Chapter 18: The Age of the City

Because of rapid growth in the late nineteenth century, American cities

• protected traditional social and cultural values.

• provided services and facilities inadequate to demands.

• supported efficient and honest governments.

• integrated different ethnicities.

American urban population growth from 1860 to 1910 resulted mainly from a(n)

• low rate of infant mortality.

• low death rate from disease.

• large influx of new immigrants.

• increasing fertility rate.

The large-scale movement of African Americans from the rural South to industrial cities began during the late nineteenth century mainly because of the

• poverty and oppression of the South.

• prospective professional opportunities in the cities.

• abundance of factory jobs there for African Americans.

• absence of racial discrimination in the North.

The formation of ethnic neighborhoods by immigrants in American cities

• tended to reinforce the cultural values of their previous societies.

• resulted primarily from discriminatory zoning restrictions.

• prevented their identification with, and advancement in, American society.

• intensified a sense of not belonging to a coherent community.

Nativist reaction against European immigrants of the late nineteenth century resulted from all of the following factors EXCEPT the

• arrival of such vast numbers of immigrants.

• refusal of most immigrants and their children to attempt to assimilate themselves into American culture.

• economic concern that immigrant workers would threaten the wages and positions of American workers.

• generalized fears of foreigners.

Which of the following groups were excluded from immigration to the United States by laws passed in the 1880s and 1890s?

• convicts, paupers, and mental incompetents

• Irish

• Germans

• illterates

The Immigration Restriction League

• blamed foreigners for all the disorder and corruption of the urban world.

• advocated the screening of immigrants through literacy tests.

• enlisted the support of President Grover Cleveland for their proposals.

• rallied against the creation of ethnic neighborhoods.

The majority of big-city residents in late-nineteenth-century America

• could afford their own houses, thanks to the availability of cheap labor and low building costs.

• took advantage of less expensive lands on the edges of the city and settled in suburbs.

• stayed in the city centers and rented living space.

• exacted high standards from urban landlords.

Most wealthy urban residents

• lived on the edge of the city to keep distance between them and the urban poor.

• built homes at a distance from the city to take advantage of the cleaner air.

• commuted to work on railroads.

• lived in new "fashionable districts" in the heart of the city.

By the 1890s, a million New Yorkers lived in tenements, which were

• helping relieve and disperse population growth.

• rental buildings designed for single-family residences.

• slum dwellings with inadequate light, plumbing, and heat.

• stylish homes in a fashionable section of the city.