Consider the Source: 100 Years of Broken-Record Opposition to the Minimum Wage

In her Congressional testimony from 1959, Eleanor Roosevelt noted the repetitive quality of objections raised by minimum wage opponents over the previous five decades. More than 50 years later, it appears that nothing has changed.

This report documents the rhetorical onslaught launched by minimum wage opponents over the past 100 years. Rather than approaching these claims at face value, we step back and review how minimum wage opponents have presented their case through roughly a century’s worth of public statements, congressional testimonies, editorials, media interviews, and other public records, devoting a critical eye to the trajectory of these criticisms over time.