By: Connie Fort
Welcome to Connie's History Corner, the inevitable result of giving creative license of a website and blog to a frustrated history major. The entire field of Prevailing Wage Compliance stems from the passage into law of the “Davis-Bacon Act of 1931”. Davis-Bacon (or DBA for short) put simply, ensures workers on federally-funded projects are paid a fair wage for their work. Seems simple enough, but the story of how we ended up with a former artillery officer and a man who founded a racist orphanage coming together to protect workers is a little more complicated.
The year is 1931. Herbert Hoover is the President of the United States, Duke Ellington has just released “Mood Indigo,” and the Washington State Cougars battled the Alabama Crimson Tide in the Rose Bowl. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 had not fully evolved into what we would know as “The Great Depression”, but the crisis was beginning to metastasize. Within 2 years, the banking system would implode and half the country would be engulfed in dust storms so intense, blowing dust would strip the paint from cars and permanently blind some people. Herbert Hoover was the man on the scene. He was so revered for his intellect that surely, the public thought, he’d see them through the trials ahead.
Hoover was brilliant, but limited by his small government ideology. He pushed for the acceleration of public works projects planned for subsequent years, sustaining some jobs and creating new ones. This wasn’t ineffective, but there was one hitch: contractors from areas where wages were lower, generally the more rural South, would travel to higher-wage areas in the North and underbid local contractors. This was so prevalent and harmful that the normally hands-off Hoover would ask for and sign into law a bill put forward by two little guys you may have heard of: House Representative Robert L. Bacon from New York and Senator James J. Davis from Pennsylvania.
Their bill’s intent was straightforward: end the underbidding on Federal contracts by contractors from lower-wage areas, protecting the workers and communities they lived in from complete destitution. How was this done? Like previous state legislation, the DBA would compile data and determine the “Prevailing Wage” in different locales across the country. This data would dictate what contractors would have to pay their workers when working on Federally-funded projects in those areas. It also provided recourse for workers who were not paid the prevailing wage, and would track and punish contractors who refused to comply. The law has been amended numerous times to make it broader and more enforceable, and has inspired state prevailing wage legislation (called “Little Davis-Bacon Laws”) in dozens of states. Many workers owe Mr. Davis and Mr. Bacon thanks. And no, Robert L. Bacon is not related to Kevin Bacon.
HOWEVER, Robert’s brother, Gaspar Bacon (known under the screen name David Bacon) was in the movie “Crash Dive” with Florence Lake. She in turn was in “The Day of the Locust” with Dennis Dugan, who then played the character “Bill” in “She’s Having a Baby” with… Kevin Bacon. That’s FOUR DEGREES OF ROBERT L. BACON BABY!
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