<P> In 1910 , in conjunction with advocacy work led by Florence Kelley of the National Consumer League , the Women 's Trade Union League ( WTLU ) of Massachusetts under the leadership of Elizabeth Evans took up the cause of minimum wage legislation in Massachusetts . Over the next two years , a coalition of social reform groups and labor advocates in Boston pushed for minimum wage legislation in the state . In 1912 , Massachusetts passed the first American minimum wage legislation , which established a state commission for recommending non-compulsory minimum wages for women and children . Within eight years , at least thirteen U.S. states and the District of Columbia would pass minimum wage laws , with pressure being placed on state legislatures by the National Consumers League in a coalition with other women 's voluntary associations and organized labor . The United States Supreme Court of the Lochner era consistently invalidated compulsory minimum wage laws . Advocates for these minimum wage laws hoped that they would be upheld under the precedent of Muller v. Oregon , which upheld maximum working hours laws for women on the grounds that women required special protection that men did not . However , the Court did not extend this principle to minimum wage laws , considering the latter as interfering with the ability of employers to freely negotiate wage contracts with employees . </P>
when was the minimum wage established in the united states
1912