week depending on what job they preformed and how hard they worked. The

not-so-skilled were getting ten to fifteen cents and hour and the somewhat

skilled workers were getting twenty to twenty –five cents an hour. These

obscene wages lasted up until June 27, 1938. This day was a milestone for

underpaid workers. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was President at the time, signed

the nations first minimum wage law. This new law put a price floor of

twenty-five cents an hour on this rapidly growing market. Not only did the law

set an hourly rate, but also a maximum work week of forty-four hours. As time

went on, the minimum wage increased. During the Reagan years in 1949, the

hourly wage went from forty cents to seventy cents. The increase wouldn’t

stop there. In 1996, President Clinton raised the minimum wage to five dollars

and fifteen cents and hour. Now Sixty-five years later, from when the law was

first signed, the federal minimum wage stands at five dollars and fifteen cents.

The federal minimum wage didn’t stop individual states from raising the wage.

California, among a few others, has one of t

increasing the minimum wage would cost jobs. “There are plenty of

nation, it is set at six dollars and seventy-five cents. This past November

wage is very bizarre. There wouldn’t be any wasting of money, but exactly the

It provides a foundation of security for teenagers anywhere from fourteen years

“If we believed the measure would help Oregonians, we’d support it. But we

Some topics in this essay:
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