In the United States, a federal holiday is an authorized holiday which has been recognized by the US government. Every year on a US federal holiday, non-essential federal government offices are closed, and every federal employee is paid for the holiday.
A succession of laws on child labour, the so-called Factory Acts, were passed in the UK in the 19th century. Children younger than nine were not allowed to work, those aged 9â16 could work 16 hours per day per Cotton Mills Act. In 1856, the law permitted child labour past age 9, for 60 hours per week, night or day. In 1901, the permissible child labour age was raised to 12.
The laws were in place from the late 1870s until the civil rights movement began in the 1950s. In the United States from about 1877, which marked the end of the formal Reconstruction period, to the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, laws existed to enforce racial segregation in the South. These laws were called Jim Crow laws.