Minimum wages have been among the most controversial government interventions in labor markets. There have been several waves of minimum wage activity over the past century, beginning with a 1912 Massachusetts law. Since 1938 minimum wages in the United States have been set by a complex array of...

We describe the economic history of the rise of the American minimum wage between 1910 and 1968. Each new FLSA amendment led to a new peak in the real purchasing power of the national minimum. Exemptions to the FLSA were progressively closed and the share of workers covered finally increased...