rap2016_ch20

Quiz for Document 20–1: Mary Elizabeth Lease, Women in the Farmers’ Alliance, 1891

Choose the best answer to each question.

1. Why did Lease say that farmers had “been too mentally lazy to do their own thinking”?

They had been too loyal to their political parties.

They had been too uneducated to think themselves.

They had been too influenced by the churches.

They were too poor for political action to be possible.

2. What did Lease think was the biggest problem facing American society in the 1890s?

Inefficient agricultural production

Inadequate transportation infrastructure

Political apathy

Income inequality

3. According to Lease, what experience had motivated women to get involved in the Farmers’ Alliance and other organizations?

The lack of success in gaining suffrage

The trials of life in the West

The instability of factory work

Organizing skills gained from the temperance movement