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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why, on November 1, 1903, do Manuel Amador and a colleague let Colonel James Shaler know Colombian troops are approaching?
(a) To get more arms, supplies, and troops brought in.
(b) To get more arms and supplies brought in.
(c) To get rolling stock safely moved to Panama City.
(d) To get more troops transported in for support.

2. Modest progress is made under Chief Engineer John Findley Wallace, but ends when a medley of tropical diseases results in a "Great Panic" and exodus of American engineers in what year?
(a) 1906.
(b) 1905.
(c) 1903.
(d) 1904.

3. Who pays Colombia $25 million in indemnities in 1925?
(a) Woodrow Wilson.
(b) Calvin Coolidge.
(c) Warren G. Harding.
(d) William Howard Taft.

4. Panama Patchwork is a publication by James Stanley Gilbert containing what?
(a) A magazine arising in competition with George W. Goethals' Canal Record.
(b) A daily newspaper designed for a black audience.
(c) A Sunday newspaper with letters, poetry, stories, other contributions.
(d) Poems about disease, alcoholism, death, futility.

5. Thousands of articles create popular view of Canal Zone life, but make no mention of blacks, so government inspectors and fact-finders are amazed to see the entire project depends on what?
(a) Black labor in construction only.
(b) Black labor, both in construction and in the vast service industries.
(c) Black labor in construction and Central American labor in the service industries.
(d) Black labor in the service industries only.

6. John Stevens is scheduled to accompany William H. Taft to the Philippines to advise on railroad construction, when who urges John Stevens to go to Panama as John Findley Wallace's successor?
(a) Theodore Perry Shonts.
(b) William N. Cromwell.
(c) John Findley Wallace.
(d) Charles F. Magoon.

7. The average death rate in the final year among whites is 2.06 per thousand, and what per thousand among blacks?
(a) 6.11.
(b) 3.51.
(c) 8.23.
(d) 4.85.

8. How fast before the canal becomes a smooth, quiet operation, free from the drama and hoopla characteristic of earlier years?
(a) Slowly.
(b) Very slowly.
(c) Quickly.
(d) Decades later.

9. What is the key to the lock enterprise?
(a) Balancing gates through wide weight dispersal.
(b) Pressurized air lifts gates and propels movement.
(c) Using aluminum in place of steel reduces weight.
(d) Using water to make gates virtually weightless.

10. When Josy Vincente Concha resigns in nervous exhaustion, he is replaced by career diplomat Tomas Herran, fluent in English and popular in Washington, and Herran proves to be what?
(a) More cautious than the State Department hoped.
(b) Less cautious than the State Department anticipated.
(c) Equally cautious as Concha.
(d) Far less cautious than the State Department expected.

11. Who outmaneuvers the Panamanians into giving the U.S. greater rights in the Canal Zone than it wants?
(a) William Nelson Cromwell.
(b) Tomas Herran.
(c) Theodore Roosevelt.
(d) Phillippe Banau-Varilla.

12. In the fall of 1902 as discussions of Canal Zone sovereignty reach a critical point, civil war erupts on the Isthmus and Theodore Roosevelt takes what action?
(a) Sends in the Army to secure the railroad.
(b) Dispatches a State Department negotiating team.
(c) None, as he has no legislative approval.
(d) Sends in the Marines to secure the railroad.

13. George W. Goethals allows employees to air grievances where?
(a) At the Sunday morning court of appeals and in the Canal Record letters to the editor.
(b) The Canal Record letters to the editor.
(c) A summary court similar to lowest level of U.S. military three-level courts martial system.
(d) A Saturday three-man review board consisting of two supervisors and one equal level employee.

14. The "Great Panic" in the Canal Zone results in what?
(a) A demand for outgoing trains that cannot be kept up with.
(b) An exodus of Panamanians to Nicaragua.
(c) A demand for outgoing boats that cannot be kept up with.
(d) An exodus of service personnel back to their homelands.

15. When is the Hay-Herran Treaty signed?
(a) March 21, 1903.
(b) April 23, 1903.
(c) January 21, 1903.
(d) February 21, 1903.

Short Answer Questions

1. Marie Gorgas provides the best impressions of the American era in Panama, noting Colon is "unspeakably dirty" and depressing and the jungle is what?

2. When do Theodore Perry Shonts and John Stevens land without ceremony at Colon?

3. "Adventure by Trigonometry" is the subtitle of Chapter 12, detailing how the U.S. moves from what to what?

4. In a special message to Congress on January 4, 1904, Theodore Roosevelt claims what nation violates a U.S. mandate to build the canal, the "great design" of the 1846 treaty to secure its construction?

5. At the peak of U.S. work, on any given day, how many steam shovels were operating in the Cut?

(see the answer keys)

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