Which inventor developed a practical electric trolley system in the late 1880s, transforming mass transit inside American cities?
Frank Sprague
✓
Thomas Edison
Elisha Otis
Alexander Graham Bell
Correct Answer
Frank Sprague
Frank Sprague built an electric streetcar system in the late 1880s that replaced slow horse-drawn cars and let cities spread outward along trolley lines. Thomas Edison is known for the incandescent light bulb and power plants. Elisha Otis is known for the safety elevator. Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.
Category: City Technology
Question 2
Which ten-story Chicago building, completed in 1885, is commonly considered the first modern skyscraper?
Flatiron Building
Home Insurance Building
✓
Woolworth Building
Empire State Building
Correct Answer
Home Insurance Building
Chicago's Home Insurance Building used a metal frame to carry its weight, the feature that made true skyscrapers possible. The Flatiron Building is a New York tower from the early 1900s. The Woolworth Building was a later New York skyscraper finished in 1913. The Empire State Building was completed in 1931.
Category: City Technology
Question 3
Which 1890 book by Jacob Riis used photographs to show middle-class readers the misery of tenement life?
The Jungle
Looking Backward
How the Other Half Lives
✓
Progress and Poverty
Correct Answer
How the Other Half Lives
How the Other Half Lives combined Riis's reporting and photographs of slum families, and it built public support for laws regulating tenements. The Jungle was Upton Sinclair's later novel about meatpacking. Looking Backward was Edward Bellamy's utopian novel. Progress and Poverty was Henry George's economic critique.
Category: Urban Problems
Question 4
Which reformer cofounded Hull House in Chicago in 1889 with Ellen Gates Starr, a leading example of the settlement house movement?
Lillian Wald
Florence Kelley
Julia Lathrop
Jane Addams
✓
Correct Answer
Jane Addams
Jane Addams, with Ellen Gates Starr, opened Hull House to offer classes, childcare, health care and other services to working-class neighbors, and she later won the Nobel Peace Prize. Lillian Wald cofounded the Henry Street Settlement in New York with Mary Brewster. Florence Kelley was a Hull House resident who fought child labor. Julia Lathrop, another Hull House resident, later headed the federal Children's Bureau.
Category: Urban Reform
Question 5
The social gospel movement, promoted by ministers such as Washington Gladden, taught that Christians should do what?
Work to improve conditions of the poor in this world
✓
Withdraw from cities to start rural communities
Focus only on personal salvation in the afterlife
Leave all charity work to the federal government
Correct Answer
Work to improve conditions of the poor in this world
Social gospel ministers argued that faith required action against poverty and urban suffering, and churches added libraries, gyms and health classes. Withdrawing to rural communities was not the goal; the movement focused on cities. Focusing only on the afterlife is the view it rejected. Leaving charity to the federal government was not its position, since churches themselves took on the work.
Category: Urban Reform
Question 6
In the late nineteenth century, most African American men who moved from the rural South to Northern cities found what kind of work?
Skilled positions in craft unions
Low-wage unskilled and service jobs
✓
Management posts in large factories
Clerical work in government offices
Correct Answer
Low-wage unskilled and service jobs
Employers and many unions kept most Black workers out of skilled trades, so migrant men usually worked as laborers, porters, waiters and servants, while many women worked as domestic servants and laundresses. Skilled positions in craft unions were largely closed to them because many unions excluded Black workers. Management posts in large factories went almost entirely to White men. Clerical work in government offices was rarely open to Black migrants in this period.
Category: African American Migration
Question 7
Beginning in the 1880s, the share of immigrants arriving from which region rose sharply?
Northern and western Europe
East Asia
Southern and eastern Europe
✓
Latin America
Correct Answer
Southern and eastern Europe
The new immigrants came largely from places such as Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Poland, and many were Catholic or Jewish. Northern and western Europe had supplied most earlier immigrants, but its share fell as arrivals from southern and eastern Europe surged. Immigration from China was sharply limited by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Latin American immigration grew mainly in the twentieth century.
Category: New Immigration
Question 8
Ellis Island, opened in 1892 as the main federal immigration station, sits in the harbor of which city?
Boston
Philadelphia
Baltimore
New York
✓
Correct Answer
New York
Ellis Island in New York Harbor processed millions of newcomers, checking them for disease and reviewing their papers before admitting most within hours. Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore were also immigrant ports, but none of them was the site of Ellis Island.
Category: New Immigration
Question 9
Neighborhoods such as Little Italy and Chinatown, where immigrants from one homeland clustered with shared languages, newspapers and food stores, are known as what?
Ethnic enclaves
✓
Streetcar suburbs
Company towns
Planned communities
Correct Answer
Ethnic enclaves
Ethnic enclaves gave immigrants familiar language, customs and support networks, though they also added to crowding in poor districts. Streetcar suburbs were middle-class areas built along transit lines. Company towns were owned by a single employer. Planned communities were designed in advance by developers, not formed by immigrant settlement.
Category: New Immigration
Question 10
Which Protestant minister's widely read 1885 book Our Country warned that immigration, Catholicism and the growth of cities endangered the nation?
