Industrialization in the West Quiz

1. The Homestead Act of 1862 helped the development of the West by...

• (1) providing free land to settlers

• (2) granting land for construction of transcontinental railroads

• (3) allowing slavery to spread to the territories

• (4) placing Native American Indians on reservations

2. What act gave millions of acres of federal lands to the states, which were to sell them and use those funds to build agricultural and engineering colleges?

• (1) Morrill Act

• (2) Sherman Act

• (3) Pacific Railway Act

•  (4) Interstate Commerce Act

3. What played the most important part in the growth of the West’s population and economy between 1865 and 1900?

• (1) the mining industry

• (2) the cattle kingdom

• (3) the Populist Party

• (4) the railroad

4. In general, the policy of the United States government toward Native Americans in the west was to

• (1) send the army to track them down and engage them in battle

• (2) move them onto reservations and open their homelands to white settlers

• (3) kill all the buffalo so that they could not continue their traditional way of life

• (4) drive them into Canada or Mexico to settle

5. The biggest problem facing western farmers in the late 1800s was...

• (1) scarcity of good, cheap land to farm

• (2) their lack of organization to achieve change

• (3) overproduction and low crop prices

• (4) the threat of attacks by Native Americans

Base your answer to question 6 on the list below and on your knowledge of social studies

• Government ownership railroads

• Free and unlimited coinage of silver

• An eight-hour day for industrial workers

• Strict limits on foreign immigration

•Election of officials who will help farmers

6. Which of the following intended to accomplish the changes listed above in American society?

• (1) the Morrill Act

• (2) the Populist Party

• (3) the National Grange

• (4) the Homestead Act

7. People in the late 1800s took advantage of the open grasslands of the West to develop which of these industries?

• (1) Banking

• (2) Manufacturing

• (3) Ranching

• (4) Mining

8. What was one effect of the Industrial Revolution on United States agriculture in the late 1800s? 

• (1) a decrease in the size of farms

• (2) a decrease in tenant farming and sharecropping

• (3) an increase in agricultural imports

• (4) an increase in productivity

9. The Granger Movement and the formation of the Populist Party were similar in that each was an attempt to effort to

• (1) end the practice of sharecropping

• (2) improve conditions for farmers

• (3) provide housing for urban dwellers

• (4) increase profits for railroad companies

10. During the 1870s, the Granger movement purchase of the Louisiana Territory was to attract the support of many westerners because it proposed that

• (1) the money supply should be deflated removing paper currency from circulation

• (2) shipping rates and grain storage fees charged by railroads should be regulated

• (3) immigrants should be given land on the Great Plains

• (4) the government should control the development of resources in the West policy