The Teaching of History Part 4

7. Financial legislation.

8. Growth of humanitarian spirit.

There will easily be sufficient topics so that each member of the cla.s.s will have a different one. They can all work at the board, simultaneously. The amount of time used for exercises of this sort need not be great, and the value received is incalculable.

If the teacher wishes to review briefly on the military, diplomatic, social, political, or economic history of the people the cla.s.s have been studying, it is no difficult matter to arrange a set of questions, the occasional review in which will clinch in the student's mind what otherwise would surely be forgotten. Such questions as the following on the financial history of the United States are each answerable with a few words and will serve as an ill.u.s.tration of the method which may be employed in reviewing any other phase of history:--

1. By what means was trade accomplished before the use of money?

2. What are the functions of money?

3. What determines the amount of money needed in a country?

4. What has been used for money at various periods of our history?

5. What is meant by doing business on credit?

6. What is cheap money?

7. What is Gresham's Law?

8. What is the effect of large issues of paper money on prices?

9. What is the effect of large issues of paper money on wages?

10. Why does the wage-earner suffer?

11. At what periods in American history have large issues of paper money been emitted?

12. What were the objects of the first United States Bank?

13. Did the bank accomplish them?

14. Why was it not rechartered?

15. When was the second United States Bank chartered?

16. Why?

17. What case decided the const.i.tutionality of the bank?

18. Did the second United States Bank accomplish the purpose for which it was formed?

19. Why was the second United States Bank rechartered?

20. What is meant by "Wildcat Banking"?

21. What are the dates of our greatest panics?

22. What were the chief causes?

23. What was the effect on prices?

24. What on wages?

25. Under what President was the independent treasury first established?

26. Is it in existence to-day?

27. When were greenbacks issued?

28. To what amount?

29. Who was responsible for the issue?

30. Were they legal tender for private debts contracted before their issue?

31. When was the Resumption Act pa.s.sed?

32. Are the greenbacks in circulation to-day?

33. What is free silver?

34. What was the "Crime of '73"?

35. What was the "Bland-Allison Act"?

36. What was the Currency Act of 1900?

37. What is Bimetallism?

38. What is meant by "Mint Ratio"?

39. What is meant by "Market Ratio"?

40. What is meant by "Free Coinage"?

41. What is meant by "Gratuitous Coinage"?

42. What is meant by "Standard Money"?

43. With the market ratio at 30 to 1 and the mint ratio at 16 to 1, which money would tend to disappear from circulation if both metals are freely coined and made full legal tender?

44. Why is silver not the standard to-day?

45. What is the "Aldrich Plan"?

46. What is a United States bond?