AP US History: Work, Exchange & Technology 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Eli Whitney's cotton gin (1793) had which major economic effect on the antebellum South?
- It expanded short-staple cotton cultivation and entrenched slavery (Correct answer)
- It ended the demand for enslaved labor
- It shifted the South to manufacturing
- It eliminated cotton as a cash crop
Correct answer: It expanded short-staple cotton cultivation and entrenched slavery
By speeding seed removal, the gin made cotton hugely profitable and deepened reliance on slavery.
Question 2: The Lowell system of early New England textile mills is notable for primarily employing:
- Young unmarried women (Correct answer)
- Enslaved laborers
- Irish immigrant men
- Child apprentices only
Correct answer: Young unmarried women
Lowell mills recruited young farm women who lived in supervised boardinghouses.
Question 3: The Market Revolution of the early 1800s was driven most directly by improvements in:
- Transportation such as canals, roads, and railroads (Correct answer)
- Overseas colonial conquest
- Federal banking deregulation
- Plantation agriculture in the West
Correct answer: Transportation such as canals, roads, and railroads
Canals like the Erie and new railroads linked regional markets and spurred commercial growth.
Question 4: The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, most directly benefited which city by linking it to the interior?
- New York City (Correct answer)
- Charleston
- New Orleans
- Boston
Correct answer: New York City
The canal connected the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, making New York the nation's leading port.
Question 5: Samuel Slater is best known for which contribution to American industrialization?
- Bringing British textile factory technology to the US (Correct answer)
- Inventing the telegraph
- Building the first steamboat
- Designing interchangeable parts for guns
Correct answer: Bringing British textile factory technology to the US
Slater memorized British spinning machine designs and built America's first water-powered textile mill.
Question 6: The concept of interchangeable parts, promoted by Eli Whitney, was significant because it:
- Enabled mass production and faster assembly (Correct answer)
- Reduced the need for canals
- Increased reliance on skilled craftsmen
- Made handmade goods cheaper than factory goods
Correct answer: Enabled mass production and faster assembly
Standardized parts allowed unskilled workers to assemble products quickly, foundational to mass production.
Question 7: The Market Revolution contributed to which social change in Northern households?
- The rise of a separate domestic 'cult of domesticity' for women (Correct answer)
- Universal male suffrage being repealed
- A return to subsistence farming
- The end of wage labor
Correct answer: The rise of a separate domestic 'cult of domesticity' for women
As work moved outside the home, middle-class ideology assigned women a domestic, moral sphere.
AP US History: Work, Exchange & Technology 3
Eli Whitney's cotton gin (1793) had which major economic effect on the antebellum South?