Quiz: The Condition of the Working Class in England

All 34 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. Who translated the book into English in 1885?

   Eleanor Marx Aveling Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky Samuel Moore Edward Aveling and Samuel Moore
2. 2. Which writer’s description of the Irish does Engels quote?

   Charles Dickens Thomas Babington Macaulay Thomas Carlyle Thomas Robert Malthus
3. 3. Who invented the spinning throstle, according to Engels?

   James Watt, an instrument-maker in Glasgow Samuel Crompton, of Firwood, Lancashire Edmund Cartwright, a Leicestershire clergyman Richard Arkwright, a barber in Preston
4. 4. How long did the great strike of the northern miners in 1844 last?

   Nineteen weeks One month Three days Twenty-six weeks
5. 5. What do the workers call the workhouse of Manchester, which stands like a citadel?

   The “Poor-Law Bastille” The Palace of Thrift The House of Charity The Mill
6. 6. What does Engels see in the crowds of London?

   A Christian brotherhood of the poor, united by their common suffering and faith Mankind dissolved into monads, each with a separate principle and purpose The strength of the English nation, its people all pressing on to one common goal A new community of interest, each worker bound by solidarity to all the rest
7. 7. How does the English middle class respond to the workers’ poverty, according to the Introduction?

   It ignores it, ashamed to lay bare the sore spot It blames the aristocracy and acts It campaigns to end it It denies that workers exist
8. 8. How many people does Engels say were heaped together in London?

   Half a million Five and a half millions Three hundred thousand Two and a half millions
9. 9. What had happened by 1892 to some of the worst slums Engels described, such as “Little Ireland” in Manchester?

   They were unchanged They had become wealthy districts They had disappeared They had grown larger
10. 10. What does Engels say England possessed in the impoverished population of Ireland?

    A market for English cottons and hardware, safe from foreign competition A source of capital, since the rents of Irish estates were spent in England A military danger, since the Irish poor were ever ready to rise against England A reserve at command for the rapid extension of English industry
11. 11. Which disturbances broke out among the Welsh peasantry in 1843?

    The Chartist rising at Newport The Luddite machine-breaking riots The “Rebecca” disturbances The Swing riots
12. 12. Which famous London rookery was “about to be penetrated” by new streets?

    Whitechapel Southwark Bethnal Green St. Giles
13. 13. Along which river does Engels describe the Old Town of Manchester, with houses rising directly out of the water?

    The Irk The Tyne The Thames The Mersey
14. 14. Who called Chartism “a knife and fork question” at a meeting of 200,000 on Kersall Moor?

    Stephens, a Chartist preacher Feargus O’Connor, editor of the Northern Star William Lovett Ernest Jones
15. 15. What does Engels say is the real importance of trade unions?

    They are the workers’ first attempt to abolish competition among themselves They are able to raise wages permanently above the level set by competition They will in time replace the state and administer all industry for the workers They make strikes unnecessary by settling disputes with the masters peacefully
16. 16. Which invention does Engels say first radically changed the state of the English workers?

    The jenny of James Hargreaves (1764) The steam engine as improved by James Watt The power loom of Edmund Cartwright (1785) The steam railway of George Stephenson (1825)
17. 17. According to the 1892 preface, what reforms did large-scale capital itself come to support?

    A minimum wage Old-age pensions paid for by a tax on the landlords Suppression of truck and the Ten Hours’ Bill Abolition of private property in land and mines
18. 18. What is the average life of the Sheffield dry grinders, according to Engels?

    Fifty years About forty-five years Scarcely twenty-five years Hardly thirty-five years
19. 19. How many people in Ireland, according to the authorities Engels cites, could not live without public or private assistance?

    23,000 Some 4,000,000 Nearly 6,000,000 2,300,000
20. 20. What kind of houses does Engels describe in Nottingham and elsewhere, built with a rear party-wall so that no through ventilation is possible?

    Cottages with gardens Tenement blocks Railway arches Back-to-back houses
21. 21. What is peculiar about how Manchester is built, according to Engels?

    It has no working-class districts at all, since the workers live in outlying villages Its working-class quarters line the main streets, in full view of every passing merchant One can live there for years without coming into contact with a working-people’s quarter It was laid out on a regular plan, with parks and broad streets for every class
22. 22. What proportion of working-class children in Manchester perish before their fifth year, according to the report Engels cites?

    Rather less than twenty per cent About one per cent About ninety-five per cent More than fifty-seven per cent
23. 23. In comparing the worker with the serf, what does Engels say the serf at least has?

    A scrap of land on which to live A fixed wage A vote Freedom to move away
24. 24. In what limited sense does Engels say Malthus was “perfectly right”?

    Population always and everywhere outruns the growth of the food supply The poor should not marry Charity should be abolished Competition always keeps a surplus population of unemployed
25. 25. What does Engels say proceeded from the great cities?

    The New Poor Law of 1834 and its workhouses The Factory Acts The Anti-Corn Law League The Trades-Unions, Chartism and Socialism
26. 26. Which article of 1885 does Engels reprint in the 1892 preface?

    “England in 1845 and in 1885” “The Origin of the Family” “The Housing Question” “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”
27. 27. What does Engels say English industry needs, except in the brief periods of highest prosperity?

    A state monopoly Slave labour An unemployed reserve army of workers Imported capital from Holland and America
28. 28. What do English workers call society’s conduct towards them, according to Engels?

    “Social murder” “Class warfare” “Free contract” “Wage slavery”
29. 29. How old was Engels when the book was first published in Germany in 1845?

    Forty Thirty-five Nineteen Twenty-four
30. 30. What happens to a factory operative who comes ten minutes late, according to Engels?

    He must work through the dinner hour without pay to make up the time lost Nothing, provided he makes up the lost ten minutes at the end of the day He is dismissed at once, and his name is sent round to every mill in the town He is shut out till after breakfast and loses a quarter-day’s wages
31. 31. What did Marx say about those who put down the revolution of 1848, as Engels recalls?

    They had destroyed it forever, root and branch They were its unconscious allies from the start They had betrayed it out of fear of the workers They became its testamentary executors
32. 32. What does Engels conclude at the end of the book?

    The workers will emigrate to America, and the crisis will then pass of itself The revolution must come; it is already too late for a peaceful solution The middle class will see its error and reform itself before the crisis comes Reform will gradually solve everything; there is still time for a peaceful solution
33. 33. Which workers does Engels say formed “an aristocracy among the working-class” after 1848?

    Factory hands under the Factory Acts and members of the great trade unions Irish immigrants who had risen to be overlookers in the Lancashire cotton mills Agricultural labourers in the southern counties, after the repeal of the Corn Laws The miners of Wales and the north, after the great colliery strikes of the 1840s
34. 34. Which laws does Engels say embody the war of the landed aristocracy against the rural workers?

    The Corn Laws The Combination Laws The Game Laws The Navigation Acts