general strike, sympathetic cessation of work by a majority of the workers in all industries of a locality or nation. Such a stoppage is economic if it is for the purpose of redressing some grievance or pressing upon the employer a series of economic demands. It is political if called for the purpose of wresting some concession from the government or if the goal is the overthrow of the existing government. The political strike has been advocated by the syndicalists and to a certain extent by anarchistic movements. Practically unknown in the United States and Canada, except for some local instances (e.g., Seattle, 1919; Winnipeg, 1919; San Francisco, 1934), the general strike has been a powerful weapon in the hands of European labor since the latter part of the 19th cent. General strikes in Belgium in 1893 and 1902 won suffrage concessions; in Italy, a general strike (1904) protested the use of troops as strikebreakers; a general strike (1905) in Russia resulted in the issuance of the October Manifesto, instituting reforms; a general strike (1909) in Sweden, called against the repeated use of the lockout by employers, encouraged the idea that economic reforms could be gained without resorting to violence; a general strike (1920) in Germany successfully warded off a rightist takeover. In 1926 a general strike in Great Britain was called in sympathetic protest against the national lockout of the coal miners, but the strikers were forced to capitulate when it became clear that the government was able to keep essential services running and when only about half of the workers answered the strike call. In France a general strike, which failed, was called (1938) to protest against a government decree lengthening hours and penalizing strikers. Since World War II, general strikes have occurred mostly on a local level. Notable exceptions are the Belgian workers' reaction (1961) against a government austerity program and the French unions' support (1962) of President Charles de Gaulle during a military insurrection in Algeria. In 1968 another general strike occurred in France when university students and workers joined together during May and June and closed the major industries and universities. The strike ended with an agreement to provide increases in wages for the workers and stronger representation in factory management. In the 1970s the general strike became an often-employed tactic of the Italian trade unions.

Secretary-General	Nationality	Dates in Office
Trygve Halvdan Lie	Norwegian	1946-53
Dag Hammarskjöld	Swedish	1953-61
U Thant	Burmese	1962-71
Kurt Waldheim	Austrian	1972-81
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar	Peruvian	1982-91
Boutros Boutros-Ghali	Egyptian	1992-96
Kofi Annan	Ghanaian	1997-2006
Ban Ki-Moon	South Korean	2007-

United Nations General Assembly: see United Nations.

Surgeon General, United States, former head of the U.S. Public Health Service, which is responsible for protecting the people's health (see public health). Since a 1986 reorganization, the surgeon general has largely served as a national spokesperson and watchdog on health issues. The separate U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force surgeons general oversee military health care.

States-General or Estates-General, diet or national assembly in which the chief estates (see estate) of a nation—usually clergy, nobles, and towns (or commons)—were represented as separate bodies. The name survives in the Netherlands, where the two houses of parliament are known as States-General; however, only the name has been preserved there, for the lower house represents the entire nation by direct election, and the upper house represents the provincial estates, which are also elected democratically. Like the English Parliament, the States-General of France and other European assemblies had their origin in the king's council, or curia regis. The Cortes of the Spanish kingdoms, the diet of the Holy Roman Empire, and the diets of Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and the Scandinavian countries all originated as royal councils and all represented, in varying degrees, the principal estates of the realm. They are generally said to have grown out of the earlier Germanic assemblies. Whatever their origin, they developed along entirely different lines in the various countries, and by the 16th cent. there was little or no resemblance between the English Parliament, the States-General of France, and the States-General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.

The States-General of France

Origins

The French States-General owes its fame less to its importance than to the mode of its creation and the manner of its demise. The first French assembly known by that name was summoned in 1302 at Paris, by King Philip IV, in order to obtain national approval for his anticlerical policy. Philip may be said to have created the body only in the sense that he assembled a larger and more regular council than had before been assembled. From 1302 to 1789 its constitution retained the same division into the first, second, and third estates, i.e., the clergy, nobles, and commons. Its powers, never clearly defined, tended to vary inversely with those of the royal authority. The States-General of 1302 and 1308 dutifully approved, respectively, Philip's measures against Pope Boniface VIII and those against the Knights Templars; that of 1314 granted the king subsidies, but the grant was more or less nominal, with the king dictating his orders.

An Ineffective Counterweight to Royal Power

The French States-General never obtained the financial control that made the English Parliament a powerful institution. It did not always meet as a single body, but often convened separately as the States-General of Langue d'Oïl (N France) and the States-General of Langue d'Oc (S France). The more important of these, the States-General of Langue d'Oïl, made a strong bid for power in 1355-57, during the captivity of King John II in England. Under the leadership of Étienne Marcel it forced the dauphin (later King Charles V) to promulgate the Grande Ordonnance, which would have greatly expanded its financial and administrative powers and made it the virtual legislature of France. The dauphin, however, revoked his concessions almost as soon as he had made them and called a rival assembly at Compiègne. Although later States-General often opposed the king and even won temporary concessions, the continuous consolidation of the royal power prevented the emergence of a truly parliamentary body.

