Chapter 6 Key Terms and Assessments
Key Terms
anarchism an ideology advocating that government be abolished
contract labor a system in which people sign contracts promising to perform work in exchange for a fee
debt bondage a system in which a person who owes money works (or provides someone else to work) for the creditor until the debt has been repaid
demographic transition a reduction in family size in the late 1800s caused by falling birth rates in industrialized nations
labor union an association that organizes workers of all kinds, both skilled and unskilled
naturalism a literary style that emphasized realistic, detached, impersonal depictions of characters whose actions were molded by their environment in ways they often had no ability to control
penal labor forced labor assigned as punishment to those convicted of crimes
pogroms violent attacks on Jewish people in the Russian empire
real wages wages measured in terms of the amount of goods and services that can be purchased with them
realism a literary and artistic style that realistically depicted everyday life in the contemporary world
romanticism an artistic movement formed in response to the Industrial Revolution that prized emotion and imagination and took as its subjects the themes of nature, the ordinary person, the exotic, the ancient, and the supernatural
social democrat people who favor the creation of a socialist society through democratic means
Taylorism a system of management that sought to improve workers’ productivity by curbing wasteful movements
trade union an association that organizes workers in a particular craft or industry
Assessments
Review Questions
1. What was the goal of scientific management?
a. to increase workers’ efficiency
b. to raise workers’ pay
c. to make factories safer
d. to shorten the workday
2. How did assembly lines affect workers?
a. They made workdays shorter.
b. They provided greater protection from injury.
c. They made jobs boring and repetitious.
d. They lowered pay.
3. What was an important result of electrifying the workplace?
a. It made jobs more dangerous by exposing workers to electrical currents.
b. It enabled factories to stay open later and people to work at night.
c. It provided better heating in the winter.
d. It reduced the strength needed to perform certain tasks, creating more jobs for children.
4. How did married working-class women in western Europe commonly supplement the family’s income in the late nineteenth century?
a. They did piecework at home.
b. They worked in mines.
c. They taught school.
d. They gave music lessons.
5. To what nineteenth-century event does the term “demographic transition” refer?
a. the disappearance of skilled crafts
b. the decrease in the age of first marriage
c. the decrease in family size
d. the movement from rural areas to cities
6. What was an important medical innovation of the late nineteenth century?
a. the smallpox vaccine
b. x-rays
c. CAT scans
d. the stethoscope
7. Which artistic style features impersonal depictions of characters compelled to behave in ways over which they have no control?
a. romanticism
b. realism
c. impressionism
d. naturalism
8. What was the Great Stink?
a. a stench coming from the polluted River Thames that nearly disrupted British government
b. the name given to the poorest neighborhood in Chicago
c. a nickname that city dwellers gave to peasants recently arrived from the countryside
d. a nickname for the Paris sewer system
9. What common disease of the period was caused by contaminated water?
a. tuberculosis
b. asthma
c. cholera
d. syphilis
10. What innovation made nineteenth-century cities cleaner?
a. streetlights
b. electric streetcars
c. outhouses
d. public water fountains
11. What were Selfridge’s, Le Bon Marché, and Matsuzakaya?
a. famous saloons
b. urban department stores
c. company towns built for miners
d. newspapers
12. Which artistic and literary movement glorified nature, common people, exotic places, and the historical past?
a. romanticism
b. modernism
c. naturalism
d. classicism
13. What was a common way in which contract laborers could fall into debt bondage?
a. renting a home in a nearby city
b. buying goods at a store owned by the employer
c. borrowing money from a friend
d. running away
14. What was the katorga system?
a. a form of penal servitude in which criminals were sent to labor camps in Siberia
b. a form of debt bondage used in Brazil
c. a British system of contracting for passage to another country in exchange for labor
d. the practice in French brothels of charging prostitutes for food and clothing so they always remained in debt
15. What was the primary reason contract laborers were taken to Hawaii?
a. build railroads
b. grow sugarcane
c. work in salt mines
d. fish for abalone
16. Which country pressured others to end the slave trade?
a. Canada
b. the United States
c. Britain
d. Germany
17. Other than criminals, what kinds of people often ended up in the Russian katorga?
a. debtors
b. alcoholics
c. political prisoners
d. unfaithful partners
18. What was a negative result of the abolition of Russian serfdom?
a. Domestic serfs received no land and no longer had a place to live.
b. Serfs were required to leave the farms on which they had always lived.
c. Serfs were no longer entitled to food and clothing from their employer.
d. Serfs were no longer protected from arrest by their employers when they committed crimes.
