Editing Minimum wage (section)

==History==
{{further|History of the minimum wage}}
{{quote box
| bgcolor = #c6dbf7
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| quote = "It is a serious national evil that any class of his Majesty's subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions. It was formerly supposed that the working of the laws of supply and demand would naturally regulate or eliminate that evil ... [and] ... ultimately produce a fair price. Where ... you have a powerful organisation on both sides ... there you have a healthy bargaining ... . But where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst ... where those conditions prevail you have not a condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration."
| source = [[Winston Churchill]] [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|MP]], [[Trade Boards Bill]], [[Hansard]] [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] (28 April 1909) vol 4, [https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1909/apr/28/trade-boards-bill#column_388 col 388]
}}

Modern minimum wage laws trace their origin to the [[Ordinance of Labourers 1349|Ordinance of Labourers]] (1349), which was a [[decree]] by [[Edward III of England|King Edward III]] that set a'' [[maximum wage]]'' for laborers in [[medieval England]].<ref name=Mihm>{{cite news|last=Mihm|first=Stephen|title=How the Black Death Spawned the Minimum Wage|url=http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-09-05/how-the-black-death-spawned-the-minimum-wage|access-date=17 April 2014|newspaper=Bloomberg View|date=5 September 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140418234149/http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-09-05/how-the-black-death-spawned-the-minimum-wage|archive-date=18 April 2014|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Wendy V. Cunningham |year=2007 |title=Minimum wages and social policy: lessons from developing countries |publisher=The World Bank |isbn=978-0-8213-7011-7 |doi=10.1596/978-0-8213-7011-7 |url=https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/6760/405260Minimum0101OFFICIAL0USE0ONLY1.pdf?sequence=1 |access-date=17 April 2014 |url-status=live |archive-date=19 April 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140419012530/https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/6760/405260Minimum0101OFFICIAL0USE0ONLY1.pdf?sequence=1}}</ref> Edward, who was a wealthy landowner, was dependent, like his lords, on [[serfs]] to work the land. In the autumn of 1348, the [[Black Plague]] reached England and decimated the population.<ref name=guardian>{{Cite news |url= https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/29/black-death-not-spread-rat-fleas-london-plague |title= Black death was not spread by rat fleas, say researchers |last1= Thorpe |first1= Vanessa |date= 29 March 2014 |journal= The Guardian |access-date= 29 March 2014 |url-status= live |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140330010701/http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/29/black-death-not-spread-rat-fleas-london-plague |archive-date= 30 March 2014 }}</ref> The severe shortage of labor caused wages to soar and encouraged King Edward III to set a wage ceiling. Subsequent amendments to the ordinance, such as the [[Statute of Labourers 1351|Statute of Labourers]] (1351), increased the penalties for paying a wage above the set rates.<ref name="Mihm"/>

While the laws governing wages initially set a ceiling on compensation, they were eventually used to set a [[living wage]]. An amendment to the Statute of Labourers in 1389 effectively fixed wages to the price of food. As time passed, the [[Justice of the Peace]], who was charged with setting the maximum wage, also began to set formal minimum wages. The practice was eventually formalized with the passage of the Act Fixing a Minimum Wage in 1604 by [[James VI and I|King James I]] for workers in the textile industry.<ref name=Mihm/>

By the early 19th century, the Statutes of Labourers was repealed as the increasingly [[History of capitalism|capitalistic United Kingdom]] embraced ''[[laissez-faire]]'' policies which disfavored regulations of wages (whether upper or lower limits).<ref name="Mihm" /> The subsequent 19th century saw significant [[Timeline of labor issues and events|labor unrest]] affect many industrial nations. As [[trade unions]] were decriminalized during the century, attempts to control wages through [[collective agreement]] were made.

It was not until the 1890s that the first modern legislative attempts to regulate minimum wages were seen in New Zealand and Australia.<ref name="Starr" /> The movement for a minimum wage was initially focused on stopping [[sweatshop]] labor and controlling the proliferation of sweatshops in manufacturing industries.<ref name=Nordlund>{{cite book|last=Nordlund|first=Willis J.|title=The quest for a living wage: the history of the federal minimum wage program|year=1997|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=Westport, Conn.|isbn=9780313264122|page=xv|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iNnsATsBQa4C&q=history+of+minimum+wage+laws&pg=PR7}}</ref> The sweatshops employed large numbers of women and young workers, paying them what were considered to be substandard wages. The sweatshop owners were thought to have unfair bargaining power over their employees, and a minimum wage was proposed as a means to make them pay fairly. Over time, the focus changed to helping people, especially families, become more self-sufficient.<ref name="Neumark">{{cite book | last = Neumark | first = David | author2 = William L. Wascher | title = Minimum Wages | publisher = The MIT Press | year = 2008 | location = Cambridge, Massachusetts | url = https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/minimum-wages | isbn = 978-0-262-14102-4 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160428001158/https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/minimum-wages | archive-date = 28 April 2016 }}</ref>

In the United States, the late 19th-century ideas for favoring a minimum wage also coincided with the [[Eugenics in the United States|eugenics movement]]. As a consequence, some economists at the time, including [[Royal Meeker]] and [[Henry Rogers Seager]], argued for the adoption of a minimum wage not only to support the worker, but to support their desired semi- and skilled laborers while forcing the undesired workers (including the idle, immigrants, women, racial minorities, and the disabled) out of the labor market. The result, over the longer term, would be to limit the nondesired workers' ability to earn money and have families, and thereby, remove them from the economists' ideal society.<ref>Thomas C. Leonard, ''Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era,'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016): 158–167.</ref>