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35. The correct answer is (A). The Taft-Hartley Act was enacted in 1947 in response to criticisms of
labor unions. The law outlawed the closed shop (one in which a worker could not work unless a
member of the union) and prohibited certain union practices such as the secondary boycott (an action
against a business dealing with a firm involved in a labor dispute) and featherbedding (forcing em-
ployers to keep staffed unneeded positions). The other acts listed were passed during the New Deal.
36. The correct answer is (A). The term reconstruction refers to the period following the Civil War
during which the states that had formed the Confederacy were reincorporated into the Union. Lincoln
had proposed a fairly moderate plan that was opposed by a group of radical Congressional Republi-
cans, led by Wade, Stevens, and Sumner, who were determined to restructure southern society.
After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson attempted to carry out Lincoln’s plan of moderate
reconstruction. The moderate plan failed primarily because of the recalcitrance of southern states:
they enacted the “Black Codes” (the effect of which was to impose a new kind of slavery on blacks)
and elected to public office many of the same men who had governed the Confederacy. The plan of
the radical reconstruction included military occupation and black suffrage.
Eventually, the whole reconstruction scheme just ran out of steam, and white southerners with
traditional attitudes about race relationships recaptured the governments. The new white govern-
ments ignored the provisions of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and in the end, no whole-
sale social restructuring ever took place.
The white conservatives who succeeded the radical reconstructionists called themselves “redeem-
ers.” Apologists for the redeemer governments pointed to fraud and corruption in the reconstruction
administrations and implied that dishonest and incompetent black southerners were largely to blame.
The apologists for the redeemer governments used phrases such as the “dreadful decade” to refer to
radical reconstruction. Those histories are incorrect on two scores. One, black southerners did not really
enjoy the monopoly on political power suggested by the apologists; two, the state governments under
reconstruction were not noticeably more corrupt that other governments of the same period.