Minimum wages were first designed to keep women and minorities out of jobs - LA Times

 Progressive labor activists took a very different view 100 years ago,
when 15 states established America's first minimum wages. Labor
reformers then believed that a legal minimum would hand a raise to
deserving white Anglo-Saxon men, and a pink slip to their undeserving
competitors: “racially undesirable” immigrants, the mentally and
physically disabled, and women. The original progressives hailed
minimum-wage-caused job losses among these groups as a positive benefit
to the U.S. economy and to Anglo-Saxon racial integrity.



Read the whole thing, it's stunning





Minimum wages were first designed to keep women and minorities out of jobs - LA Times