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Fair Labor Standards Act

(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 ...

Freedom of Information Act

(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...

National Defense Education Act

(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 ...

Americans with Disabilities Act

(Encyclopedia)Americans with Disabilities Act, U.S. civil-rights law, enacted 1990, that forbids discrimination of various sorts against persons with physical or mental handicaps. Its primary emphasis is on enablin...

Embargo Act of 1807

(Encyclopedia)Embargo Act of 1807, passed Dec. 22, 1807, by the U.S. Congress in answer to the British orders in council restricting neutral shipping and to Napoleon's restrictive Continental System. The U.S. merch...

Tenure of Office Act

(Encyclopedia)Tenure of Office Act, in U.S. history, measure passed on Mar. 2, 1867, by Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson; it forbade the President to remove any federal officeholder appointed by a...

Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act

(Encyclopedia)Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act: see Wilson, William Lyne; Gorman, Arthur Pue. ...

Kansas-Nebraska Act

(Encyclopedia)Kansas-Nebraska Act, bill that became law on May 30, 1854, by which the U.S. Congress established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. By 1854 the organization of the vast Platte and Kansas river c...

Northern Pacific Railway

(Encyclopedia)Northern Pacific Railway, former American rail line, following the northern route from Duluth and St. Paul, Minn., to Seattle, Wash., and Portland, Oreg. The Northern Pacific RR Company was chartered ...

monopoly

(Encyclopedia)monopoly mənōpˈəlē [key], market condition in which there is only one seller of a certain commodity; by virtue of the long-run control over supply, such a seller is able to exert nearly total con...