A Living Wage for the Forgotten Man: The Quest for Fair Labor Standards 1933-1941 - Hardcover

Paulsen, George E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0945636911 ISBN 13: 9780945636915

Publisher: Susquehanna Univ Pr, 1996

Synopsis

This book is the first history of the five-year-long struggle to improve the income and living standards of the poorest workers in the United States. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the Fair Labor Standards Act the second most important reform of his New Deal administration after the Social Security Act. Although historians have considered the wage and hour law, which limited the workweek, fixed minimum wages, and banned child labor, as a last gasp of New Deal reform, it was a major effort to outlaw sweatshops and guarantee workers "living wages."

About this title

From Library Journal:

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), passed in 1938 in the twilight of the New Deal, is among the most significant legacies of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. Yet the era's voluminous literature has paid scant attention to the act, which empowered the federal government to fix a minimum wage and a maximum work week and to set limitations on child labor. Paulsen (emeritus, Arizona State Univ.) has written the first major study of the FLSA. Although he writes in a clear, straightforward manner, in focus and density he makes few concessions to nonspecialists, mapping in small scale the tortuous political road to the FLSA's passage. While few readers will complete the trip, those interested in a detailed view of the factional divisions that bear on this piece of legislation?Republican and Democrat, Northern and Southern, urban and rural, employers and workers, craft and industrial labor?will read the book with profit and may wonder that important legislation ever gets passed. For strong collections in U.S. public policy and labor history.?Robert F. Nardini, North Chichester, N.H.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Susquehanna Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0945636911
• ISBN 13: 9780945636915
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 228