19. Why did Brazil attempt to attract European immigrants in the second half of the nineteenth century?
a. to make its population more White
b. to employ them in factories
c. to employ them in mines
d. to have them establish schools and universities
20. Immigrant laborers from which country were completely excluded from the United States in 1882?
a. Russia
b. Germany
c. China
d. Japan
21. What event caused many Chinese people to flee their country in the middle of the nineteenth century?
a. dust storms in Manchuria
b. the fall of the Ming dynasty
c. a typhoon that struck Kowloon Island
d. the Taiping Rebellion
22. What kinds of immigrants did Australia try to exclude in the early twentieth century?
a. Jewish people
b. non-Europeans
c. Irish people
d. unskilled laborers
23. Jewish people fled the Russian empire in the late nineteenth century to escape poverty and
a. epidemic disease
b. anti-Semitic violence
c. civil war
d. famine
24. Which city was rebuilt by Baron Haussmann in the second half of the nineteenth century?
a. Rome
b. London
c. Vienna
d. Paris
25. Which social movement was more successful in Protestant societies than in others?
a. housing reform
b. anti-prostitution campaigns
c. temperance and prohibition
d. health insurance advocacy
26. What was Britain’s Alkali Act intended to do?
a. protect drinking water from contamination
b. ensure that processed foods were safe to eat
c. prevent cholera
d. alleviate air pollution
27. Which country was the first to provide health insurance for workers?
a. the United States
b. Germany
c. France
d. Russia
28. Which of the following was an important difference between socialist parties in Europe?
a. Some parties accepted women and some did not.
b. Some believed the bourgeoisie should be executed and others did not.
c. Some advocated revolution and some a more gradual democratic approach.
d. Some supported workers’ rights and some did not.
Check Your Understanding Questions
- In what ways did nineteenth-century industrialization lead to lower death rates and longer life spans?
- Why did child labor in factories become less common in western Europe and the United States by the end of the nineteenth century?
- How did industrialization affect family size in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
- What made nineteenth-century industrial cities so dirty?
- What were the causes of disease in nineteenth-century industrial cities?
- What were the advantages of city life?
- By what means did White people in the southern United States legally force African American people to work for them after the abolition of slavery?
- What steps led to the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888?
- For what similar reasons did European and Asian emigrants move to other countries in the nineteenth century?
- To what extent was race a factor in the treatment of immigrants by their host countries?
- Why did the working class sometimes resent the attempts of the middle class to pass legislation intended to help them?
- How did nineteenth-century governments and reformers try to prevent the spread of disease in the industrial city?
- What were Samuel Smiles and Herbert Spencer’s ideas regarding the poor?
Application and Reflection Questions
- On the whole, did industrialization improve the life of the working class or worsen it? Why?
- How did conditions faced by working-class people in the nineteenth century compare to those working-class people face today? Are the problems the same or different? If different, how?
- On the whole, do you think there were more benefits to nineteenth-century city life, or more drawbacks? Why?
- Is city life better today than it was in the late nineteenth century? Why or why not?
- How did conditions faced by those emancipated from slavery in the United States in the late nineteenth century compare to others around the world facing similar conditions? Are the problems the same or different? If different, how?
- There has been much talk of giving reparations (monetary compensation) to the descendants of enslaved African American people to compensate them for their ancestors’ labor. Do you believe this should be done? Why or why not? Should other countries in which slavery or serfdom existed do the same? Why or why not?
- Why do many people oppose immigration today? Are these reasons similar to or different from the reasons of people in the nineteenth century? In what ways?
- What role does race play in the response to immigrants today?
- How do we try to help the poor today? Has our approach changed from the nineteenth century? What do we now think are the reasons for poverty?
- Are governments today concerned with protecting the rights of workers? Are they more concerned with the rights of workers or the rights of employers?
- What kinds of private reform movements exist today? What are they focused on changing?