Reading Questions

Reading Questions. American Economic History, Fall 2008.

Last Updated: Monday, September 29, 2008

As you read the chapters in the text you will want to keep the following questions in mind. Some of these questions are about specific details in order to force you to do a lot of reading and thinking to find the right answer. But remember that the main goal of reading the text is to develop a picture of the major trends and events. Be sure to look at all the pictures and graphs in the text and read the captions. One picture is worth 1,326 words.

Could some of these questions turn up on an exam? Yes!

If you email me, will I tell you the answer? No!

How do I know I have the right answer? The questions and answers are taken nearly verbatim from the text. When you run into the paragraph (or sometimes the picture or graph) that has the right answer to the question it will be immediately obvious.

The reading questions are below the assignment.

Class Meeting, Date	Topic of Lecture	Chapters and pages in the text (If no pages are shown you are responsible for the entire chapter.)
1. Tues., September 2	The American Economy in Historical Perspective	1. Skim this chapter to get a general sense of the long-term growth of the economy. Also go to my website, check it out, and bookmark it. It would be a good idea to download and make hardcopies of the old exams at this time.
Questions 1. The book is dedicated to two famous economic historians? Who are they? Answer: Robert W. Fogel and Douglass North, economic historians who won the Nobel Prize in economics. Their pictures are in the front of the book; you can't miss them, if you go through the text page by page. This is true of most of the questions. 2. What teams played in the first intercollegiate football game? In what year? 3. By how much has real per capita GDP in the United States risen between 1900 and 2000? 4. What was life expectancy at age 0 in 1901? What was life expectancy at age 45 in 1901? Isn't this kind of a picky question? Yes. But it also gets you to read the text; and to think about the meaning of "life expectancy."
2. Friday, September 5	Mercantilism	4, pp. 68-75. 6, all including Economic Insight on p. 119.
Questions 1. On what trade routes during the colonial period did shuttle patterns (back and forth between the same two ports) prevail? 2. What was “new” about the "New Colonial Policy" adopted by Britain in the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War. 3. Economic Historian Lawrence Harper thought that Britain had made the same mistake in dealing with the United States that parents often make with their children. What was it?
3. Tuesday, September 9	Revolutionary War	6, all. 7: pp. 124-131
Questions 1. What was the impact of the Revolutionary War on manufacturing in the United States? 2. What was the attitude of the Constitution toward property rights? 3. What was the Quebec Act of 1774? 4. Which region of the United States suffered the most economically during the early years of American Independence? Why?
4. Friday, September 12	Opening the West	8, all. 9, all. (Especially the section on the Iron Horse, and the box on market integration).
Questions 1. What did the Northwest Ordinance of 1785 do? What major political figure is associated with it? 2. What federal regulatory law was passed in 1852? 3. What variables would an economist look at to determine how well “integrated” the markets for flour in New Orleans and Philadelphia were?
5. Tuesday, September 16	Financial Crises and the Lender of Last Resort	12: pp. 222-228.
1. What was Bank Note Detector? What were the "discounts" listed in Bank Note Detectors? 2. What is the address of the economics department? What does this have to do with the monetary history of the United States? 3. Did the First Bank of the United States ever act as a “lender of last resort”?
6. Friday, September 19	Financial History, 1791-1860	12: pp. 228-238.
1. How did the Second Bank try to control the banking system? In other words, what did it do to a bank that was acting imprudently? 2. Where was the Suffolk Bank located? 3. What did Andrew Jackson suggest if an institution such as the Second Bank was “deemed essential to the fiscal operations of the government”? 4. How did Andrew Jackson's contemporaries explain the Jacksonian Inflation"?
7. Tuesday, September 23	The Economic Impact of the Civil War	14: pp. 264-274
1. What does the text conclude about the rationality of the South's decision to go to war? 2. Prices rose faster than wages in the North during the Civil War. How did Wesley C. Mitchell explain this? 3. What was the average growth rate of manufacturing from 1840 to 1859? What was the average growth rate from 1870 to 1899? How do these numbers relate to the “Beard Hacker Thesis?” 4. How did the South attempt to make use of cotton as a weapon of war?
8. Friday, September 26	The South After the Civil War (Sharecropping)	14: pp. 275-282.
1. What happened to real commodity output in the North and South as a result of the Civil War? 2. What happened to the amount of labor supplied by former slaves after emancipation? 3. Who were the Radical Republicans? What did they want to do with the Southern plantations?
9. Tuesday, September 30	The South After the Civil War (Debt Peonage)	Continued discussion of 14: pp. 275-282
1. There is a famous statue in Enterprise Alabama. Who does the statue celebrate? Why? 2. What percentage of the land occupied by African Americans in the South in 1880 was owned by African Americans and what percentage was rented? 3. What did the Supreme Court decide in Plessy v. Fergusson (1896)?
10. Friday, October 3	Northern Agriculture and Populism	15: all.

1. What was the cause of the hard times on western farms in the late nineteenth century?

2. Who developed the mechanical reaper?

3. What is an Engel Curve? What does it have to do with the problems experienced by farmers in the late nineteenth century?

