United States 1910s-1930s

Synopsis

Long before a federal minimum wage was established, American workers in the 1910s and 1920s stepped up a decades-old struggle for a minimum wage law. One pivotal protest in 1912, a textile workers' strike demanding "fair pay for a day's work," made Massachusetts the first state in the United States to adopt a minimum wage law. By 1923, 15 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., had instituted similar laws. Given that women were a vulnerable segment of the workforce, and most minimum wage legislation was limited to female workers, the struggle for a minimum wage was closely linked to the movement for women's rights. A key moment in the minimum wage struggle came with the 1923 Adkins decision, which equated the establishment of the minimum wage with price-fixing. That year the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in the case of Adkins v. Children's...