Lincoln Steffens built his reputation as a muckraker by exposing corruption in city governments.
Correct Answer
True
True. Steffens investigated how political machines and business interests corrupted city governments, publishing his findings in magazines such as McClure's. His work fed the Progressive push for cleaner city government.
Category: Muckrakers
Question 2
Henry Demarest Lloyd's book Wealth Against Commonwealth was an attack on the railroads' treatment of farmers.
Correct Answer
False
False. Wealth Against Commonwealth, published in 1894, attacked the abuses of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. It came before Ida Tarbell's more famous articles on the same company.
Category: Muckrakers
Question 3
The direct primary let party members choose their candidates themselves instead of leaving the choice to party conventions.
Correct Answer
True
True. Progressives backed the direct primary to take nominations away from party bosses who controlled conventions. Many states adopted it in the early 1900s, and most states still use it.
Category: Democratic Reforms
Question 4
Progressive reformers generally praised political machines such as Tammany Hall as models of efficient city government.
Correct Answer
False
False. Progressives condemned machines such as Tammany Hall as corrupt. They promoted reforms such as commission and city manager governments to replace boss rule with professional, efficient administration.
Category: Democratic Reforms
Question 5
After a hurricane devastated Galveston, Texas, in 1900, the city adopted a commission form of government.
Correct Answer
True
True. When the old city government failed to cope with the disaster, Galveston turned in 1901 to a small commission in which each commissioner ran one department, such as police or water. Other cities copied the model.
Category: Democratic Reforms
Question 6
As governor of Wisconsin, Robert La Follette opposed the direct election of U.S. senators.
Correct Answer
False
False. La Follette supported the direct election of senators, along with women's suffrage. His Wisconsin Idea relied on experts to draft laws such as workers' compensation and a progressive tax.
Category: Democratic Reforms
Question 7
Florence Kelley led the National Consumers League in campaigns against sweatshops and for shorter working hours for women.
Correct Answer
True
True. As the league's general secretary, Kelley fought sweatshop labor and pushed for an eight-hour day for women. The league later drew on the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to press for workplace safety laws.
Category: Social Reform
Question 8
Socialist leader Eugene Debs ran for president only once.
Correct Answer
False
False. Debs, a founder of the Socialist Party of America, ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920. Twice he drew close to one million votes.
Category: Social Reform
Question 9
By 1900, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho allowed women to vote in state and local elections.
Correct Answer
True
True. These western states granted women the vote well before the Nineteenth Amendment, partly to attract female settlers. The West led the nation in woman suffrage.
Category: Women's Suffrage
Question 10
Once the Nineteenth Amendment took effect, Black women across the South were able to vote freely.
Correct Answer
False
False. The amendment barred denying the vote on account of sex, but state laws and practices such as poll taxes and literacy tests kept most Black women in the South, like Black men, from voting.
Category: Women's Suffrage
Question 11
Ida B. Wells-Barnett refused to march at the back of the 1913 suffrage parade and joined the Illinois delegation instead.
Correct Answer
True
True. Organizers placed Black marchers at the rear to avoid offending white Southerners. Wells-Barnett stepped out of the segregated section and marched with the white women of the Illinois delegation.
Category: Women's Suffrage
Question 12
The NAACP was founded by an all-white group of reformers.
Correct Answer
False
False. The NAACP was founded by an interracial coalition. Black founders included W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell, and Du Bois edited its magazine, The Crisis.
Category: African American Activism
Question 13
Woodrow Wilson appointed Louis Brandeis, who in 1916 became the first Jewish justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Correct Answer
True
True. Brandeis, a well-known reform lawyer, joined the Court in 1916. His appointment reflected Wilson's growing embrace of Progressive reform during his first term.
Category: Taft and Wilson
Question 14
Before winning the presidency in 1912, Woodrow Wilson had been governor of New York.
Correct Answer
False
False. Wilson was governor of New Jersey and before that president of Princeton University. Theodore Roosevelt, not Wilson, had been governor of New York.
Category: Taft and Wilson
Question 15
Theodore Roosevelt distinguished between good trusts and bad trusts rather than trying to break up every large corporation.
Correct Answer
True
True. Roosevelt prosecuted trusts he saw as harming the public but let others, such as U.S. Steel, continue. He believed big business could be acceptable if it was regulated.
Category: Roosevelt's Presidency
Question 16
The Hepburn Act of 1906 weakened the Interstate Commerce Commission's power over railroad rates.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Hepburn Act strengthened the ICC's power to regulate railroad rates. It also extended the commission's authority to bridges, ferries and oil pipelines.
Category: Roosevelt's Presidency
Question 17
The Underwood Tariff of 1913 included a federal income tax, made possible by the newly ratified Sixteenth Amendment.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, allowed Congress to tax incomes without dividing the tax among the states by population. The Underwood Tariff cut import duties and used a graduated income tax to replace the lost revenue.
Category: Taft and Wilson
Question 18
The Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909 sharply lowered tariff rates and pleased Progressive Republicans.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Payne-Aldrich Tariff raised rates on hundreds of goods after Taft accepted the Senate's version of the bill. Progressive Republicans were angered, which helped split the party.
Category: Taft and Wilson
Question 19
Woodrow Wilson won the 1912 election with less than half of the popular vote as Republicans split between Taft and Roosevelt.
Correct Answer
True
True. Wilson won about 42 percent of the popular vote. Roosevelt's Progressive Party and Taft's Republicans divided the rest of the vote, letting Wilson win the Electoral College easily.
Category: Taft and Wilson
Question 20
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 repealed the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Clayton Act built on the Sherman Antitrust Act rather than replacing it. It spelled out banned practices more clearly, including interlocking directorates.
Category: Taft and Wilson