Jacob Riis's 1890 book How the Other Half Lives stood out for exposing New York tenement conditions through what?
Photographs of slum life
✓
Statistical wage surveys
Interviews with city bosses
Serialized romance fiction
Correct Answer
Photographs of slum life
Riis paired his writing with photographs of crowded, unsanitary tenements, an early and influential use of photojournalism for reform. Statistical wage surveys were not the heart of his book. Interviews with city bosses were not his method; Lincoln Steffens was the muckraker known for exposing city corruption. Serialized romance fiction had nothing to do with his reporting.
Category: Muckrakers
Question 2
Muckraker Ida Tarbell's best-known series of magazine articles exposed the practices of which monopoly?
U.S. Steel
Standard Oil
✓
Union Pacific
American Tobacco
Correct Answer
Standard Oil
Tarbell's articles in McClure's laid out how John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil crushed competitors to build its monopoly. U.S. Steel was J. P. Morgan's giant, not the subject of her famous series. Union Pacific was a railroad and was not her target. American Tobacco was later prosecuted under the Sherman Act, but she did not make her name exposing it.
Category: Muckrakers
Question 3
How did the muckrakers differ from the yellow journalists of the same period?
They wrote only for small religious newspapers
They avoided criticizing big business
They sought public action to fix the problems they exposed
✓
They worked as paid staff of political parties
Correct Answer
They sought public action to fix the problems they exposed
Yellow journalists chased sensational stories to sell papers, while muckrakers exposed social problems in order to push the public and government toward solutions. They wrote only for small religious newspapers is wrong; their work ran in mass-circulation magazines such as McClure's. They avoided criticizing big business is wrong, since attacks on monopolies were central to their work. They worked as paid staff of political parties is wrong; they were independent writers.
Category: Muckrakers
Question 4
Progressive reformers backed the initiative, a measure that allowed voters to do what?
Remove an elected official before the term ended
Choose party nominees directly instead of through conventions
Vote to keep or repeal a law already passed
Petition to place a proposed new law on the ballot
✓
Correct Answer
Petition to place a proposed new law on the ballot
The initiative let citizens gather signatures to put a new law they proposed directly before the voters. Remove an elected official before the term ended describes the recall. Choose party nominees directly instead of through conventions describes the direct primary. Vote to keep or repeal a law already passed describes the referendum.
Category: Democratic Reforms
Question 5
The Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, changed the Constitution so that
U.S. senators are elected directly by voters
✓
Congress may collect a federal income tax
The manufacture and sale of alcohol are banned
No citizen may be denied the vote because of sex
Correct Answer
U.S. senators are elected directly by voters
Before the Seventeenth Amendment, state legislatures chose U.S. senators; the amendment gave that choice to the voters, a key Progressive goal for curbing corruption. Congress may collect a federal income tax was the Sixteenth Amendment. The manufacture and sale of alcohol are banned was the Eighteenth Amendment. No citizen may be denied the vote because of sex was the Nineteenth Amendment.
Category: Democratic Reforms
Question 6
Frederick Winslow Taylor promoted time-motion studies and management-set work routines under what name?
Welfare capitalism
Scientific management
✓
Industrial unionism
Social Darwinism
Correct Answer
Scientific management
Taylor's scientific management broke jobs into timed, standardized steps chosen by managers to raise efficiency, an idea that fit the Progressive faith in experts. Welfare capitalism refers to employers offering benefits to win worker loyalty. Industrial unionism was the strategy of organizing every worker in an industry, favored by the IWW. Social Darwinism applied ideas of natural selection to society.
Category: Social Reform
Question 7
Why did so many garment workers die in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City?
Firefighters refused to enter the building
The fire began in a crowded basement
Managers had locked the exit doors
✓
Striking union members locked the workers in
Correct Answer
Managers had locked the exit doors
Managers had locked exit doors, and the building's lone fire escape collapsed, so many workers were trapped on the upper floors. Firefighters refused to enter the building is wrong; their ladders simply could not reach the upper floors. The fire began in a crowded basement is wrong; it broke out high in the building, on the eighth floor. Striking union members locked the workers in is wrong; management, not unions, locked the exits.
