Years ago, I worked in a smokestack industry that had a few critical jobs during the war. There was a place in the plant that guys had scribbled history making events on the wall with dates. Anyway, the wage I recall was $0.42/hour for a shift foreman. A buck had value then.
Consider that all of these wages were paid in silver.
$10 of silver is going for about $120 (depending on how far it’s gone down today!). So the weekly minimum wage of about $50 before taxes is akin to about $600.