America Had No Minimum Wage Until 1938 One Woman Kept It in Her Desk Drawer

Before 1938 there was no federal rule anywhere in the United States on how little a worker could be paid, how long a worker could be made to work, or how young a child in a factory could be. When states tried, the Supreme Court kept striking their laws down. The person who pushed hardest to change that was Frances Perkins — a former physics student who watched the Triangle factory burn in 1911, became the first woman in an American cabinet, and kept two draft labor bills locked in the lower left-hand drawer of her desk until the Court changed its mind. A case file on three popular claims about the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 — it gave America the weekend, one woman made it happen, it protected everyone — checked against the text of the law and dated documents. ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 The line on your pay stub 3:01 The world before: 60 hours and $4 a week 6:14 Frances Perkins: tea on Washington Square 9:17 Her conditions — and the Court that said no 13:19 The desk drawer 18:33 The law: twenty-five cents 23:58 The price: who the law left out 27:50 Today: the verdict on three claims 📚 SOURCES Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1060: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUT... U.S. Department of Labor — J. Grossman, "Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage": https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/histo... U.S. DOL — federal minimum wage history: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-w... U.S. DOL — minimum wage today: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/mi... F. D. Roosevelt — Message to Congress, May 24, 1937 (American Presidency Project): https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/... F. D. Roosevelt — Fireside Chat, June 24, 1938 (American Presidency Project): https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/... Frances Perkins Center — her life: https://francesperkinscenter.org/life-new/ Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shi... Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_v._Da... Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adkins_v._Ch... West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_H... United States v. Darby Lumber Co. (1941): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_State.... 29 U.S. Code §213 — exemptions today (Cornell LII): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29... Texas State Historical Association — Pecan Shellers' Strike: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entrie... M. Linder (Loyola): https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewconten... Palmer, "Outside the Law" (J. of Policy History, 1995): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/jo... LOC — 40 hours, 5 days (Ford, 1926): https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2024/01... Quotes in quotation marks are verbatim from these sources. 📷 CREDITS Archive film (public domain, Internet Archive / Prelinger Archives / FedFlix): Children Who Labor (Edison / National Child Labor Committee, 1912); 6,000,000 American Children Are Not in School (Selznick News, 1922); Humboldt County Lumber Mill (1926); National Recovery Administration promo (MGM, 1933); Roosevelt Inaugurated (Universal Newsreel, 1933); Network Broadcasting (ERPI, 1934); 2200 Men Out on Strike (Universal Newsreel, 1935); Roosevelt Landslide (Universal Newsreel, 1936); Dawn Strikes the Capitol Dome (c. 1936); Labor Day parade, New York City (home movie, 1936); The Plow That Broke the Plains (Resettlement Administration, 1936); Work Pays America (WPA, 1937); We Work Again (WPA, 1937); Pathé News Digest (1937); UAW Organizers at the Rouge (Ford Motor Co., 1937; NARA); News Digest No. 4 (1938); Stop Silicosis (U.S. Department of Labor, 1938); Roosevelt Urges Congress (Universal Newsreel, 1939); A Day in Congress (Academic Films, 1940s); How Textile Mills Are Modernizing (1948); The Plantation System in Southern Life (Coronet, 1950). Photos (public domain, via Library of Congress / National Archives / Wikimedia Commons): Harris & Ewing; Lewis W. Hine / National Child Labor Committee; Bain News Service; Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Dorothea Lange (Farm Security Administration); Keystone View Company; V. O. Hammon Publishing Co.; Vincenzo Laviosa; U.S. Department of Labor. CC BY 2.0: Kheel Center, Cornell University; U.S. Department of Labor. CC BY-SA 3.0: Joe Mabel; AgnosticPreachersKid. CC BY-SA 4.0: Eejjmm8888; Darrylpearson — all via Wikimedia Commons. Stock video: Envato Elements. Graphics: It Changed America. #history #minimumwage #francesperkins