Category: Social Reform
Question 8
The Keating-Owen Act of 1916, later struck down by the Supreme Court, was meant to
Set an eight-hour day for railroad workers
Lower tariffs on imported farm tools
Require accurate labels on foods and drugs
Ban interstate trade in goods made by children
✓
Correct Answer
Ban interstate trade in goods made by children
The Keating-Owen Act barred goods made by young children from interstate commerce, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, and a lasting federal ban came only with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Set an eight-hour day for railroad workers was the Adamson Act. Lower tariffs on imported farm tools was part of the Underwood Tariff of 1913. Require accurate labels on foods and drugs was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
Category: Social Reform
Question 9
The Anti-Saloon League's national campaign succeeded with the ratification of which constitutional amendment in 1919?
Eighteenth Amendment
✓
Sixteenth Amendment
Seventeenth Amendment
Nineteenth Amendment
Correct Answer
Eighteenth Amendment
The Eighteenth Amendment, ratified in 1919, banned the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol nationwide, the goal the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union had pursued. The Sixteenth Amendment allowed a federal income tax. The Seventeenth Amendment provided for direct election of senators. The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, barred denying the vote on account of sex.
Category: Social Reform
Question 10
Beginning in 1917, members of Alice Paul's National Woman's Party who picketed the White House to pressure President Wilson became known as the
Bull Moosers
Silent Sentinels
✓
Wobblies
Mugwumps
Correct Answer
Silent Sentinels
The Silent Sentinels picketed the White House for nearly two years; many were jailed, and hunger strikes and forced feedings drew public sympathy that helped move Wilson to support a suffrage amendment. Bull Moosers were supporters of Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 Progressive Party. Wobblies were members of the Industrial Workers of the World. Mugwumps were reform Republicans of the 1880s.
Category: Women's Suffrage
Question 11
Carrie Chapman Catt, who made winning the vote for women her organization's top priority, led which group?
National Woman's Party
National Consumers League
National American Woman Suffrage Association
✓
Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Correct Answer
National American Woman Suffrage Association
Catt led the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the large mainstream suffrage group formed in 1890, and used organized, modern publicity to build support for a federal amendment. The National Woman's Party was Alice Paul's more militant group. The National Consumers League, led by Florence Kelley, fought sweatshops and unsafe labor. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union focused on banning alcohol.
Category: Women's Suffrage
Question 12
In his 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech, Booker T. Washington urged Black Southerners to
Demand immediate political and social equality
Leave the South and resettle in Africa
Form a separate Black political party
Focus on economic progress before civil rights
✓
Correct Answer
Focus on economic progress before civil rights
Washington argued that Black Americans should concentrate on economic self-improvement and job skills, believing that political and civil rights would follow; critics said this accepted segregation. Demand immediate political and social equality was the position of W. E. B. Du Bois and the Niagara Movement. Leave the South and resettle in Africa was not his message. Form a separate Black political party was not part of his speech.
Category: African American Activism
Question 13
Niagara Movement leader W. E. B. Du Bois argued that Black Americans should be led by an educated elite he called
The Talented Tenth
✓
The New Negro
The Old Guard
The Black Cabinet
Correct Answer
The Talented Tenth
Du Bois believed the best-educated tenth of Black Americans should lead the push for full equality, in contrast to Booker T. Washington's stress on vocational training. The New Negro was a phrase associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The Old Guard usually describes conservative party leaders. The Black Cabinet was the informal group of Black advisers to Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s.
Category: African American Activism
Question 14
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was formed largely in response to what event?
