50,000 people.
D) It was broken up into a number of smaller companies by the federal government.

Question 14

The turn of the twentieth century saw individual entrepreneurship in the United States yield to

A) industrial capitalism.
B) joint stock investment.
C) finance capitalism.
D) limited partnerships.

Question 15

Which of the following describes the Gilded Age?

A) The peak of the social reform era in the nineteenth century
B) An era marked by personal greed and a corrupt partnership between business and politics
C) The period when the success of mining operations significantly lowered the price of gold
D) The time in which poverty was nonexistent and wealth was shared by all

Question 16

In her History of the Standard Oil Company published in McClure's Magazine, Ida M. Tarbell characterized John D. Rockefeller as

A) a benevolent businessman whose company had provided cheap kerosene to millions.
B) an inept businessman whose success rested on a host of overworked and underpaid managers.
C) a success and a model for others hoping to prosper in business.
D) a man who had used illegal methods to take over the oil industry.

Question 17

Which of the following big businesses came to dominate American life in the second half of the nineteenth century?

A) Steel manufacturing
B) Oil refining
C) Railroading
D) Meatpacking

Question 18

Why did first organize Standard Oil as a trust?

A) To offer legal protections to oil refineries
B) To divide the oil market among the top five competitors in the business
C) To purchase shares of stock in competing companies
D) To control the key elements of production and corner the market for oil

Question 19

Which of the following developments was a key factor in the rise of the Gilded Age?

A) The growth of industrialism in the United States
B) Urban political reform
C) The separation of business and politics
D) Massive government programs to help the poor

Question 20

Prominent business leader of the late nineteenth century J. P. Morgan believed that

A) he was making American business more democratic and competitive.
B) consolidation and central control were preferable to competition.
C) he should make a huge amount of money and then give it all away before he died.
D) his Christian faith led to his fabulous success in business and that he deserved that wealth.

Question 21

The economic theory of laissez-faire gained political clout in the late nineteenth century because

A) the Supreme Court increasingly was reinterpreting the Constitution to protect business.
B) businessmen bribed congressmen to stay out of their affairs in exchange for stock trading tips.
C) the Supreme Court increasingly was reinterpreting the Constitution to the detriment of big business.
D) Republicans and Democrats in Congress could not agree on its tenets.

Question 22

What was an important consequence of the civil service reform of the 1880s?

A) Business became even more influential in politics than before.
B) Big business lost its political power on the national level.
C) Party bosses gained tremendous influence in national politics.
D) Government was run more efficiently and honestly.

Question 23

What message did Andrew Carnegie promote in his gospel of wealth?

A) Poverty is more than likely caused by moral weakness.
B) Successful businessmen should be respected by the society at large.
C) His own success was more due to luck than hard work.
D) Millionaires should be trustees and agents for the poor.

Question 24

To what did the term solid South refer in the decades after Reconstruction?

A) The states of the old Confederacy, which voted Republican in every election for the next seventy years
B) The states of the old Confederacy, which voted Democratic in every election for the next seventy years
C) Four southern states that voted as a bloc over the next decade
D) The states of the old Confederacy, which continued to lobby for the reinstitution of slavery

Question 25

Which group of Republicans fiercely supported the patronage system?

A) Northern reformers
B) Half breeds
C) Mugwumps
D) Stalwarts

Question 26

President James A. Garfield unwittingly helped the cause of civil service reform when he

A) mistakenly signed a legislative act enabling that reform.
B) was shot by Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker.
C) made a series of speeches that appeared to endorse government reforms.
D) refused to speak out on standardizing the requirements for federal jobs.

Question 27

Which of the following factors explains the high voter turnout in national elections during the last three decades of the nineteenth century?

A) Presidential candidates were incredibly charismatic.
B) Most Americans were very knowledgeable about the issues of the day.
C) Voting was an important way to get a government job.
D) Voters believed that failure to participate in politics had greatly contributed to the Civil War.

Question 28

What idea was promoted by the theory of social Darwinism in the late nineteenth century?

A) Certain inequities should be ameliorated by government intervention.
B) Charles Darwin actually was writing about people when he authored On the Origin of Species.
C) Progress is the result of competition where the strong survived and the weak died out.
D) Competition led rich Americans to have an unfair advantage over the poor.

Question 29

What was the outcome of the notion that black men were a threat to white women in the South in the late nineteenth century?

A) The desertion of southern whites from the Democratic party
B) The decreased participation of white women in politics
C) The solidification of cross-racial political alliances
D) An increasing number of lynchings across the South

Question 30

What was evident in the call for a New South in the decades after Reconstruction?

A) The desire among some southerners to shift to an industrial economy
B) A resurgence of the Republican party in the region
C) The idea that the South could rebuild its war-torn economy through agriculture alone
D) The end of efforts in the region to forge political alliances across the color line

Question 31

How did American women respond to the denial of their right to vote in the late nineteenth century?

A) They turned inward and refused to engage in the political process.
B) They conceded that politics was a man's game and confined themselves to domestic concerns.
C) They participated in the political process though the antilynching, suffrage, and temperance movements.
D) They decided to take up a major role in the behind-the-scenes work of presidential politics.

