Just where does the Federal Government get the authority to dictate wages?
During the Depression, the state of Washington passed minimum wage legislation, and a chambermaid working for the Cascadian Hotel in Wenatchee sued to be paid the difference between her wages and what was established at the time as the minimum wage in Washington state, $14.50/week for 48 hours. The trial court, citing a previous decision in
Adkins v. Children's Hospital, found in favor of the hotel and its ownership group, West Coast Hotels. The state supreme court overturned the decision, and West Coast Hotels appealed in the federal courts.
An avowed supporter of Britain's "new liberalism" -- essentially, socialism -- Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote the majority opinion reversing decades of SCOTUS precedent disavowing the federal government's authority to regulate labor and wages, ruling that the state had an interest in establishing a minimum wage. Roosevelt jumped on that ruling and unilaterally instituted the concept that the SCOTUS ruling applied to the federal government's interest as well, and had fellow Democrats introduce minimum wage legislation in the Senate, and it passed, never to be successfully challenged.
The Court had been largely conservative up to that point, dealing blow after blow to FDR's socialist agenda with rulings against his government-grown efforts at legislating the country out of the Great Depression with the same kind of federal spending programs that we call "stimulus packages" today. Roosevelt had threatened to "pack the Court," appointing justices to the SCOTUS bench, expanding it to as many as 15 justices. He argued the Constitution put no number on how many justices should be on the Court, and he wanted a majority. Ultimately his efforts failed, but not before he managed to intimidate the Court into more favorable rulings -- like the Washington minimum wage decision -- with his "packing" tactic in play as a threat to the Court's authority.
That is how FDR overcame founders' principles and over 100 years of precedent before the Court, to usurp the privileges of free enterprise and force companies to pay what the government wants them to pay.