4. What happened to the number of bushels of corn grown per acre of land between 1870 and 1890?

11. Tuesday, October 7	FIRST EXAM	Multiple-choice and short-answer questions.
No new reading assignment. Study like crazy for the exam.
12. Friday, October 10	No Class
No reading assignment
13. Tuesday, October 14	Transcontinental RRs (Land Grants)	16: pp. 307-321.
1. Where was the golden spike driven in order to celebrate the completion of the first transcontinental railroad? 2. What was the main benefit to the Federal Government received in return for the land grants to the railroads? 3. What was the name of the notorious construction company that built the Union Pacific railroad? 4. What event does the text identify as “the greatest disaster in voluntary western migration in U.S. history"?
14. Friday, October 17	Transcontinental RRs (Social Savings)	16: pp. 321-323.
1. What is Robert Fogel's central claim about the contribution of the railroads to American economic growth? 2. How do you illustrate the social savings calculation on a supply and demand diagram? 3. Before the railroad, what was the best way from the New York to California if money was not a problem?
15. Tuesday, October 21	Big Business and the “Robber Barons”	17: all.
1. What was the "Rule of Reason" adopted by the Supreme Court in the antitrust cases handed down in 1911? 2. Which was faster the Bessemer process for making steel or the Open-hearth process? 3. What group, according to economic historian Gary Libecap, provided the political muscle that led to the Sherman Antitrust Act? 4. What were the two phases of the merger movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century?
16. Friday, October 24	No Class
No reading assignment
17. Tuesday, October 28	The Gold Standard	19: pp. 369-383 (and the notes on my website)
1. What caused the persistent fall in prices between 1879 and the mid 1890s? 2. What was the "Crime of 1873?" What was the relationship between the market price of silver and the mint price of silver when the Crime of 1873 occurred? 3. What were the costs and benefits to the United States of joining the gold standard? 4. What is the “Fisher effect?” Why does the Fisher effect undermine the argument of the Populists that Free Silver would help farmers?
18. Friday, October 31	Banking Panics and the Federal Reserve System	19: pp. 383- 387.
1. Who was J.P. Morgan? What was his answer when a reporter asked him what the [stock] market would do? 2. What happened to the price level and industrial production between 1865 and 1896? So what? 3. What financial crisis led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System?
19. Tuesday, Nov. 4	World War I (Mobilization)	21: pp. 416-426
1. What was happening to living standards in Europe in the period leading up to World War I? 2. What happened to earnings in the United States between 1914 and 1920? 3. What was the most important means of finance for the United States in WWI? 4. Why is there a picture of Charlie Chaplin yelling at a crowd in the textbook?
20. Friday, Nov. 7	World War I (Legacies)	21: pp. 426-428
1. Who was Bernard Mannes Baruch? 2. What famous treaty concluded World War I? 3. What happened to the Federal Reserve’s discount rate in 1920?
21. Tuesday, Nov. 11	The Roaring Twenties	22: all.
1. What components of the modern American lifestyle arrived in the 1920s? 2. What sector of the economy suffered the most distress in the 1920s? 3. What did George Sirkin claim about the stock market in the 1920s? 4. What was Eugene White's counter argument to Sirkin?
22. Friday, Nov. 14	SECOND EXAM (100 POINTS)	Multiple-choice and short answer. Covers the lectures and readings since the first exam.
No New Reading Questions. Study like crazy for the exam.
23. Tuesday, Nov. 18	The Great Depression: One Darned Thing after Another	23: pp.452-465.
1. What was the Smoot-Hawley tariff? Does the text regard it as a major cause of the depression? 2. What was the Kreditanstalt? 3. How does Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, explain the severity of the Great Depression? 4. Approximately, what was the maximum rate of unemployment during the Great Depression? (Count government emergency workers as unemployed as was the official practice in the 1930s)
24. Friday, Nov. 21	The New Deal	23: pp. 465-470.
1. What government policies contributed to the "Recession within the Depression?" 2. When Rexford Tugwell, an advisor of President Roosevelt, said the "Cat is out of the Bag" what did he mean? 3. How does the text answer the question -- Can it happen again?
26. Tuesday, December 2	World War II (The Military Front)	25: pp. 494-499 (And notes on my website)
1. At the peak of wartime mobilization in 1943, approximately what percentage of GDP was going into the war effort? 2. How would you describe how America mobilized in WWII in terms of the production possibilities curve? 3. What was the most important means of finance for the United States in WWII?
27. Friday, December 5	World War II (The Home Front)	25: pp. 499 -514
1. What was "forced uptrading?" 2. Who was Henry J. Kaiser? What did he do during World War II? 3. According to Claudia Goldin, what percentage of women who entered the labor force between 1940 and 1944 had dropped out by 1950?
28. Tuesday, December 9	The business cycle after WWII	27: all
1. What did the Kennedy-Johnson economic team mean by the “New Economics”? 2. What was the chief economic problem faced by the Carter administration? 3. What did the Federal Reserve do on October 6, 1979?
TF2. Monday, December 15: 12:00-3:00. TF3. Thursday, December 18, 12:00-3:00.	Final Exam. The Final Exam will be all multiple-choice. About half the questions will review the first two parts of the class, and about half will cover the new material since the last exam.	TF2. Monday, December 15: 12:00-3:00. TF3. Thursday, December 18, 12:00-3:00.

No New Reading Questions.

Study like crazy for the exam.