.. don't have anything to do with "fairness" or a "living wage," as 
this article reports:

5/28/1998 In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Burton W. Folsom Jr. 
explained the origins of the federal minimum-wage law in the 1930s: A 
Yankee plot to strangle the South's economy.

During the 1920s and '30s, the American textile industry had begun to 
shift from New England to the South, where the cost of living was lower 
and where Southern workers produced a high-quality product for lower 
wages," writes Mr. Folsom, a senior fellow with the Mackinac Center for 
Public Policy in Midland, Mich.

"Politicians in Massachusetts, led by Republican Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge 
Jr. and House Minority Leader Joseph Martin, battled in Congress for a 
law that would force Southern textile mills to raise wages and thereby 
lose their competitive edge." 

Politicians in Dixie were quick to spot this evil Yankee 
conspiracy ,Mr. Folsom writes.
  "Northern industries are trying to stop the progress of the South, 
and they feel if they can pass this bill, it will really be a tariff 
against Southern goods," Rep. Sam McReynolds, Tennessee Democrat, 
argued in the 1930s. 

Hmm. Massachusetts politicians pushing for a minimum-wage increase?  
Sound familiar? 

"Sen. [Edward M.] Kennedy would have us believe that what has been good 
for Massachusetts is good for the nation," Mr. Folsom writes of the 
Massachusetts Democrat. "That was wrong in 1938 and it's still wrong 60 
  years later." 

http://www.washtimes.com/politics/inside.html

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