Volume 11 , Issue 36

1914 Economics, Finance & Retailing

Remember when the minimum wage was $5-PER-DAY? We have come along way since those days of 1914, huh?

The $5-a-day wage idea was largely the brainchild of James Couzens, 42, who met Ford in 1903, borrowed heavily in order to invest $2,500 in the new Ford Motor Company, and had become Ford's second in command.

Threats of labor troubles in early January, 1914 had led Henry Ford to offer workers a minimum wage of $5 per day. That was more than twice the average U.S. wage and more than the average English worker earned in a week.

A Federal Trade Commission was established by congress September 26, 1914 to police US industry and was designed only to prevent unfair competition. The Clayton Anti-Trust Act voted by congress October 15, 1914 toughened the federal government's power against combinations in restraint of trade as outlawed by the Sherman Act of 1890. The law contained provisions to protect labor.
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