Reading Questions American Econ.docx

Reading Questions Chapter 1: 1) Q: The book is dedicated to two famous economic historians: The only two to win the Nobel Prize, who are they? A: Robert W. Fogel and Douglass C. North 2) Q: What teams played in the first intercollegiate football game? In what year? A: Rutgers Vs. Princeton.. 1869 3) Q: What was life expectancy in the U.S. at age 45 in 1901? What was life expectancy at age 45 in 2010? A: 1901- 70 2010- 81 4) Q: By 1960 what percentage of American Households owned a clothes washer? A clothes dryer? A: Washer- 40% Dryer- 20% Chapter 4: Mercantilism 5) Q: What was the meaning of the term “Mercantilism” in the context of the early North American colonies? A: To achieve power and wealth for the state 6) Q: What was the leading commodity export by value of the American colonies in the late colonial period? What commodity was in second place? A: 1st- Tobacco; 2nd- Bread and Flour 7) Q: In the late colonial period, what was the main form of subsidy from Britain to the American colonies? A: Indigo 8) Q: 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? A: They put a duty of 3d per gallon on molasses and when people opposed they lowered it to 1d. This provided for a stamp act and withdrew it in the face of temper tantrums and when trying to enforce it, people didn’t comply.

Chapter 6: Revolutionary War 9) Q: The Tea Act of 1773, which led to the famous Boston Tea Party was a cause of the American Revolution. What does the text consider the most important effect of the Tea Act? A: The American importer was removed from the picture, which alarmed American merchants. 10)Q: What was “new” about the “new colonial policy” adopted by Britain in the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War? A: New enactments were adopted by a parliament and enforced by bureaucratic oversight that had every intention of enforcing them to the latter of the law, shaping the atmosphere of freedom in the colonies. Furthermore, British officials insisted on taking punitive actions that flamed the bitterness they already created in the colonies. 11)Q: What were the “intolerable acts”? A: An act that 1) closed the port of Boston until the colonists paid east India company for tea. 2) Permitted British officials charged with crimes in America to be tried in another colony or Britain. 3) Revised the charter of mass to make certain rights dependent on new governor. 4) provided troops to oversee Boston. 12)Q: Why did the American colonists object to the “Stamp Act” according to Benjamin Franklin? A: The act levied an internal tax as distinguished from the traditional external tax collected on important goods. Chapter 8: Opening the West 13)Q: What great political principal was resolved by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787? A: The debate on western Settlements 14)Q: According to Douglass North, what determined the timing of the peaks and troughs of the westward migrations before the Civil War? A: People migrated west in response to the profits to be made in the production of corn and wheat. 15)Q: What justification did Andrew Jackson offer for the forced removal of the Cherokee from their ancestral homeland? What light is shed on Jackson’s argument by the research of David Wishart? A: Because the cheroke’s would not be able to survive because their food source was disappearing. Wishart said that the cheroke’s were in fact very successful in farming and hunting. And in economic terms, they were similar to whites, which increased the demand for their removal.

16)Q: Initially, there were no property rights in the first California gold field. What was the result? A: Thousands of people moved to California to mine gold on the property that no man had exclusive rights to.

Chapter 12: Financial History 17) Q: What was Bank Note Detector? What were the "discounts" listed in Bank Note Detectors? A: Bank Note Detector- made sure that bank notes were genuine and not fake. Discounts were a fee the bank took a percentage of every dollar. 18) Q: What is the address of the economics department? What does this have to do with the monetary history of the United States? A: NJ HALL 19) Q: What is Gresham’s law? Who was Gresham? A: Law- Bad money drives out good money.. He was Elizabeth 1st master of the mints. 20) Q: How did Alexander Hamilton decide the weight in silver of the American dollar? A: he said that gold was 15x more valuable, so he decided that the weight of gold was 1/15. 21) Q: 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? A: they regulated them because they had considerable control over the stock of money. 22) Q: Where was the Suffolk Bank located? A: Boston, Mass. 23) Q: According to the text what variable best illustrates the economic excesses of the period leading up to the crisis of 1837? (A variable is something that you can measure which varies over time like the price of beans.) A: Cotton prices and the land bubble. 24) Q: Why (possibly) is Louisiana called the Land of Dixie? A: because 10 dollar notes issued in new Orleans bore the French word “Dix” which meant 10.

Chapter 14: The economic Impact of the Civil War 25) Q: On the eve of the Civil War what were the disparities between the North and South in terms of human and industrial resources? A: the north had a 3:1 ratio of men, and they had 1.6 billion in manufacturing, compared to 193 million in the south 26) Q: What is the "Beard-Hacker thesis"?
 A: transferred political power from the south to the north, and it stimulated the economy and increased investments. 27) Q: How did the South pay for the Civil War?
 A: From Sharecropping and the sale of land. 28) Q: How did the South attempt to make use of cotton as a weapon of war? A: They used it as a bartering tool to fund the purchase of weapons.