Question 32

The Pendleton Act of 1883 established the Civil Service Commission and

A) made an examination a requirement for holding any federal job.
B) placed fifty thousand federal jobs under a merit system that required continuing education and yearly examinations.
C) legalized the removal of jobholders with a change of presidential administration.
D) made it impossible to remove people in civil service jobs for political reasons.

Question 33

Where did the South's iron and steel industry develop?

A) Durham, North Carolina
B) Atlanta, Georgia
C) Birmingham, Alabama
D) Memphis, Tennessee

Question 34

Morgan acquired the core of what would be the largest corporation in the world when he purchased

A) oil interests formerly controlled by John D. Rockefeller.
B) railroads formerly controlled by Collis P. Huntington.
C) steel interests formerly controlled by Andrew Carnegie.
D) meatpacking interests formerly controlled by the Armour and Swift companies.

Question 35

According to Ida B. Wells, lynching was a problem rooted in

A) economics and the shifting social structure of the South.
B) attacks on white women by black men in the South and the North.
C) attacks on black women by white men who employed them as domestics.
D) The concept of separate spheres, particularly in the South.

Question 36

The presidents who served in the last part of the nineteenth century-Rutherford B. Hayes through William McKinley-

A) were all largely incompetent and elected because of their personal charisma.
B) lacked influence owing to the control of powerful state governors.
C) were talented leaders but misunderstood by those who wrote about them.
D) were overshadowed by party politics at state and local levels.

Question 37

Who wrote the social Darwinist book What Social Classes Owe to Each Other?

A) Charles Darwin
B) William Graham Sumner
C) Herbert Spencer
D) Andrew Carnegie

Question 38

Having stated that "the paramount issue this year is moral rather than political," supporters of Grover Cleveland in 1884 were chagrined to learn that Cleveland had

A) become rich through a slush fund while he was governor of New York.
B) fathered a child out of wedlock.
C) taken kickbacks from builders in New York and New Jersey.
D) lied about his academic and professional background.

Question 39

How did the Republican party attempt to foster unity for the election of 1880?

A) It forced voters to choose among its factions.
B) It convinced the popular Rutherford B. Hayes to run for reelection.
C) It nominated a Stalwart, Chester A. Arthur, for vice president.
D) It nominated former Union general Winfield Scott Hancock for president.

Question 40

According to American businessmen who subscribed to the economic theory of laissez-faire, what was the role of the government in the economy?

A) It should always intervene in the nation's economic affairs.
B) It should not interfere in economic affairs except to protect private property.
C) It had the responsibility to foster competition in industry.
D) Only state governments should intervene in the nation's social and economic affairs.

Question 41

Why were Irish Catholic voters offended by James G. Blaine's campaign?

A) He neglected to respond to a slur on Catholic voters.
B) He denied his Irish heritage in order to gain votes.
C) His campaign office refused to hire Irish workers.
D) He often drank on the campaign trail, bringing truth to the phrase "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion."

Question 42

The tariff posed a threat to America's prosperity in the 1880s because

A) it was too low to be effective.
B) a number of foreign nations refused to export their goods to the United States.
C) it created a surplus that was not used to produce goods and services.
D) it exempted manufactured goods such as textiles.

Question 43

The Greenback Labor party believed that the government should issue paper currency based on

A) the gold supply.
B) gold and silver.
C) gold, silver, and Civil War bonds.
D) the country's total wealth.

Question 44

Although the men who served as president in the late nineteenth century were less than memorable, Americans of that era participated in electoral politics with great enthusiasm. Cite three reasons why people were so interested in politics.

Question 45

Democrats dubbed the Republican-dominated Fifty-first Congress the "Billion Dollar Congress" because it spent the nation's surplus on

A) large subsidies for farmers.
B) lawmakers' own constituents.
C) compensation for the revenue foreign nations lost because of the tariff.
D) programs to promote big business.

Question 46

How did the tariff issue demonstrate the Republicans' new commitment to economics over ideology after the 1888 election?

Question 47

Explain the concept of laissez-faire and how the Supreme Court supported that economic philosophy by protecting business interests during the 1880s and 1890s.

Question 48

Which group enthusiastically supported the tariff in the nineteenth century?

A) Industrialists
B) Southern farmers
C) Midwestern farmers
D) Advocates of free trade

Question 49

In the midst of America's raucous industrial development, Andrew Carnegie's fabulous success in the steel business turned him into something of a hero. Why?

Question 50

The Supreme Court's decision in Wabash v. Illinois (1886), which reversed its ruling in Munn v. Illinois (1877),

A) increased states' regulation of the railroads.
B) created a new alliance between the court and members of the Grange.
C) led to an outpouring of criticism of the court by the railroad industry.
D) led to passage of the first federal law regulating the railroad industry.

Question 51

What did the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act have in common?

A) Both testified to big business's concern about government abuses in chartering and licensing corporations.
B) Both testified to the nation's growing willingness to use federal measures to intervene in big business on behalf of the public interest.
C) Both had an immediate and significant impact on the conduct of business in the United States.
D) Both were compromises supported by big business to distract the public from corporate abuses.

