Deck 23: Coping With Change, 1920-1929

Question 1

Which of the following statements accurately describe the automobile in the 1920s?

A) It was still just a plaything of the rich.
B) It lost much of its potential market as people turned to the new forms of mass transit available.
C) It was produced mostly for the overseas market since Americans could not afford the high-priced American models.
D) It became common in most American socioeconomic groups, as cheap Japanese models flooded the market.
E) It saw a big increase in popularity, with the number of vehicle registrations reaching 20 million in 1929.

Answer 1

It saw a big increase in popularity, with the number of vehicle registrations reaching 20 million in 1929.

Question 2

During the 1920s, American foreign policy toward Europe was characterized by

A) a willingness to forgive the World War I debts owed to the U.S. government by former allies.
B) a desire to lead the League of Nations.
C) by independent internationalism with an occasional willingness to enter into arms control treaties.
D) a commitment to the World Court.
E) complete isolation from other countries.

Answer 2

by independent internationalism with an occasional willingness to enter into arms control treaties.

Question 3

Which statement best describes the post-World War I American attitude toward businessmen?

A) Business values saturated American culture.
B) Americans considered corporate leaders to be "robber barons."
C) There was a growing hostility to the growth of the "military-industrial complex."
D) Postwar America held businessmen in contempt as war profiteers.
E) Most Americans blamed corporate America for the post-war depression.

Answer 3

Business values saturated American culture.

Question 4

The teaching of this subject in public schools was the key issue in the Scopes Trial.

A) evolution.
B) sex education.
C) creationism.
D) racial equality.
E) biology.

Question 5

What increasingly characterized commerce in the 1920s?

A) "Mom and pop" businesses drove the economy.
B) Chain-stores competed with independent businesses.
C) Workers and consumers established cooperative.
D) The number of women-owned businesses increased as women took more control over consumerism.
E) None of these choices

Question 6

The term "welfare capitalism" refers to

A) corporations providing employee benefits in the hope of preventing the establishment of unions.
B) the high rate of unemployment in the 1920s, when many people had to go on welfare.
C) the trade-union philosophy that the welfare of the workers should be the first concern of capitalism.
D) the federal government providing massive subsidies to select government contractors.
E) the creation of Social Security and Medicare in the 1930s.

Question 7

Which of the following statements concerning the equal rights amendment advocated by Alice Paul and the National Woman's party is true?

A) It unified the feminist movement in the 1920s, which had become splintered after women won the vote.
B) It attracted the support of young women, who looked up to the feminists for their civic idealism.
C) It was supported by an alliance of professional women and labor activists.
D) It turned out to be the deciding issue in the 1928 presidential election.
E) It was opposed by many young women, who began defining liberation in terms of consumption.

Question 8

Which of the following examples reveals the nativism in the United States in the 1920s?

A) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed as much for their ethnic origins as their crimes.
B) President Harding issued an executive order limiting the number of non-British immigrants.
C) Congress passed a law in 1924 that strictly limited immigration.
D) White Citizen Councils increased in membership by stressing anti-black and anti-foreigner messages.
E) President Calvin Coolidge publicly supported the lynching of immigrants in certain circumstances.

Question 9

Which of the following was not one of the reasons that the union movement weakened in the 1920s?

A) Overall wage rates rose steadily in the 1920s.
B) The older craft-based pattern of union organization was ill suited to the new mass-production industries.
C) Management was hostile to labor organizing.
D) The "open shop" was dubbed the "American plan."
E) Inequities and regional variations in wages were eliminated through the Federal Fair Wages Act.

Question 10

Henry Ford led the way in industry by

A) pioneering a style of management that delegated corporate decisions to professionals in specialized divisions.
B) instituting worker-management teams to share decision making about production.
C) paying his workers higher wages to encourage consumerism.
D) breaking labor unions and replaced them with industry "worker associations."
E) paying his workers low wages to increase the profit margin.

Question 11

What happened in the 1920s Teapot Dome Scandal?

A) President Herbert Hoover was caught having an affair with one of the secretaries in the White House.
B) Interior Secretary Albert Fall received bribes to lease naval oil reserves to two private companies.
C) Secretary of the Treasury William Clinton invested federal funds in the Whitewater land deal.
D) President Calvin Coolidge used federal funds to buy his wife a fancy tea serving set.
E) Vice President Davis was accused of lying under oath about his investments in Mexico.

