The plight of workers during the early years of the Industrial Revolution was less than ideal: 10-hour, 6-day workweeks, with pay barely above subsistence level. Moreover, employers openly discriminated in setting wages for men versus women. The first state to pass laws to change that, albeit in a roundabout way, was Massachusetts: calling for an establishment of boards that would determine what the living wage for women was. But it would be Oregon a year later to create the first minimum wage laws.

On this day, February 17, in 1913, Oregon passed the first laws creating a minimum state wage: $8.25 for women.

Oregon’s law led to two actions. First, a court case concerning Oregon’s law made it to the Supreme Court, where  4-4 decision upheld it. Second, other states would try to follow in setting minimum wages of their own, but much less successfully. In 1923, the Court struck down Washington, D.C.’s minimum wage laws for all residents, holding that the District had no right to interfere with private enterprise. This same reasoning was used to strike down most of the wage laws that followed, until the Great Depression changed public opinion and legislative course.