Thomas Edison developed a practical incandescent light bulb in 1879.
Correct Answer
True
True. Edison tested thousands of filament materials before finding one that glowed long enough, and he soon built a company to supply electric power in New York City.
Category: Age of Invention
Question 2
Telephones remained rare in the United States, with only a few thousand in use by 1900.
Correct Answer
False
False. Telephone use spread quickly; tens of thousands were in use by 1880 and more than a million by 1900.
Category: Age of Invention
Question 3
The first transatlantic telegraph cable, laid in 1858, worked reliably for decades.
Correct Answer
False
False. The 1858 cable failed within weeks; a lasting transatlantic cable was completed in 1866, and undersea lines soon linked the continents.
Category: Age of Invention
Question 4
Steel prices rose sharply as American steel production grew in the late 1800s.
Correct Answer
False
False. New processes and large mills drove steel prices down dramatically even as output multiplied, making steel the backbone of construction and railroads.
Category: Steel and Oil Empires
Question 5
John D. Rockefeller entered the oil business by drilling wells rather than refining oil.
Correct Answer
False
False. Rockefeller chose to focus on refining crude oil into kerosene, and his Standard Oil came to control most American refining.
Category: Steel and Oil Empires
Question 6
Rockefeller used secret rebates from railroads to undercut competing oil refiners.
Correct Answer
True
True. Standard Oil's huge shipping volume won it discounts that rivals could not get, letting it sell cheaply and drive competitors out or buy them up.
Category: Steel and Oil Empires
Question 7
Buying up competing firms that make the same product is known as horizontal integration.
Correct Answer
True
True. Horizontal integration combines rivals in one stage of an industry, as Standard Oil did with refineries, while vertical integration controls the stages of production.
Category: Steel and Oil Empires
Question 8
By 1900, a handful of tycoons controlled most of the nation's railroad lines.
Correct Answer
True
True. Through consolidation, about seven tycoons and their banking allies, among them the Vanderbilts, J. P. Morgan, Edward Harriman and James J. Hill, controlled over 70 percent of operating lines by 1900.
Category: Railroads and Finance
Question 9
The Sherman Antitrust Act quickly ended the wave of business mergers in the 1890s.
Correct Answer
False
False. The law was weakly enforced, and hundreds of mergers followed in the next decade as giant corporations such as U.S. Steel formed.
Category: Railroads and Finance
Question 10
Many steelworkers of the late 1800s worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week.
Correct Answer
True
True. Long hours were common in heavy industry, and safety protections were poor, so injuries and deaths on the job were frequent.
Category: Working Conditions
Question 11
A typical factory workweek around 1900 was about 40 hours.
Correct Answer
False
False. Factory workers commonly put in about 60 hours a week, and the eight-hour day remained a goal of the labor movement.
Category: Working Conditions
Question 12
Women factory workers in the late 1800s were usually paid more than men doing similar work.
Correct Answer
False
False. Women earned less than men, even though the number of women working for wages grew rapidly after 1870.
Category: Working Conditions
Question 13
Federal law banned child labor in factories by 1890.
Correct Answer
False
False. Child factory labor grew rapidly in this period, and some states passed limits, but federal protections came only in the twentieth century.
Category: Working Conditions
Question 14
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began among workers on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
Correct Answer
True
True. The walkout started in July 1877 at Martinsburg, West Virginia, on the Baltimore and Ohio line and spread along the rail lines to Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis and other cities until federal troops put it down.
Category: Labor Unions and Strikes
Question 15
The National Labor Union persuaded Congress to pass an eight-hour workday law for federal workers.
Correct Answer
True
True. Founded in 1866, the National Labor Union persuaded Congress in 1868 to pass an eight-hour day for federal laborers and mechanics, though it was poorly enforced, and the union declined after the Panic of 1873.
Category: Labor Unions and Strikes
Question 16
Terence Powderly led the American Federation of Labor during its rise in the 1880s.
Correct Answer
False
False. Powderly led the Knights of Labor; Samuel Gompers led the American Federation of Labor.
Category: Labor Unions and Strikes
Question 17
The 1886 Haymarket rally in Chicago turned deadly when someone threw a bomb at police.
Correct Answer
True
True. The bomb and the gunfire that followed killed police officers and civilians, and the event fed fears that labor activism meant radical violence.
Category: Labor Unions and Strikes
Question 18
The American Railway Union supported Pullman workers by refusing to handle trains carrying Pullman cars.
Correct Answer
True
True. The union's boycott spread the 1894 strike across the national rail network until federal action ended it.
Category: Labor Unions and Strikes
Question 19
Department stores such as Macy's and Marshall Field's offered many kinds of goods under one roof.
Correct Answer
True
True. Big-city department stores used large display windows and wide selections to draw shoppers and helped create a new consumer culture.
Category: Consumer Culture
Question 20
Buying on credit became less common as the new consumer culture grew.
Correct Answer
False
False. Stores and companies such as Singer increasingly let customers buy on credit or installment plans, which spread spending and debt.
Category: Consumer Culture