Question 12

In the 1920s, Babe Ruth was famous because

A) he raised people's awareness of profession boxing.
B) he hit 60 home runs in one year.
C) he was the first black football player to win the Heisman Trophy.
D) he won the Master's, the U.S. Open, the

Question 13

In the 1920s American business activities abroad

A) increased as American built foreign production facilities and acquired foreign sources of raw materials.
B) decreased as investment opportunities in United States production grew.
C) were outlawed in order to keep the American dollar at home.
D) decreased, particularly in Latin America, because foreign governments began to nationalize their industries.
E) ended, as a worldwide depression began.

Question 14

What did the Fordney-McCumber Tariff and Smoot-Hawley Tariff demonstrate about U.S. trade policy from 1920 to 1930?

A) the United States was committed to laissez-faire economics.
B) the United States was willing to raise tariffs to protect domestic manufacturers.
C) the United States wanted to maintain lower tariffs.
D) the concept free trade would never be abandoned.
E) the nation had completely abandoned the principles of free trade.

Question 15

Who was the main subject in Bruce Barton's The Man Nobody Knows?

A) Henry Ford
B) Jesus Christ
C) Babe Ruth
D) Bartolomeo Vanzetti
E) Warren Harding

Question 16

Which sector of the economy did not prosper in the 1920s?

A) Manufacturing
B) Agriculture
C) The "service" sector
D) Financial services
E) New consumer goods

Question 17

Which of the following statements accurately reflects trends during the 1920s regarding women in the work force?

A) With their new feeling of "liberation" gained during World War I, women made gigantic inroads into previously all-male professions.
B) Most college women entered such traditionally "female" professions as nursing, school teaching, and librarianship.
C) The proportion of working women who were single rose by about 30%, as single women came to dominate teaching at the university level.
D) The number of women in the workforce declined.
E) The number of women physicians soared.

Question 18

What was the social philosophy of Herbert Hoover?

A) Big business was the answer to America's problems.
B) He saw unfettered competition as the life force of capitalism.
C) He advocated a cooperative, socially responsible economic order shaped by the voluntary action of capitalist leaders.
D) He supported direct government intervention in the economy.
E) He argued in favor of higher wages and higher personal income taxes.

Question 19

Which of the following statements concerning women in the work force in the 1920s is true?

A) Women workers swelled the union movement.
B) Women found increased job opportunities on assembly lines.
C) Women faced systematic wage discrimination.
D) Women workers declined in number and power as women returned home and let their husbands resume their careers.
E) Women workers increased proportionally so that almost half of women were working outside the home.

Question 20

Which of the following writers is not correctly identified with one of his/her books?

A) F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
B) Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
C) Henry Mencken, The Sun Also Rises
D) Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
E) Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt.

Question 21

Which of the following statements concerning the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s is not true?

A) The Klan was made up of ordinary Americans.
B) The Klan targeted blacks, Catholics, or Jews, depending on the region.
C) The Klan dropped the elaborate rituals, titles, and costumes of the Reconstruction era in order to attract a mass membership.
D) Estimates of Klan membership in the 1920s range as high as 5 million Americans.
E) It promised to restore the nation's lost racial, ethnic, religious, and moral purity.

Question 22

What did Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, advocate?

A) blacks should return to Africa.
B) blacks should return to the rural South because northern migration had led only to the ghetto.
C) blacks should integrate into white society.
D) blacks should focus on the acquisition of practical skills while temporarily accepting second-class status.
E) blacks should exercise political power by voting.

Question 23

Which of the following is not one of the reasons that Prohibition failed?

A) Organized crime provided a ready supply of liquor.
B) It proved impossible to enforce rules of behavior with which a significant portion of the population disagreed.
C) The Volstead Act was underfunded.
D) New pharmaceutical discoveries cured the problem of alcohol abuse in a simpler way.
E) Prohibition laws were weakly enforced.

Question 24

The 1924 National Origins Act was designed to

A) increase the number of immigrants coming from Eastern Europe.
B) increase the number of immigrants coming from Asia.
C) increase the number of immigrants coming from South America.
D) decrease the number of immigrants coming from Southern and Eastern Europe.
E) decrease the number of immigrants coming from England.

Question 25

Which musical style epitomized the 1920s?

