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Research dossier · History & Society

Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938

United States wage law

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 203, is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and "time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppressive child labor". It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. The Act was enacted by the 75th Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938. The FLSA is considered the last legislation of the New Deal.

Editorial summary

“Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938” enters the record as united States wage law. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fair, Labor and Standards can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1938—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Fair, Labor and Standards.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Fair, Labor and Standards provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1938.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 primary sources, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 archive and Fair research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.