Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 5 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
To the editor:
Ever since the early New Deal, it has been the policy that the federal minimum wage would be about half the average working-level wage in the nation; when the concept of a poverty level was developed, the minimum wage was supposed to pay just about the poverty level for a family of three.
The minimum wage effective in 1981, $3.35 an hour, was about 45 percent of the average, and paid about 96 percent of the poverty rate. By 1989, inflation had cut the minimum wage to 34 percent of the average and 70 percent of the poverty level. Five million Americans below the poverty level were in families headed by a full-time year-round worker.
In 1989, the Democratic Congress, over general Republican objection, passed a bill to raise the minimum wage to $4.55 over three
91.8%