AP U.S. History
APUSH 4.6: Effects of the Market Revolution on Society
Shared by Ashton · Oct 28, 2026 · 2 plays
Practice for Topic 4.6: wage labor and the new middle class, Lowell mill workers and strikes, the cult of domesticity, Irish and German immigration, nativism and the Know-Nothings, free Black Northerners, and city growth. 15 questions with an explanation for every choice.
15 questions across 4 sections. After every answer you’ll see why each choice is right or wrong, not just the one you picked.
Sample questions
Open a question to see the answer choices and the correct answer.
How did the market revolution change the lives of many skilled artisans?
- A. They moved south to work on cotton plantations
- B. They gained new government jobs and laws that protected their old crafts from factories
- C. They became wealthy factory owners almost overnight
- D. It became harder to own a shop and work for themselves ✓
Correct answer: D. Journeymen who once expected to become masters increasingly worked for wages under employers, a change some called 'wage slavery.'
A distinct middle class grew in Northern cities during this period mainly because
- A. farms disappeared completely in the North
- B. the government gave land to every city worker
- C. new jobs for clerks, managers, merchants and professionals appeared in a market economy ✓
- D. enslaved people in the North were freed and became shop owners
Correct answer: C. These salaried workers valued education, self-discipline and respectability and often led reform movements.
Which describes the gap between rich and poor in Northern cities by the 1840s?
- A. It widened, as wealthy merchants and factory owners pulled far ahead of wage workers ✓
- B. It shrank, because the government set maximum wages
- C. It stayed the same as in colonial times
- D. It disappeared, because the market revolution made almost every American equally well off
Correct answer: A. Even as Tocqueville praised equality, wealth in cities like New York became more concentrated.
Young women worked in the Lowell mills in the 1820s and 1830s mainly to
- A. pay off debts to the federal government
- B. escape slavery in the South through the Underground Railroad
- C. qualify to vote in Massachusetts elections
- D. earn wages for themselves or their families before marriage ✓
Correct answer: D. Many sent money home, saved for a dowry or paid a brother's schooling, and most worked only a few years.
"I do not care what you do, I am going to turn out, whether any one else does or not; and I marched out, and was followed by the others." | Harriet Hanson Robinson, recalling a Lowell mill strike of 1836, when she was eleven, in her memoir Loom and Spindle, 1898 — The excerpt is best used as evidence that
- A. the federal government sent army troops to Lowell to break up factory strikes by force
- B. mill owners willingly raised wages when workers asked
- C. most mill workers were young men from Ireland
- D. factory women organized to protest wage cuts and working conditions ✓
Correct answer: D. Lowell women 'turned out' in 1834 and 1836 when owners cut wages or raised boardinghouse charges.