Which of the following is true for the period between 1860 and 1910?
(a) The number of people in the labor force increased at a faster pace than the total
population.
(b) The workday lengthened.
(c) Real national income decreased.
(d) All of the above.
Burns (1934) argued that retardation and decline in some industries are
(a) healthy for a growing and developing economy because resources are released for
use in productive sectors.
(b) healthy only for the competitors of the declining industries.
(c) unhealthy for a growing economy because resources are idle in the declining
industries.
(d) unhealthy for a growing economy because the released resources are used
unproductively by the competitors of the declining industries.
The Founding Fathers (or Founders) of the United States were
(a) pragmatic reformers, eager to assault slavery whenever political realities permitted.
(b) skittish abolitionists, cautiously promoting antislavery under particular
circumstances.
(c) anti-abolitionists, permitting slaves to be freed only when they would reap a great
advantage from emancipation.
(d) not concerned with slavery, because for centuries humankind failed to recognize it
as a problem.
Which of the following best explains the closing gap between rural and urban mortality
rates?
(a) Relatively higher incomes in urban areas
(b) Relatively lower prices in urban areas
(c) Medical advancements, health education, and public health and sanitation
involvement
(d) All of the above.
Historians typically disagree with which of the following contentions from Time on the
Cross?
(a) Slavery was profitable for Southerners and consequently resulted in wealth
accumulation.
(b) Slavery was on the verge of extinction on the eve of the Civil War.
(c) Slave owners were moral and treated slaves with kindness and high standards.
(d) Slave breeding and sexual exploitation were myths and slave sales rarely broke up
slave families.
Today’s railroads are:
(a) Privately owned and regulated by competitive forces.
(b) Private owned but managed by federal regulatory bodies.
(c) Federally owned and managed by government regulatory bodies.
(d) Federally owned but competitive.
During the colonial period, individual producers
(a) were never required to produce specific goods or services.
(b) were, at times, required by colonial officials to produce certain staples if they
wanted to produce cash crops. For example, the early governors of Virginia directed
tobacco producers to also plant wheat.
(c) produced only what they were directed to produce by colonial officials as part of an
overall plan of colonial development.
(d) received orders directly from England to produce what was viewed as most valuable
to England.
In a political democracy,
(a) only the voting majority is protected but the minority is coerced to protect the
majority.
(b) the population minority is free to organize and to lobby to achieve goals.
(c) there is no unequal distribution of income or wealth.
(d) the minority can elect officials.
Out of the various types of M1 (demand deposits, coins and bank notes), only demand
deposits
(a) can be used to generate loans by banks.
(b) serve as a medium of exchange.
(c) serve as a unit of account.
(d) store value.
Why did the slave-labor system probably cause a lag in Southernurban and industrial
development?
(a) The slave system provided a weak market for goods because of the low income and
consumption levels of slaves.
(b) Side-effects of urbanization and industrialization, such as slave flight and greater
freedom, were threatening to Southern owners.
(c) The South’s slave society culture was resistant to manufacturing and urbanization.
(d) All of the above apply.
Which of the following best describes the Employment Act of 1946?
(a) A piece of New Deal legislation that had to be postponed until after the war
(b) An effort to stabilize the U.S. balance of payments as the world moved toward using
the U.S. dollar as the main reserve currency
(c) An attempt to reduce the overall extent of federal responsibility in the post-war
national economy
(d) All of the above
Brinley Thomas (1954) argues that immigrants were attracted to the United States
between 1815 and 1914 for all of the following reasons except
(a) Harvest failures in the home countries of the immigrants
(b) Organized labor opportunities, health benefits, safe working conditions and healthy
work environments in the U.S.
(c) European population increases, contributing to problems associated with more
mouths to feed in a stagnant European economy
(d) Increasing job opportunities in an expanding U.S. economy
Which of the following is false?
(a) Constitutions are the basic framework of law.
(b) The day-to-day interpretation and application of constitutions are matters
for legislatures and the courts.
(c) The U.S. is a “common-law” (judge-made law) country, even though we operate by
positive statute law and written constitution.
(d) The “police power” of government to control business activity was reduced
significantly by the U.S. Constitution compared to what it had been during the colonial
period.
Which of the following economic and/or political rights does the labor movement work
toward gaining?
(a) Property rights for women
(b) The right to vote for women
(c) The right to vote for non-owners of property
(d) All of the above
The form of property ownership rights inherited from the colonial period was
characterized by which of the following?
(a) Property ownership was almost ideal as the base for a free-market economy.
(b) Property ownership established property, including land, as a “commodity”
that could be easily bought and sold.
(c) Property ownership proved to be an excellent vehicle for economic growth.
(d) All of the above.
Once wartime spending is under way and production is diverted away from household
consumption items and private investment goods,
(a) real Gross National Product will likely fall.
(b) the money supply will automatically increase.
(c) inflation will likely rear its ugly head if productivity does not advance.
(d) production and employment will fall.
As a result of emancipation,
(a) black labor force participation increased by 1/3.
(b) black labor force participation declined by 1/3.
