The Historical Argument Against the Minimum Wage

Ben R. Crenshaw reports:

The first minimum wage law appeared in Kansas in 1891, with New York quickly following in 1894. However, it wasn’t until 1927 that the push for a federal wage law in certain industries began, culminating in the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 which set prevailing wages and benefits on all federally subsidized construction projects. As economist Walter E. Williams extensively documents in his book Race and Economics, the Davis-Bacon Act was proposed specially to protect local, white, unionized workers from competing cheap labor. This cheap labor took the form of mostly unskilled black American and non-European immigrant workers in construction, agriculture, and domestic service industries who were increasingly migrating north, putting pressure on northern labor markets dominated by whites. The Act intentionally sought to disrupt this trend and protect these white workers from “colored labor” that “sought to demoralize wage rates.” It worked. Prior to the Davis-Bacon Act, black and white employment in the construction industry was virtually equal; yet after the Act, black unemployment rose dramatically relative to white unemployment. This Act paved the way for the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that established a federal minimum wage for employees producing goods for interstate commerce, and which has since been greatly expanded so that it now covers 85% of the American workforce.

Pricing black folk out of the labor market: a legacy of white progressives.