The Epic, Surprisingly Sexist Fight That Brought the Minimum Wage to America

What’s clear, in hindsight, is that the 1923 decision outlawing the minimum wage and the Supreme Court’s 1937 reversal bookend a period worth revisiting as President Obama pushes Congress to adopt a new $9-per-hour floor on labor. We’re still having many of the same arguments minimum wage advocates and opponents had back then. But it is fascinating and clarifying to see them unfold in a different cultural context — one that upsets our preconceived narratives, dislodges our ideological assumptions, and reminds us how surprisingly, complicatedly intertwined this issue once was with women’s rights.

Read more. [Top image: Collier’s Weekly]

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    Fascinating stuff.

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    Not that surprising, but then most Americans (people?) are hopelessly ignorant when it comes to even relatively recent...

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