The States-General regained some importance in the chaotic period of the Wars of Religion (16th cent.). However, the opposing factions used it merely as an instrument for their own aims. The States-General of Paris of 1614 accomplished nothing, and the estates were not convoked again until 1789. Under the guidance of the chief ministers of state, Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, and under the firm hand of King Louis XIV, royal absolutism reached its apex in the 17th cent. The only serious check to the royal power was the Parlement of Paris (see parlement), which was a judicial rather than a representative body. Provincial estates, however, continued to function in the so-called pays d'états, i.e., the provinces of Brittany, Flanders, Artois, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Franche-Comté, Dauphiné, Provence, Languedoc, Béarn and Navarre, and several others. The major part of France, however, was more directly subject to the central administration.

The French Revolution

When in 1788 the Assembly of Notables (a meeting of the chief nobles, clerics, and magistrates) failed to solve the financial crisis of the French government, King Louis XVI ordered elections for the States-General as his last resort. Although no official pronouncement indicated that the assembly was to act as a truly deliberative body, its convocation was thus interpreted by the third estate and by the liberals among the nobility and clergy, who hoped to introduce English parliamentary government into France. At the same time, the government ordered the compilation of lists of grievances in the various provinces; these were to serve as a basis for discussing the necessary reforms. The preparation of the lists contributed to the impression that a general reform was impending and that the States-General was to act as a national assembly representing the sovereign will of the people.

On May 5, 1789, the States-General assembled at Versailles. Almost immediately the crucial issue of voting procedure came under debate. If the three estates adhered to tradition and voted as separate bodies, the third estate was bound to be continually outvoted. If voting was by head, the third estate (whose deputies equaled in number those of the combined clergy and nobility) was bound to win on most points, for many clerics and nobles sympathized with its aspirations. In June, 1789, the third estate, joined by a number of deputies from the clergy, forced the issue and declared itself the National Assembly. With this act of defiance the French Revolution may be said to have begun; and with Louis XVI's recognition of the fait accompli, the States-General ceased to exist.

New General Catalog (NGC), standard reference list of nebulae (see nebula). It is based on the General Catalog, published in 1864, which included 2,500 nebulae cataloged by William Herschel and an additional 2,500 cataloged by his son, John Herschel. The General Catalog was combined with work of other observers and the resulting total of more than 7,800 entries was published as the New General Catalog of Nebulae by J. Dreyer in 1888. This work was updated by publication of two Index Catalogs (IC), in 1895 and 1910. More than 13,000 objects are listed in these works, of which more than 12,000 are extragalactic nebulae (galaxies). Some nebulae listed in the NGC are also listed in the Messier catalog, e.g., the Andromeda Galaxy is listed both as NGC 224 and as M31.

General Land Office, established (1812) in the U.S. Treasury Dept. and transferred (1849) to the U.S. Dept. of the Interior. Empowered to survey, manage, and dispose of the public domain, the office administered the preemption acts, homestead laws, and all legislation affecting public lands. After 1900 it was more concerned with conservation of the remaining land. In 1946 it was consolidated with the Grazing Service into the Bureau of Land Management.

General Grant National Memorial: see National Parks and Monuments (table).

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), former specialized agency of the United Nations. It was established in 1948 as an interim measure pending the creation of the International Trade Organization. However, plans for the latter were abandoned and GATT continued to exist until the end of 1995. Members of GATT were pledged to work together to reduce tariffs and other barriers to international trade and to eliminate discriminatory treatment in international commerce. The most important service of GATT was to negotiate multilateral extensions of tariff reductions through the application of the most-favored-nation clause. GATT also provided for regular meetings to consider other problems of international trade. An important GATT principle was that protection of domestic industries was to be done strictly through tariffs and not measures such as import quotas. The only exceptions permitted to GATT rules were those dealing with balance of payments difficulties, and these exceptions are carefully supervised. GATT provided the framework for most important international tariff negotiations from 1947 until 1994. The eighth, or Uruguay round, of GATT negotiations, which began in 1986 with 15 negotiating groups, was long stalemated by the issue of agricultural subsidies maintained by the European Community. The agreement that resulted (1994) from the Uruguay round led to the creation (1995) of the more powerful World Trade Organization (WTO) as a replacement for GATT. However, the GATT framework remained in place for a 12-month transition period.

Estates-General: see States-General.

