On this day 75 years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the landmark Wagner Act, which has survived the ages as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

To this day, the FLSA regulates the minimum wage, overtime page, child labor and many other wage-and-hour issues that, prior to the 1938 statute's enactment, were completely unregulated at the national level (though progressive states had already moved into the field of labor law).

President Obama took advantage of the anniversary to issue a renewed call to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour.

The White House website noted that "a higher minimum wage can be achieved without hurting employment. At the same time, increasing the minimum wage can help reduce inequality: indeed, studies have found that at least 10 to 20 percent of the increase in inequality since 1980 can be traced to the erosion of the minimum wage due to inflation."