A) Swing
B) Ragtime
C) Jazz
D) Reggae
E) The blues

Question 26

What is the stereotype of the Jazz Age "flapper"?

A) a sophisticated, pleasure-mad young woman.
B) the key to the success of the Harlem Renaissance.
C) the "spiritual sister" of the suffragist since both suffragists and flappers supported feminist political action.
D) the product of publicists and advertising agencies.
E) the evangelical Christian woman who followed the teachings of Billy Sunday.

Question 27

In 1928 many Americans feared that if Al Smith were elected he would

A) answer to the pope.
B) enforce prohibition.
C) too much away to the socialists.
D) have a "kitchen cabinet" made up of women advisers.
E) make Christianity America's official religion.

Question 28

Why is Aimee Semple McPherson significant?

A) She confronted the American Civil Liberties Union in a conflict over the theory of evolution.
B) The popularity of her theatrical sermons illustrated the impact of fundamentalism on American society.
C) Her promotion of the Social Gospel popularized social service.
D) Her financial support enabled Marcus Garvey to found the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
E) She was the author of This Side of Paradise.

Question 29

Which of the following statements concerning the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s is not true?

A) It witnessed the flowering of black culture, particularly among writers.
B) It depended on white patronage.
C) It had little contact with the black masses.
D) It ended with the onset of the Great Depression, but stands as a monument to African-American cultural creativity.
E) It showcased the talents of Paul Robeson and Chuck Barry.

Question 30

Which three writers expressed hostility to the moralistic pieties of the old order and the business pieties of the new?

A) Bruce Barton, Theodore Dreiser, and Ernest Hemingway
B) H. L. Mencken, Lewis Mumford, and Horatio Alger
C) William Jennings Bryan, H. L. Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis
D) F. Scott Fitzgerald, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz
E) Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, and H. L. Mencken

Question 31

At the Washington Naval Arms Conference the major naval powers agreed that for ten years they would halt the construction of

A) nuclear weapons.
B) submarines.
C) aircraft carriers.
D) destroyers.
E) battleships.

Question 32

In the 1920s, housework

A) made easier for middle-class housewives because they were able to hire immigrant women and farm girls for household help.
B) reduced in terms of hours and sheer physical effort thanks to electrification, store-bought clothing, and purchased food.
C) "socialized" through cooperative apartments, commercial laundries, and other collective forms of housework.
D) increased because industrialization and crowded urban conditions made homes dirtier.
E) became simpler because air conditioning and electric heat made homes cleaner.

Question 33

Who won the 1928 presidential election?

A) Al Smith
B) Calvin Coolidge
C) Warren Harding
D) Herbert Hoover
E) Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Question 34

Which of the following was not one of the ways that the automobile affected American life?

A) It gave young people freedom from parental oversight.
B) It broke down the isolation of rural life.
C) It let more prosperous Americans move out to the suburbs.
D) It increased mobility and headaches.
E) It created new stereotypes of feminine delicacy.

Question 35

In the early 1920s religious fundamentalists focused especially on which of the following issues?

A) Eradicating slum conditions in cities
B) The sexual revolution
C) The theory of evolution
D) Equal rights for women
E) Restricting the immigration of Catholics and Jews

Question 36

What was the result of the "sexual revolution" of the 1920s?

A) There was a significant increase in premarital sex.
B) The new custom of casual dating developed.
C) It eradicated the "double standard" of sexual behavior for men and women.
D) It produced a surge in pornographic lyrics in popular music.
E) It led to a significant increase in the divorce rate.

Question 37

What happened to mass culture (magazines, books, radio, and movies) in the 1920s?

A) It became increasingly standardized as the same amusements were available in all parts of the country.
B) It retained regional favor in the South, New England, the Southwest, and other areas with strong cultural traditions.
C) It was available only to the middle class, who could afford it.
D) It became less important as Americans placed renewed emphasis on individualism.
E) It was strongly influenced by the radical, bohemian art world.

Question 38

What was the country's first radio network?

A) ABC
B) CBS
C) NBC
D) PBS
E) FOX

Question 39

What did the Sacco-Vanzetti case reveal?

A) the growing division over the use of the death penalty.
B) the strong ethnic prejudices in the United States.
C) the growing ties between immigrants and blacks.
D) the corruption in Boston's "Little Italy."
E) the need for immigration restrictions.