Review Questions

1. Which of the following four elements was not essential for creating massive urban growth in late nineteenth-century America?
electric lighting
communication improvements
skyscrapers
settlement houses

2. Which of the following did the settlement house movement offer as a means of relief for working-class women?
childcare
job opportunities
political advocacy
relocation services

3. What technological and economic factors combined to lead to the explosive growth of American cities at this time?

4. Why did African Americans consider moving from the rural South to the urban North following the Civil War?
to be able to buy land
to avoid slavery
to find wage-earning work
to further their education

5. Which of the following is true of late nineteenth-century southern and eastern European immigrants, as opposed to their western and northern European predecessors?
Southern and eastern European immigrants tended to be wealthier.
Southern and eastern European immigrants were, on the whole, more skilled and able to find better-paying employment.
Many southern and eastern European immigrants acquired land in the West, while western and northern European immigrants tended to remain in urban centers.
Ellis Island was the first destination for most southern and eastern Europeans.

6. What made recent European immigrants the ready targets of more established city dwellers? What was the result of this discrimination?

7. Which of the following was a popular pastime for working-class urban dwellers?
football games
opera
museums
amusement parks

8. Which of the following was a disadvantage of machine politics?
Immigrants did not have a voice.
Taxpayers ultimately paid higher city taxes due to graft.
Only wealthy parts of the city received timely responses.
Citizens who voiced complaints were at risk for their safety.

9. In what way did education play a crucial role in the emergence of the middle class?

10. Which of the following statements accurately represents Thorstein Veblen’s argument in The Theory of the Leisure Class?
All citizens of an industrial society would rise or fall based on their own innate merits.
The tenets of naturalism were the only laws through which society should be governed.
The middle class was overly focused on its own comfort and consumption.
Land and natural resources should belong equally to all citizens.

11. Which of the following was not an element of realism?
social Darwinism
instrumentalism
naturalism
pragmatism

12. In what ways did writers, photographers, and visual artists begin to embrace more realistic subjects in their work? How were these responses to the advent of the industrial age and the rise of cities?