21. Progressivism from the Grass Roots to the White House, 1890

Quiz for Experiencing the American Promise: Making the Workplace Safer: Alice Hamilton Explores the Dangerous Trades

Select the best answer for each question. Click the “submit” button for each question to turn in your work.

Question 21.1

1. Before the advent of occupational safety laws, who or what did industrial employers blame for the poor health of their workers in the early twentieth century?

Their shift supervisors, for neglecting to enforce safe practices in the workplace

The workers’ wives, for not taking better care of their husbands at home

The federal government, for permitting feeble and diseased immigrants into the country

The workers themselves, for being alcoholic or neglecting personal hygiene

Question 21.2

2. In her efforts to improve occupational health for industrial workers in the early twentieth century, Alice Hamilton focused especially on

chemical burns.

limbs mangled in machinery.

lead poisoning.

tuberculosis.

Question 21.3

3. How did Alice Hamilton gather evidence to demonstrate the connections between work and illness in the early twentieth century?

By examining the medical files of hundreds of people

By reading the studies other public health reformers had conducted

By interviewing employers about their workplace practices

By going directly into workplaces and into workers’ homes

Question 21.4

4. Why might immigrants have been particularly vulnerable to the occupational diseases that public health reformers like Alice Hamilton tried to prevent in the early twentieth century?

Immigrants were less likely to visit the doctor regularly than their native-born peers, making them more vulnerable to disease.

Immigrants frequently held dangerous industrial jobs and accepted the dangers of work as an inevitable part of being poor.

Many employers enforced two different sets of workplace safety standards: one for native-born workers and one for immigrants.

Workplaces typically posted safety information signs written in English, which immigrants were frequently unable to read.

Question 21.5

5. What does Alice Hamilton’s life and career illustrate about the opportunities available for college-educated women at the turn of the twentieth century?

Settlement houses and social work provided college-educated women a means to apply their skills in a way that helped society, when many professions were still closed to them.

By 1900, it was common for middle-class women to attend college, and not unusual for some to pursue medical school, so there were many different kinds of job available for them.

Since public health was understood to be a feminized profession in the United States, it was common for women to become professors in this field in the early twentieth century.