OCS 10-13 Test Review

Question 1

Explain the conditions for children of working class families during the late 18th century. Provide examples of jobs they did and what it was like for them (at least 3)

Answer 1

Children of working families were often forced to join the workforce as well. They worked as newsies, coalminers, in mills, farming, etc. It was very dangerous as bosses made them fit inside machinery because of their small stature. Many children lost fingers, limbs, and even their lives; and the rest lost their childhood.

Question 2

Explain what institutionalized discrimination means.

Answer 2

Institutionalized discrimination refers to the unjust and discriminatory mistreatment of an individual or group of individuals by society and its institutions as a whole, through unequal selection or bias, intentional or unintentional; as opposed to individuals making a conscious choice to discriminate.

Question 3

What is nativism? What are their major beliefs?

Answer 3

• The policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants.
• Believing that native-born Americans are better than immigrants

Question 4

Explain what a political machine is.

Answer 4

A political machine is a political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses (usually campaign workers), who receive rewards for their efforts.

Question 5

Who is William “Boss” Tweed?

Answer 5

American politician most notable for being the “boss” of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in the politics of 19th century New York City and State. He is thought to have stolen around $50 million dollars through extortion, bribery,

Question 6

Explain the journey for immigrants coming to Ellis Island.

Answer 6

• 1-2 months on a crowded, hot, disgusting, illness ridden ship
• Do not get to bathe during entire journey
• Once arrived they could be sent back for being sick, not passing an IQ test, or not having enough money

Question 7

What is a monopoly?

Answer 7

the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.

Question 8

What are the lynching rates of African Americans from 1882-1892?

Answer 8

Over 1,400. However, there were many more unofficial cases. Into the tens of thousands following Reconstruction

Question 9

What is the definition of a Captain of Industry?

Answer 9

a captain of industry was a business leader whose means of amassing a personal fortune contributed positively to the country in some way. This may have been through increased productivity, expansion of markets, providing more jobs, or acts of philanthropy.

Question 10

What is the definition of a Robber Baron?

Answer 10

An American capitalist who acquired a fortune in the late nineteenth century by ruthless means such as stealing from his workers and from the public. It is a negative connotation for an industrial capitalist

Question 11

List 3 different Robber Barons/Captains of Industry and provide me with their major industries and how they spent their money.

Answer 11

Andrew Carnegie- led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. Pittsburg. Gave a lot of his money away to Charity

J.P. Morgan- an American financier, banker, and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time

John Rockefeller- An American business magnate and philanthropist. He was a co-founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust

Cornelius Vanderbilt- An American business magnate and philanthropist who built his wealth in railroads and shipping.

Question 12

Who is Jacob Riis and what did he do?

Answer 12

He was a “muckraking” journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of “model tenements”

Question 13

Who is Thomas Nast? Who was his major opponent in life?

Answer 13

He was one of the most famous editorial cartoonist considered to be the “Father of the American Cartoon”. He was the person who almost single handedly destroyed Democratic Representative “Boss” Tweed and the Tammany Hall Democratic party political machine.

Question 14

What is laissez-faire?

Answer 14

• a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering.
• abstention by governments from interfering in the workings of the free market.

Question 15

Explain what the Plessy v. Ferguson court case established.

Answer 15

a landmark United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of “separate but equal”.

Question 16

List the rates of immigration of both Europeans to the East coast and Asians to the West coast.

Answer 16

Europeans- 20 million between 1880-1920
Chinese- ~200,000
Japanese- ~200,000

Question 17

Where did Asian immigrants enter the United States?

Answer 17

Angel Island

Question 18

Where did European immigrants enter the United States?

Answer 18

Ellis Island

Question 19

List at least 8 technological innovations in the late 19th century and provide me with a brief description of what each did.

Answer 19

Elevator, Calculating Machine, Car, Lightbulb, Hotdogs, radio, washing machine, telephone, toilet paper, x-rays, gramophone

Question 20

Explain multiple ways that Robber Barons/Captains of Industry gain monopolies.

Answer 20

They lower the prices of their products,so that no one wants to buy the more expensive product. The smaller companies will eventually go out of businesses, and the robber baron will buy out the smaller businesses to gain a monopoly in their industry. The oil industry often does this. Rockefeller and Vanderbilt make an alliance, and Vanderbilt would only ship Rockefeller’s oil. Creating a monopoly in the oil industry.

Question 21

Explain the convict-leasing system

Answer 21

Convict leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the Southern United States, beginning with the emancipation of slaves at the end of the American Civil War in 1865, peaking around 1880, and officially ending in the last state, Alabama, in 1928.
-Rented prisoners to PRIVATE industries and worked them often times to death

Question 22

Explain what debt-peonage is.

Answer 22

The use of laborers bound in servitude because of debt. They were often kept for long periods of time because it was the boss who determined if the debt has been paid.

Question 23

What are the requirements for a murder to be deemed a lynching? (3)

Answer 23

The killings had to be done illegally
Three or more people must have taken part in the killing
The persons must claim to have been serving justice or cultural tradition
Illegal

Question 24

What is social darwinism?

