Deck 10: The Opening of America

Question 1

The chapter introduction tells the story of clockmaker Chauncey Jerome to make the point that

A) clocks both made possible and symbolized the organized routines of an industrialized society.
B)Jerome's rise and fall were made possible by the opportunities offered in an expanding market economy that bound Americans together through ever more complex and specialized ways.
C) the intricate but comprehensible mechanism of a clock was to become the favorite metaphor for an age that believed human reason could discern the workings of natural law and apply those discoveries to improving the material conditions of life.
D) Jerome exemplifies the exploited urban laborer who becomes a helpless victim of the forces of rapid and relentless industrialization.

Answer 1

Jerome's rise and fall were made possible by the opportunities offered in an expanding market economy that bound Americans together through ever more complex and specialized ways.

Question 2

In the years before the Civil War, what single enterprise employed more workers than any other enterprise in the country?

A) Fulton's steamboat company
B) Lowell Mills
C) the postal system
D) the Erie Canal Company

Answer 2

the postal system

Question 3

What was key to making the Merrimack valley the nation's greatest industrial center in the first half of the nineteenth century?

A) regulating the river's waters
B) the Lawrence dam
C) New Hampshire lakes
D) Lowell's seven canals

Answer 3

regulating the river's waters

Question 4

Industrial work in the factory resulted in ________ compared to work as a skilled artisan.

A) lower productivity
B) lower product quality
C) higher social status
D) None of these answers is correct.

Question 5

Craftworkers such as carpenters, printers, and tailors formed unions, and in 1834 individual unions came together in the

A) American Federation of Labor.
B) Allied Craftworkers Union.
C) National Trades' Union.
D) Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Question 6

In its social impact, the national market economy did all of the following EXCEPT

A) significantly elevate the status of workers.
B) produce greater per capita wealth in American society.
C) stimulate materialism.
D) reorganize society toward greater specialization.

Question 7

Why was American life marked by anxiety in the midst of early nineteenth-century prosperity?

A) because foreign movements seemed to repeatedly threaten national security
B) because cyclical depressions made that prosperity seem fleeting
C) because corrupt politicians could infringe on a person's liberties at any time
D) because the nagging issue of slavery threatened to cause a permanent rift in the culture

Question 8

What conflict in values emerged as America went through its market revolution?

A) Most farmers clung to the ideal of a semisubsistence way of life, despite the relentless reach of commercial networks.
B) Personal lifestyles prized by northerners, who were more religious, differed from those of southerners, who were more materialistic-a distinction that national market networks made obvious.
C) Americans had long enjoyed living in settled and stable communities, but transportation improvements led to much greater geographic mobility.
D) Although Americans professed to believe in equality, the national market economy coupled with American materialistic pursuits led to ever greater inequalities in wealth.

Question 9

Sam Patch used his waterfall jumping skills to gain personal notoriety and as a defiant ________ against the changing times.

Question 10

What were the new forms of transportation that developed in the period of 1800-1850? What was the importance of each type of transportation?

Question 11

Explain why the transportation revolution stimulated the development of a national domestic market.

Question 12

List three ways the government promoted economic growth after 1815. Which do you think was the most important, and why?

Question 13

How did factories differ from earlier forms of production in the United States?

Question 14

Why did factories develop in the United States? How did they change over time?

Question 15

How did the Supreme Court aid the development of a market economy?

Question 16

How does Chauncey Jerome's life encapsulate the major changes that occurred in this period? How can his life stand as a symbol of the changes discussed in this chapter?

Question 17

What evidence is there that the period from 1815 to 1850 was a time of heightened anxiety in American life? What were the causes of this anxiety?

Question 18

List three ways the development of a national market changed American society after 1815. Did these changes make American society more open than before? What does the phrase "opening of America"
mean?

Question 19

Explain the impact of the market economy on the following Americans: a mountain man, a Lowell mill girl, a farmer, and Chauncey Jerome.

Question 20

What is the difference between social and geographic mobility? How were these related in the years after 1815?

Question 21

The creation of a domestic market, the development of cheap transportation, the rise of cities, and the availability of capital and credit can all be seen to have stimulated the shift to factory production. Choose three of these factors and explain how they contributed to the rise of factories.
ch10 Key