ABSTRACT
The devastating onslaught of the Great Depression, rising political pressure against laissez-faire economic doctrines, and the experimental policy approach of newly elected Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt changed the climate and context for wage regulations. Wage and hour laws, the hallmarks of protective legislation for women and children during the Progressive Era, became national, gender-neutral regulations in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. In fact, during Congressional testimony on the proposed legislation, William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) asserted
The act is not a minimum wage law for women and minors. It is designed to establish minimum wage standards under very limited and special circumstances for workers engaged in the private industries covered by the act – men as well as women.
(U.S. Congress 1937: 219)