Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Indian Reorganization Act, legislation passed in 1934 in the United States in an attempt to secure new rights for Native Americans on reservations. Its main provisions were to restore to Native Americ...

(Encyclopedia) Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, 1930, passed by the U.S. Congress; it brought the U.S. tariff to the highest protective level yet in the history of the United States. President Hoover desired a limited upwar...

(Encyclopedia) Wages and Hours Act: see Fair Labor Standards Act. ...

(Encyclopedia) act of God, in law, an accident caused by the operation of extraordinary natural force. The effect of ordinary natural causes (e.g., that rain will leak through a defective roof) may be foreseen and a...

(Encyclopedia) Chapultepec, Act of: see Pan-Americanism. ...

(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) Freedom of Information Act (1966), law requiring that U.S. government agencies release their records to the public on request, unless the information sought falls into a category specifically exempted...

(Encyclopedia) Gilded Age, a term used to describe a period in United States history—from roughly 1870 to 1900—when the wealthy elite consisted of industrialists w...

(Encyclopedia) Posse Comitatus Act, 1878, U.S. federal law that makes it a crime to use the military as a domestic police force in the United States under most circumstances. The law was designed to end the use of f...

(Encyclopedia) National Defense Education Act (NDEA), federal legislation passed in 1958 providing aid to education in the United States at all levels, public and private. NDEA was instituted primarily to stimulate ...