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Monday, March 11, 2013

FDR on a "living wage"--true then, true now



"In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."

- Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act June 16, 1933.
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html

Image: Froosevelt, Wikimedia Commons http://bit.ly/Xbe8bR
















"In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."

- Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act June 16, 1933.

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