Last month marked the centennial of the first minimum wage law passed in the United States. And, while there is nothing new about low-wage work, we should take this occasion to recognize an even more dispiriting fact about the low-wage workforce: It could have been a thing of the past.
The first minimum wage law in the United States was established on June 4, 1912 in Massachusetts. More than a dozen states would follow over the subsequent 10 years, and by 1933 the new u.s. Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, wrote an essay to make the case for a minimum wage. ...