Churches of God, General Conference, conservative evangelical Christian bodies, Arminian in faith (see Jacobus Arminius), with certain Baptist doctrines. The movement originated during revivals held in Harrisburg, Pa., by John Winebrenner, a minister in the German Reformed Church. In 1830 the first cooperative "eldership" was organized by the independent congregations of Winebrenner's founding; a General Eldership of the Churches of God in North America followed in 1845. In 1975 its name became Churches of God, General Conference. The church polity is presbyterial. The Bible is the sole rule of faith and practice. Additional congregations have spread westward into adjoining states; there are mission ministries among Native Americans in the Southwest, in Bangladesh, Haiti, and India. They have about 31,000 members (1997).

Stoppage of work by a substantial proportion of workers in each of a number of industries in an organized effort to achieve economic or political objectives. The idea of a general strike spanning a variety of industries apparently began in Britain in the early 19th century; it was envisioned as a tactic of collective bargaining or, by more radical thinkers, as an instrument of social revolution. Notable general strikes occurred in Russia during the Revolution of 1905, in Britain in 1926 (carried on by various labour unions in support of striking coal miners), and in France in 1967 (touched off by student demands for educational reform).

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Group of military officers that assists the commander of a division or larger unit by helping to formulate and disseminate policy and by transmitting orders and overseeing their execution. It is distinguished from staffs that consist of technical specialists (e.g., medical, police, communications, and supply officers). It appeared in its modern form in the Prussian army in the early 19th century and in other European countries after 1870. The U.S. Army created a general staff in 1903.

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or family medicine or general practice

Field of medicine that stresses comprehensive primary health care, emphasizing the family unit. Practitioners must be familiar to some degree with medical specialties and, especially in health maintenance organizations, are now often gatekeepers who refer patients to specialists when necessary. Once virtually the only kind of medicine, family practice has been defined as a separate field only since increasing specialization in medicine led to a shortage of practitioners. A 1963 World Health Organization report stressing the need for medical education to focus on the patient as a whole throughout life led to specific programs in family practice.

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Chief law-enforcement officer of a state and legal adviser to the chief executive. The office dates to the Middle Ages but did not assume its modern form until the 16th century. In the U.S., the position dates to the Judiciary Act of 1789. Head of the Department of Justice and a member of the cabinet, the attorney general oversees all the government's law business and acts as the president's legal adviser. Every U.S. state also has an attorney general.

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Officer on the personal staff of a general, admiral, or other high-ranking commander who acts as a confidential secretary. Today they are usually of junior rank, and their duties are largely social. The term also denotes a high-ranking military officer who acts as an aide to a chief of state.

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One of six principal components of the United Nations and the only one in which all UN members are represented. It meets annually or in special sessions. It acts primarily as a deliberative body; it may discuss and make recommendations about any issue within the scope of the UN charter. Its president is elected annually on a rotating basis from five geographic groups of members.

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Former U.S. manufacturer of packaged grocery and meat products. It was incorporated in 1922, having developed from the earlier Postum Cereal Co. founded by C.W. Post. It soon began acquiring other companies and products: Jell-O Co. (1925), Swans Down flour and Minute Tapioca Co. (1926), Log Cabin (1927), Maxwell House and Calumet (1928), Birdseye (1929), Sanka coffee (1932), Gaines dog food (1943), Kool-Aid (1953), Burpee seeds (1970), Oscar Mayer & Co. (1981), and Entenmann's bakery products (1982). In 1985 it was bought by Philip Morris Companies Inc.

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Set of multilateral trade agreements aimed at the abolition of quotas and the reduction of tariff duties among the signing nations. Originally signed by 23 countries at Geneva in 1947, GATT became the most effective instrument in the massive expansion of world trade in the later 20th century. By 1995, when GATT was replaced by the World Trade Organization (WTO), 125 nations had signed its agreements, which governed 90percnt of world trade. GATT's most important principle was trade without discrimination, in which member nations opened their markets equally to one another. Once a country and its largest trading partners agreed to reduce a tariff, that tariff cut was automatically extended to all GATT members. GATT also established uniform customs regulations and sought to eliminate import quotas. It sponsored many treaties that reduced tariffs, the last of which, signed in Uruguay in 1994, established the WTO.

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or States General French États-Généraux.

In pre-Revolutionary France, the representative assembly of the three “estates” or orders of the realm: the clergy and the nobility (both privileged minorities) as well as the Third Estate, which represented the majority of the people. Usually summoned by monarchs in times of crisis, the Estates General met at irregular intervals from the 14th century on; it was of limited effectiveness because the monarchy usually dealt with local Estates instead. The last meeting of the Estates General was at the start of the French Revolution in 1789, when the deputies of the Third Estate led in founding the National Assembly.

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