Well this is fascinating. People have been claiming that Bob Cratchit from A Christmas Carol was a) destitute b) still earning more than the current U.S. minimum wage. So USA Today did some investigating, here: Fact check: Bob Cratchit’s salary higher than US minimum wage.

They state:

The claim: Bob Cratchit was destitute but still earned more than the U.S. minimum wage The work of Victorian-era novelist Charles Dickens went viral over the holidays, when a tweet used his 1843 novella “A Christmas Carol” to make a point about the minimum wage.  Posted Dec. 19 and retweeted by over 14,000 users, it centered on Bob Cratchit. The character works as a clerk and accountant for wealthy Ebenezer Scrooge yet struggles to provide enough food and clothing for his wife and six children. According to the post – which was screenshotted and shared by many Facebook users – Cratchit symbolizes “destitution” in the novella but would have made an inflation-adjusted wage of around $13.50 per hour – almost twice the federal minimum wage.

From there they go on to say the claim is not really true. I highly recommend you go read the rest of it on their site.

P.S. If you can, I recommend reading “A Christmas Carol” on Christmas eve (today!). It puts me in the Christmas spirit, and it’s a great read (of course).

(Image, from wikipedia, of Scrooge hosting Cratchit.)