Question 52

Why did Ida Tarbell and others criticize Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller?

Question 53

At the turn of the twentieth century, how did electricity contribute to the growing divergence between urban and rural life in America?

Question 54

How effective was the Interstate Commerce Commission, the nation's first federal regulatory agency?

A) It was so weak in its early years that it served as little more than a historical precedent.
B) It had unprecedented power to clean up and regulate the railroads.
C) It was authorized to set interest rates for small-business loans.
D) It was so powerful initially that the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.

Question 55

Why did civil service reform become more and more popular in the years following the Civil War? What was the result of civil service reform?

Question 56

Jay Gould was not typical of railroad builders in the late nineteenth century. Explain why.

Question 57

In The Gilded Age, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner satirized American society in the late nineteenth century. Briefly describe the characteristics of this era.

Question 58

How did Ida B. Wells challenge dominant views of race, gender, and politics in the late nineteenth century?

Question 59

When advocates of bimetallism referred to the crime of '73, they were talking about

A) the financial panic that hit the United States in 1873.
B) Ulysses S. Grant's return to the Oval Office for a second term.
C) the decision by Congress in 1873 to stop buying and minting silver.
D) the decision by Congress in 1873 to stop buying and minting gold.

Question 60

President Grover Cleveland hoped to increase the nation's flagging gold reserves during the economic depression in the winter of 1894-95

A) by sending an increasing number of miners to the West in an effort to find new gold mines.
B) by asking Americans to contribute whatever gold they had to an important national cause.
C) by sending the army to Mexico to capture gold mines that the Mexicans could not exploit because of their lack of technology.
D) through making a deal with a private group of bankers who would buy government bonds with gold.

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.
Founded in 1874 to advocate for total abstinence from alcohol, this organization provided important political training for women, which many used in the suffrage movement.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

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.
In this theory popularized in the late nineteenth century by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, only relentless competition could produce social progress, with wealth a sign of "fitness" and poverty one of "unfitness" for survival.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Question 63

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.
A period of enormous economic growth and ostentatious displays of wealth during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Industrialization dramatically changed in U.S. society and created a newly dominant group of rich entrepreneurs and an impoverished working class.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Question 64

In what ways did the changing economic system restructure American politics in the years following Reconstruction?

Question 65

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.
Patronage scheme in which politicians doled out government positions to their loyal supporters; it led to widespread corruption during the Gilded Age.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

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.
1890 act that outlawed pools and trusts, ruling that businesses could no longer enter into agreements to restrict competition. Government inaction, combined with the Supreme Court's narrow reading of the act in the United States v. E. C. Knight Company decision, undermined the law's effectiveness.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

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.
Effort in the 1880s to end the spoils system and reduce government corruption. New legislation awarded government jobs under a merit system that required examinations for office and made it impossible to remove jobholders for political reasons.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Question 68

Discuss the concept of laissez-faire as it was used in the late nineteenth century to describe the ideal relationship between the U.S. government and economy. How was the relationship between the two truly "laissez faire" during the Gilded Age and how, on the other hand, did government actually work to build and strengthen corporate capitalism?

Question 69

Discuss three ways that leading industrialists transformed American business in the late nineteenth century. Considering Ida Tarbell's criticism of John D. Rockefeller, should those industrialists be considered symbols of American business ingenuity or of ruthless business practices?

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.
System of racial segregation in the South lasting from after the Civil War into the twentieth century. These laws segregated African Americans in public facilities such as trains and streetcars, curtailed their voting rights, and denied other basic civil rights.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

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.
A system in which corporations give shares of their stock to trustees who hold the stocks "in trust" for their stockholders, thereby coordinating the industry to ensure profits to the participating corporations and curb competition.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Question 72

Discuss the concept of social Darwinism. Include a summary of its roots and an explanation of the theory itself. How did Andrew Carnegie's gospel of wealth refine the concept?

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.
Congress created this regulatory agency designed to oversee the railroad industry after the Supreme Court decision in Wabash v. Illinois (1886) effectively denied states the right to regulate railroads. The agency proved weak and did not immediately pose a threat to the industry.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Question 74

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 used in the late nineteenth century by those who advocated minting silver dollars in addition to supporting the gold standard and the paper currency backed by gold. Western silver barons and poor farmers from the West and South hoped this would result in inflation, effectively providing them with debt relief.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

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.
The idea that the financially successful should use their wisdom, experience, and wealth as stewards for the poor. Andrew Carnegie promoted this view in an 1889 essay in which he maintained that the wealthy should serve as stewards for society as a whole.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

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.
Investment sponsored by banks and bankers that typified the American business scene at the end of the nineteenth century. After the Panic of 1893, bankers stepped in and reorganized major industries to stabilize them, leaving power concentrated in the hands of a few influential capitalists.

A)civil service reform
B)finance capitalism
C)free silver
D)Gilded Age
E)gospel of wealth
F)Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
G)Jim Crow
H)trust
I)Sherman Antitrust Act
J)social Darwinism
K)spoils system
L)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Question 77

How did the notion of separate spheres for men and women shape late-nineteenth-century American politics? How did black and white women challenge dominant conceptions of their prescribed roles?