(c) amazingly, black labor force participation remained essentially unchanged.
(d) average wages of black workers rose well above those of their immigrant
counterparts.
Unlike the steel industry, the automobile industry
(a) became more concentrated.
(b) became less concentrated.
(c) remained the same in terms of concentration.
(d) constantly fluctuated in terms of concentration.
To what can we attribute the relatively high population growth in colonial America,
compared with growth in England?
(a) The relatively advanced medicine in the colonies
(b) Better climate, food and water
(c) Better hygiene and preventive care
(d) All of the above
Mass production during U.S. industrialization involved using which of the following?
(a) Interchangeable parts
(b) Division of labor and specialization
(c) The assembly line
(d) All of the above
Railroads had advantages over canals in all respects except
(a) year-around service.
(b) speed of delivery.
(c) full access to shipping points.
(d) there is no “except”; all of the above were advantages of railroads.
In 1938, another Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed. The error of the 1933 Act
was now avoided. What had that error been?
(a) Acreage allotments
(b) Combining provisions for conservation with subsidies
(c) Imposition of specific taxes on food processors
(d) Excessive delegation of power
Between the 1921 recession and 1929, the U.S. economy was described as healthy.
Which of the following changes in economic indicators is correctly stated and supports
this claim?
(a) Real Gross Domestic Product (RGDP) increased per capita
(b) There were increases in real income but they were more unequally distributed
(c) Consumer spending on credit increased dramatically
(d) There was a decline in total building construction
The emphasis upon export surpluses in mercantilist theory
(a) is also called the “beggar-thy-neighbor policy” and a “favorable” balance of trade.
(b) was thought to be a good thing by business people because it meant that more
money was circulating and more money meant higher prices and brisk trade.
(c) was thought to be a good thing by governments because it created brisk trade which
yielded higher tax revenues than did slack trade.
(d) is characterized by all of the above.
All of the following were true in the South except
(a) Slaves had little or no status in courts of law.
(b) Slave marriages (when there was a ceremony) were not legal, binding contracts.
(c) Slaves’ property was legally their own.
(d) Slaves’ own children were not theirs to control; slaves were property.
What did the 1958 Treaty of Rome establish?
(a) The European Payments Union
(b) The European Economic Community
(c) The European Coal and Steel Community
(d) The Marshall Plan
During the antebellum period, the federal government assumed
(a) responsibility for full employment.
(b) responsibility for stable prices.
(c) responsibility for the overall economy through control of the money supply.
(d) little responsibility for most economic matters, leaving them to private individuals
in businesses and households.
Government controls over industry
(a) limit overall net industrial growth.
(b) help all industries.
(c) lower consumer costs in the industries assisted by government.
(d) encourage the destruction of inefficient and lagging industries.
Social Security provides incentive for individuals to
(a) save more than they consume during their working years.
(b) manage their assets privately in order to prepare to live on principal and interest
during retirement.
(c) rely on transfer payments made by the working class to them during retirement.
(d) carefully manage their private retirement portfolios and use the income earned to
consume and save during retirement.
The “New Deal” programs of the 1930s aimed at
(a) transforming American capitalism into a planned socialist economy.
(b) introducing short-term measures to cure the depression but no fundamental changes
in the American economy.
(c) introducing measures to deal with the crises and cure the depression combined with
measures to restructure important aspects of the economy and increase the role of
government in it.
(d) reintroducing laissez-faire policies (non-government intervention) like those that
had worked in the 19th century.
What was the official policy of the British colonies toward the practice of ‘squatting,” or
freely settling and cultivating the land?
(a) Squatting was encouraged as a way to promote settlement of the land.
(b) Colonial officials discouraged squatting because the indigenous populations legally
owned land.
(c) There was no policy toward the practice of ‘squatting”; it was left to the individual
settlers.
(d) The official policy opposed squatting because it did not involve a formal transfer of
ownership.
What do Baack and Ray (1983) find in their survey of U.S. tariff history?
(a) Tariff rates in the U.S. were low.
(b) Tariff cuts were associated with the fast-growing industries.
(c) The highest tariff rates in the U.S. were associated with the fastest growing
industries.
(d) The U.S. was a world leader in free trade policy.
Which statement is correct?
(a) Slaves were owned by the majority of Southern whites.
(b) The old Southern states held the majority of slaves even as the new cotton South
expanded.
(c) The increase in slave ownership was most dramatic in the relatively new cotton
plantations.
(d) Slavery vanished in the Middle colonies but not the North by the start of the Civil
War.
The stage of industrial development during the early part of the 20th century is usually
referred to as Fordism. The characteristics of this system include all of the following
except
(a) Moving assembly-line production
(b) Mass production of relatively inexpensive consumer goods
(c) The extensive use of skilled labor to produce complex consumer goods
(d) Consumer durable goods purchased on installment credit
All of the following methods were used to raise funds to finance the Civil War
(1861″1865) except
(a) An income tax
(b) The printing of paper money
(c) Taxes on prostitution
(d) Taxes on whiskey and beer