The assassination of President McKinley
A 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois
✓
The 1912 Progressive Party convention
The death of Booker T. Washington
Correct Answer
A 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois
White mob violence against Black residents of Springfield, Illinois, in 1908 spurred an interracial group of reformers, including Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, to issue a call that produced the NAACP. The assassination of President McKinley in 1901 was not connected to its founding. The 1912 Progressive Party convention came after the NAACP already existed. The death of Booker T. Washington came in 1915, years later.
Category: African American Activism
Question 15
The first major antitrust suit of Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, upheld by the Supreme Court in 1904, broke up which railroad holding company?
U.S. Steel Corporation
Pullman Palace Car Company
Northern Securities Company
✓
Bethlehem Steel Company
Correct Answer
Northern Securities Company
Roosevelt revived the Sherman Antitrust Act by suing Northern Securities, which controlled several major northern railroads, and the Court ordered it dissolved by a five-to-four vote. U.S. Steel Corporation was a trust Roosevelt allowed to continue. Pullman Palace Car Company built railroad cars and was known for the 1894 strike, not this suit. Bethlehem Steel Company was a steelmaker, not a railroad holding company.
Category: Roosevelt's Presidency
Question 16
How did Roosevelt respond to the anthracite coal strike of 1902?
He sent federal troops to break the strike
He ordered the mines closed for a year
He left the owners to settle it alone
He brought both sides to the White House to negotiate
✓
Correct Answer
He brought both sides to the White House to negotiate
Roosevelt intervened directly by calling mine owners and union leaders to the White House, and the settlement that followed gave miners a modest raise and slightly shorter hours. He sent federal troops to break the strike describes how earlier presidents handled labor conflicts, not Roosevelt. He ordered the mines closed for a year did not happen. He left the owners to settle it alone is the hands-off approach he rejected.
Category: Roosevelt's Presidency
Question 17
Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle helped win passage in 1906 of which law?
Meat Inspection Act
✓
Hepburn Act
Clayton Antitrust Act
Elkins Act
Correct Answer
Meat Inspection Act
Sinclair's description of filthy Chicago packinghouses shocked readers, and Roosevelt backed the Meat Inspection Act, which set up federal inspection of meat; the Pure Food and Drug Act passed the same year. The Hepburn Act strengthened railroad rate regulation. The Clayton Antitrust Act came in 1914 under Wilson. The Elkins Act of 1903 targeted railroad rebates.
Category: Roosevelt's Presidency
Question 18
In the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy of 1909, President Taft fired Gifford Pinchot from which post?
Secretary of the Interior
Chief of the U.S. Forest Service
✓
Secretary of War
Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission
Correct Answer
Chief of the U.S. Forest Service
Pinchot, Roosevelt's friend and conservation ally, headed the Forest Service and publicly objected when Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger approved a sale of federal land, so Taft fired him, deepening the rift with Roosevelt. Secretary of the Interior was Ballinger's own post. Secretary of War was the office Taft had held under Roosevelt. Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission was not Pinchot's job.
Category: Taft and Wilson
Question 19
In the 1912 campaign, Theodore Roosevelt's call for a strong federal government to protect the public interest was known as
New Freedom
Fair Deal
New Nationalism
✓
Dollar Diplomacy
Correct Answer
New Nationalism
Running for the Progressive Party, Roosevelt offered New Nationalism, which accepted big business but called for an active federal government to regulate it. New Freedom was Woodrow Wilson's rival program favoring smaller government and broken-up monopolies. Fair Deal was Harry Truman's program after World War II. Dollar Diplomacy was Taft's foreign policy of promoting American investment abroad.
Category: Taft and Wilson
Question 20
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 set up a banking system built on
A single central bank owned by the government
A federal fund that insured bank deposits
A return to gold coins as the only money
Twelve regional banks overseen by a central board
✓
Correct Answer
Twelve regional banks overseen by a central board
The act created twelve regional reserve banks supervised by a Federal Reserve Board appointed by the president, which could influence credit by setting the discount rate. A single central bank owned by the government is not what the act created. A federal fund that insured bank deposits came later, in the 1930s. A return to gold coins as the only money was not part of the law.
Category: Taft and Wilson