Minimum allowable wage to be paid to workers; first implemented by the U.S. government through the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set the rate at $.25 per hour.
The forces that led to minimum wage legislation took
years to develop. Robert Pollin and Stephanie Luce have written that “one of the early works written on behalf of minimum wage legislation was a 1906 book by Monsignor John A.
Ryan titled A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects.”
Kansas enacted the first prevailing-wage law in 1891. In 1931
President Herbert Hoover signed the Davis-Bacon Act, an
equivalent piece of national legislation written by Republican
U.S. Senator James J. Davis of Pennsylvania, a former secretary of labor, and Republican U.S. Representative Robert L.
Bacon of New York, a banker.
In 1932, Mary “Molly” Williams Dewson, director of the
women’s division of the Democratic National Committee,
became a major advocate of establishing a minimum wage by
advocating in a letter to the administration of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt that no difference in minimum wage
should exist between the sexes and that “time and one half
should be paid for all time worked over and above 40 hours
per week.” The principles supported by Dewson were implemented in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which included minimum wage requirements. Conditions were auspicious for this national legislation at this time because the
U.S. Supreme Court had upheld a state minimum wage law
the previous year. The 1938 statute initially set a standard
minimum wage of 25 cents per hour, and at first minimum
wage laws were confined to government construction projects and referred to as efforts to establish prevailing wages.
The Fair Labor Standards Act was arguably the last major
piece of New Deal legislation passed; the Democrats soon
after sustained heavy losses in the November 1938 midterm
elections, which gave rise in 1939 to a conservative coalition
of Southern Democrats and Republicans that controlled the
House and Senate. Additionally, World War II naturally
shifted President Roosevelt’s attention from the New Deal to
efforts to win the war. Since 1950, when the minimum wage
was $.75 per hour, Congress has increased the minimum
wage at least 16 times to rates greater than $5.00 per hour in
1997 and $5.15 per hour in 2003.
—Henry B. Sirgo
References
Dewson, Mary W., to Mr. C. W. Dunning. Letter.
“Objections to the Candy Manufacturing Code.”
Attached Testimony from Hearing of March 13, 1934.
Democratic National Committee–Women’s Division
Correspondence–General (Box no. 5) Folder:
Consumers’ Advisory Board of NRA 1933–1935.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York,
March 19, 1934.
Pollin, Robert, and Stephanie Luce. The Living Wage:
Building a Fair Economy. New York: New Press, 1998.