Washington Gladden
Josiah Strong
✓
Dwight Moody
Henry Ward Beecher
Correct Answer
Josiah Strong
Josiah Strong's Our Country portrayed the new immigrants and the Catholic Church as threats to a Protestant nation, and it fed the nativist fears of the 1880s and 1890s. Washington Gladden was an Ohio minister who led the social gospel movement. Dwight Moody was a revivalist preacher who stressed personal conversion. Henry Ward Beecher was a famous Brooklyn preacher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Category: Nativism
Question 11
Tammany Hall, the most famous urban political machine of the era, was tied to which political party?
Republican
Whig
Democratic
✓
Populist
Correct Answer
Democratic
Tammany Hall was the Democratic Party's machine in New York City, led for a time by William Tweed. The Republican Party was its rival. The Whig Party had collapsed in the 1850s. The Populist Party formed in the 1890s and drew mainly on farmers.
Category: Machine Politics
Question 12
Under machine politics, the kickbacks and illegal profits that bosses collected in exchange for city contracts and favors were known as what?
Dividends
Tithes
Royalties
Graft
✓
Correct Answer
Graft
Graft is the use of political power for personal gain, such as bosses taking a cut of city contracts. Dividends are profits a corporation pays its shareholders. Tithes are religious contributions. Royalties are payments to the owner of a patent, copyright or resource.
Category: Machine Politics
Question 13
Why did many working-class immigrants support urban political machines?
Bosses offered jobs and quick help in exchange for votes
✓
Machines promised to end all further immigration
Bosses guaranteed honest and open city government
Machines abolished city taxes for the poor
Correct Answer
Bosses offered jobs and quick help in exchange for votes
Ward bosses gave newcomers jobs, small favors and fast fixes for local problems, and residents repaid them with votes. Machines did not promise to end immigration, since immigrants were their base. They were known for corruption, not honest government. They did not abolish city taxes for the poor.
Category: Machine Politics
Question 14
Which Brooklyn seaside resort became famous in the 1890s for amusement parks that drew working-class crowds?
Central Park
Coney Island
✓
Atlantic City
Niagara Falls
Correct Answer
Coney Island
Coney Island's amusement parks offered cheap rides, shows and spectacles that working-class city dwellers could afford. Central Park is a Manhattan park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, not a seaside resort. Atlantic City is a New Jersey resort, not part of Brooklyn. Niagara Falls is in upstate New York.
Category: Leisure and Culture
Question 15
What popular form of stage entertainment combined singing, dancing, comedy, magic and animal acts in a single variety show?
Opera
Ballet
Vaudeville
✓
Symphony
Correct Answer
Vaudeville
Vaudeville shows strung together many short acts and drew large urban audiences, and performers such as Harry Houdini became famous on its stages. Opera is sung drama. Ballet is a dance form. A symphony is an orchestral concert work.
Category: Leisure and Culture
Question 16
The White City at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago inspired which urban planning movement?
Settlement house movement
Social gospel movement
Temperance movement
City Beautiful movement
✓
Correct Answer
City Beautiful movement
The City Beautiful movement called for grand public buildings, larger parks and wide tree-lined boulevards modeled on the exposition's White City. The settlement house movement provided neighborhood services to the poor. The social gospel movement urged churches to address poverty. The temperance movement opposed alcohol.
Category: Urban Reform
Question 17
Applying the phrase "survival of the fittest" to human society, which school of thought argued that the rich had earned their place and that government aid to the poor was harmful?
Social Darwinism
✓
Pragmatism
Instrumentalism
Transcendentalism
Correct Answer
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism, popularized by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, treated competition in society like natural selection and opposed reforms that helped the poor. Pragmatism, associated with William James, judged ideas by practical results. Instrumentalism was John Dewey's view of education and science as tools of reform. Transcendentalism was an earlier movement stressing intuition and nature.
Category: Ideas and Literature
Question 18
Painters such as Robert Henri and George Bellows, who portrayed gritty scenes of urban working-class life, belonged to which group?
Hudson River School
Ashcan School
✓
Harlem Renaissance
Impressionists
Correct Answer
Ashcan School
The Ashcan School painted tenements, crowded streets and working-class leisure in a realist style. The Hudson River School painted romantic American landscapes earlier in the century. The Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural movement of the 1920s. The Impressionists were mainly French painters focused on light and color.
Category: Ideas and Literature
Question 19
Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) introduced which term for lavish spending meant to display wealth and status?
Survival of the fittest
Gospel of wealth
Conspicuous consumption
✓
Single tax
Correct Answer
Conspicuous consumption
Veblen used conspicuous consumption to criticize wealthy elites who spent extravagantly to show off rather than to meet needs. Survival of the fittest was Herbert Spencer's phrase. Gospel of wealth was Andrew Carnegie's idea that the rich should use their fortunes for public good. Single tax was Henry George's proposal.
Category: Ideas and Literature
Question 20
Henry George's Progress and Poverty (1879) proposed which remedy for growing inequality?
A government takeover of railroads
An end to all tariffs
A ban on further immigration
A single tax on land
✓
Correct Answer
A single tax on land
George argued that rising land values enriched owners without effort, so a single tax on land could fund government and reduce inequality. A government takeover of railroads was a Populist demand, not his central idea. Ending all tariffs was not his main proposal. A ban on immigration was a nativist goal, not his.
Category: Ideas and Literature