Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Civil War veterans were the first interest group to use their political power to obtain substantial monetary transfers from the U.S. Treasury. Veterans supported the Republican party and, in exchange, Republicans provided increasingly generous veterans benefits, placing a strain on the Treasury that led toward a demand for increased taxes. Veterans also established a precedent that other groups could follow to petition the government for economic benefits, shaping the transformation of American government in the Progressive Era which led to the substantial growth of the federal government in the twentieth century. Copyright 1999 by Kluwer Academic Publishers