Answer 24

Economically, social Darwinists argue that the strong should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. Different social Darwinists have differing views about which groups of people are considered to be the strong and which groups of people are considered to be the weak, and they also hold different opinions about the precise mechanism that should be used to reward strength and punish weakness.

Question 25

What groups are affected by social darwinism in the 20th Century (at least 3)? Explain.

Answer 25

Rich vs. Poor, Men vs. Women, Races

Classism, sexism, racism

Question 26

What are tenements?

Answer 26

Buildings that had once been single-family dwellings were increasingly divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate this growing population. Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings–many of them concentrated in the city’s Lower East Side neighborhood–

Question 27

Explain what life was like for people who lived in the tenements.

Answer 27

Life was all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation.

Question 28

Explain what the Knights of Labor did and who they were.

Answer 28

It was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence V. Powderly. It was destroyed by the Haymarket square incident. It was unique because it accepted almost all groups into its ranks.

Question 29

Explain what the American Federation of Labor was and explain how it was different from the Knights of Labor.

Answer 29

The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in May 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. It was different from the Knights of Labor because they did not accept as many people into the association.

Question 30

What happened at the Haymarket Strike/Bombing?

Answer 30

Tuesday May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour day and in reaction to the killing of several workers the previous day by the police. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they acted to disperse the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; scores of others were wounded.
-It destroyed the Knights of Labor because people assumed union groups were associated with anarchists/terrorists

Question 31

What were the long lasting effects of the Haymarket Strike/Bombing?

Answer 31

Unions were seen as possibly communist/anarchists/terrorists

Question 32

How are political machines formed?

Answer 32

A political machine works when immigrants are greeted as soon as they come from their country by someone who offers them food, jobs, and a place to live for the simple cost of their vote for the person who is supplying them with their food, housing, job, etc. This gives people running for office a surefire way to get in office where they are granted even more power. This setup works very effectively as the new immigrants are vulnerable with very few other options. They are also usually unaware of what they are doing and who they are voting for. Those elected into office will often start projects and overestimate the cost of them in order to take the leftover money to pocket.

Question 33

How are political machines maintained?

Answer 33

When these people are elected into office, they pay most, if not all judges/police officers/other politicians in the area, to allow them to escape getting caught in their nefarious actions.

Question 34

Explain the corruption associated with political machines.

Answer 34

They also would buy judges, police officers, and other politicians and would make money through embezzlement. Insider trading: buying the building for cheap then sell it for more money to make a profit.

Question 35

List and explain 6 causes the causes of the rise of urbanization in America?

Answer 35

1. Educational Opportunities: More schools= better jobs= more money made
2. Places for Recreation: Parks and places for plays, concerts, etc (Atractedness
3. Cheap Housing: The houses weren’t the best but they were cheap enough for people to afford them.
4. Many jobs were available in the cities.
5. The Great Migration was 200,000 African Americans came to escape racism and slavery
6. People were fired because the technology of new machines
7. Immigration filled up needed jobs (20,000,000 new immigrants)

Question 36

Explain what it was like to live in the slums of New York City in the late 19th C.

Answer 36

• Small space with so many people. You would never be able to have privacy, and also when you just want everyone to be quiet you can’t make them and you have no where else to go. I also like to keep my space clean and it would drive me crazy for people to have their few belongings everywhere and unorganized.
• Not being able to have running water or privacy. I wouldn’t be able to be around a crowded living space with different people all the time and not being able to have my own alone time and I would catch the flu if a person in my room had it. Also, I wouldn’t be able to take showers or use the toilet, since there is no bathroom.
• Without any natural light, a tenement housing building would be like a smelly, hot, dark cave, and without light I wouldn’t see where I’m going and thus trip all the time over things. This gets even worse when you consider that there was barely enough room for several families to be crammed into one room, so I would always be tripping over them as well.

Question 37

Explain Justice Harlan’s Dissent in the Plessy V. Ferguson? What were his main arguments?

Answer 37

he argued that segregationist legislation, like the Louisiana law in this case, was based on the assumption that “colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens.” These laws promoted and perpetuated the belief that African Americans were inferior to whites, according to Justice Harlan. They must be struck down, he argued, because the government could not “permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law.” Justice Harlan believed that the constitution must be “color-blind,” and that it could allow “no superior, dominant ruling class of citizens.” Because segregation had the effect of creating such classes, he judged, it was unconstitutional.

Question 38

What are the Jim Crow Laws?

Answer 38

Jim Crow Laws were written down rules and regulations that if broken African Americans could go to prison
Examples are Pig Laws, Segregation, illegal to go to school, Marriage - “All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void.” (Wyoming law)
Hospitalization - “The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients [in a mental hospital], so that in no cases shall Negroes and white persons be together.” (Georgia law)

Question 39

What is the significance of Plessy v. Ferguson?

Answer 39

Allowed for the legal practice of segregation (Jim Crow Laws). Argued that segregation is ok because things can be “separate but equal.”