The Chinese from California Became the Major Source of Labor

question 11

Multiple Choice

The Chinese from California became the major source of labor for the transcontinental railroad in part because

• A) most were experienced in railroad construction.
• B) their more well-established unions won the railroad contracts.
• C) most were forced into working for the railroads.
• D) they worked for lower wages than what whites would accept.
• E) they had no other employment prospects.

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Definitions:

Phylogenetic Tree

A branching diagram that shows lines of descent among a group of related species.

Ancestral Characters

See shared ancestral characters.

Maximum Likelihood

A statistical method for estimating the parameters of a model, where the estimated parameters maximize the likelihood of observing the given sample data.

Systematists

Scientists who study the diversity of life and the evolutionary relationships between organisms, classifying them into a systematic framework.