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The article focuses on the labour movement in New York, supporting the minimum-wage legislation, during the years 1933 to 1937. Minimum-wage legislation failed to gain widespread acceptance until the New Deal in the U.S. When the depression hit, workers had little or no protection against the vicious wage cutting which swept the country. New York not only became the first state to adopt a wage law during this period, but it also initiated a test of the measure's constitutionality. For decades the National Consumers' League (NCL) led the campaign for minimum wages throughout the country. In 1923, a ruling by the Supreme Court halted the initial campaign for this reform. NCL efforts in the preceding decade had brought passage of minimum-wage laws in fifteen states and the District of Columbia. The depression revived interest in minimum wages, since massive unemployment gave businessmen the opportunity to exploit helpless workers by drastically reducing wages. Although the cost of living fell

The minimum-wage movement on the state level followed a meteoric course in the early twentieth century. In 1911 Wisconsin lawmakers introduced the first bill. The next year Massachusetts became the first state to enact a minimum-wage law for women and children. With some variation eight states had copied Massachusetts by 1913. While New York did not pass such a law, the New York State Factory Investigating Commission (1911-1915) wrote an important chapter in the broader story of the minimum-wage drive during the Progressive Era. Its investigation into wages continued to influence the minimum-wage movement at both the state and national levels, through the 1930s. In the United States progressives restricted their proposals to women and minors because of the tenuous constitutionality of minimum-wage statutes. Opponents of minimum-wage laws would certainly challenge them in the courts as a denial of property rights and, hence, interference with individual liberty. The initial impetus for the minimum-wage movement came from the Consumers' League. Its leaders had urged merchants voluntarily to apply minimum rates to female employees during the 1890's. By 1913 the reformers' drive led to investigations that had successfully persuaded the legislators in nine states to establish minimum-wage acts. The statutes varied. Reformers had not neglected New York. In their early campaigns for voluntary action, Consumers' League leaders had pressured New York. Nationally, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (F.L.S.A.) crowned the minimum-wage movement. Congress passed this law as a result of the 1935 Supreme Court decision against the N.I.R.A. It provided for flat minimum-wage rates, originally 25 cents an hour, but to go up to 40 cents in seven years.

The article focuses on the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the child-labor legislation in the U.S. One of the lesser-known legislative activities of AFL during the first quarter of the century was its involvement in what amounted to a nation-wide campaign for child-labor legislation. While AFL was quite active legislatively throughout the first half-century or so of its existence, child-labor legislation represents a significant episode for several reasons. First, AFL either decided or was forced to shift its tactics and thinking several times. Second, quite in contrast with most of its legislative efforts, the Federation accomplished absolutely nothing in this case. Finally, in pursuing its child-labor goals, AFL got involved in a cooperative effort with a variety of non-labor groups who were also attempting to effect legislative change in the area. The paper describes the Federation's attempts to obtain some type of federal or state statutes limiting hours of work as well as measures limiting the employment of and providing minimum wages for children.

It was in the seventh year of the Chief Justiceship of Charles Evans Hughes that the Supreme Court of the United States gave up the fifty-year fight, which it had been waging intermittently against social and economic reform. The culmination of the Court's campaign came in 1935 and 1936 when, in a little more than twelve months, the high tribunal smashed much of the New Deal program. The Court's final attempt to protect business against government regulation came on June 1, 1936, when it overturned a New York minimum-wage law for women and children. Within twelve months, the Supreme Court surrendered to the New Deal. The judicial bastion of laissez-faire economics crumbled before the concept of governmental responsibility for the state of the economy and the welfare of the people. Central to this change was Justice Owen J. Roberts. Carrying his majority-making ballot like a white flag of truce, Roberts switched from the conservative to the liberal bloc of the Court. State minimum-wage legislation was the focal point of the Court's conversion from an opponent into a supporter of social and economic reform.