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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was the American response to steam power in Britain?
(a) That it would provide them cheap power.
(b) That it would corrupt the youth with dreams of travel.
(c) That it would never come to America.
(d) That it would become their great strength.

2. How did Thoreau describe modern man?
(a) Free in the wilderness.
(b) Torn apart by his desires.
(c) Poised at the boundary between nature and industry.
(d) Unhappy in factories.

3. Who does Marx say will *not* contribute to reversing the trend toward urbanization and industrialization?
(a) Artists.
(b) Urban planners.
(c) Farmers.
(d) Activists.

4. How does Marx describe the pastoralism of the 19th century?
(a) Sentimental.
(b) Romantic.
(c) Industrial.
(d) Modern.

5. How did Emerson portray nature?
(a) As chaotic and disorganized.
(b) As the grand provider.
(c) As demonic.
(d) As a force to be overcome.

6. Who was Tench Coxe?
(a) A Philadelphia inventor and statesman.
(b) A Philadelphia merchant.
(c) A Boston statesman.
(d) A New York financier.

7. How does Marx predict the trend toward urbanization and industrialization will be reversed?
(a) By politics.
(b) By resource depletion.
(c) By market changes.
(d) By popular uprisings.

8. What dangers were writers warning about as America urbanized?
(a) Creation of a permanently poor underclass.
(b) Loss of nature.
(c) Declining value of money.
(d) Decline of morals.

9. What contradiction does Marx say is Melville's true theme in Moby Dick?
(a) Man reveres nature but plunders it.
(b) Industry provides for men and destroys them.
(c) Nature provides man with everything, and it kills him.
(d) The divine inspires and undermines man's projects.

10. What 'sealed the fate' of American industrialism, according to Marx?
(a) The railroad.
(b) Standardized parts.
(c) The cotton gin.
(d) Machine tools.

11. What skill did Twain idealize?
(a) The steam locomotive engineer's control over the train.
(b) The riverboat pilot's knowledge of the river.
(c) The engineer's ability to bridge rivers.
(d) The Indian soldier's warfare.

12. What is the consequence of knowing nature, according to Twain's work?
(a) Knowing the deep inter-connectedness of things.
(b) Knowing the wild spirit of nature.
(c) Losing familiarity with the whole.
(d) Feeling free of society.

13. What did Emerson originally propose in his philosophy?
(a) Immersion in nature.
(b) Immersion in science.
(c) Immersion in literature.
(d) Immersion in society.

14. What did Thoreau conclude as a result of his time at Walden?
(a) That men should remove themselves from society.
(b) That man should simplify his life.
(c) That technology must be stopped.
(d) That men are desperate and sad.

15. What would manufacturing do for America, in Coxe's estimation?
(a) Generate wealth.
(b) Ensure independence.
(c) Drive western expansion.
(d) Unify the electorate.

Short Answer Questions

1. What do complex pastoralists recognize, in Marx's account?

2. What did Henry Adams envision as the consequence of technology?

3. What did Daniel Webster believe the railroad would do for America?

4. What trait did American thinkers and writers see in evidence in America's industrial expansion?

5. What has happened to the ideal of the pastoral society, in Marx's opinion?

(see the answer keys)

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