Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) American Film Institute (AFI), nonprofit organization established in Washington, D.C., in 1967 by the National Endowment for the Arts to preserve and catalog American films and television, to provide ...

(Encyclopedia) Communist party, in the United States, political party that espoused the Marxist-Leninist principles of communism. In 1945, Browder's policy was attacked as being one of the “right deviationism,�...

(Encyclopedia) Industrial Revolution, term usually applied to the social and economic changes that mark the transition from a stable agricultural and commercial society to a modern industrial society relying on comp...

(Encyclopedia) Fair Labor Standards Act or Wages and Hours Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1938 to establish minimum living standards for workers engaged directly or indirectly in interstate commerce, including ...

(Encyclopedia) Haywood, William Dudley, 1869–1928, American labor leader, known as Big Bill Haywood, b. Salt Lake City, Utah. He began work as a miner at 15 years of age. In 1896 he joined the newly organized West...

(Encyclopedia) fraternity and sorority, in American colleges, a student society formed for social purposes, into which members are initiated by invitation and occasionally by a period of trial known as hazing. Frate...

(Encyclopedia) Taft-Hartley Labor Act, 1947, passed by the U.S. Congress, officially known as the Labor-Management Relations Act. Sponsored by Senator Robert Alphonso Taft and Representative Fred Allan Hartley, the ...

(Encyclopedia) Petrillo, James Caesar pētrĭlˈō, pĭ– [key], 1892–1984, American labor leader, president of the American Federation of Musicians (1940–58), b. Chicago. In 1915 he became president of the Ame...

(Encyclopedia) Continental Congress, 1774–89, federal legislature of the Thirteen Colonies and later of the United States in the American Revolution and under the Articles of Confederation (see Confederation, Arti...

(Encyclopedia) federation: see federal government. ...