Chapter 15 Learning Curve
Why did the protective tariff policy of post-Civil War Republicans not lead to the desired benefit to workers?
Corporations failed to pass along their profits to workers
What did the U.S. Supreme Court rule in the case of Munn v. Illinois (1877)?
States had the right to regulate businesses with a public purpose
Why did Democrats support lowering tariff rates after the Civil War?
Access to cheaper European goods was being restricted
What mid-American city connected East and West in the late nineteenth century, bringing western cattle on railroads to its slaughterhouses and then distributing the meat east, enriching itself in the process?
Chicago
Readers of Frederick Jackson Turner's essay on the frontier in American history believed that, in contrast to European nations, the United States had avoided what practice?
Imperialism
What did the Homestead Act of 1862 do?
It gave 160 acres to applicants who occupied and improved them
What problem plagued homesteaders of the Great Plains in the 1880s?
Lack of Rain
Which issue distinguished homesteading on the plains from pioneer farming in Iowa or Oregon in the antebellum years?
Land speculation
Why was the General Mining Act of 1872 not useful in developing the West despite its generous grant of mineral resources to those who discovered them?
Large-scale operations were needed to extract many minerals
Why did whites living in the West in the early 1860s undertake vigilante action against Native Americans on their own rather than relying on the federal government?
The government was preoccupied by the Civil War
How did barbed wire affect western economic development in the late 1800s?
The invention enabled cattle ranchers and farmers to fence large areas cheaply and easily
Why did Pacific northwestern cities like Seattle and Portland grow substantially in the late 1800s?
They acted as gateways to gold-rush regions
Why did Indian agents and missionaries create Indian schools off the reservations as part of the effort to solve what was seen as the "Indian problem"?
They did not think they could reeducate Indian children who were still living with their families
For what reason had states chartered corporations in the early nineteenth century?
To fulfill specific public purposes
Why did the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act ultimately undermine its original intention?
Whites used its provisions to obtain the best Indian lands
How did Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West differ from other such shows in the 1890s?
Wild West represented a conquered, not an empty, West
Who was the expansionist secretary of state during the 1860s that negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia?
William Seward
