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The World of Child Labor
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19148 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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8 / 2000 |
2,562 Words |
| Author
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John J. Tierney Jr.
John J. Tierney Jr. is faculty chairman of the Institute of World Politics, a private graduate school of statecraft and national security in Washington, D.C. |
As Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) told a U.S. Department of Labor hearing in 1997,
"In an age of computers, fiber optics, and space travel, it is easy to forget that in many parts of the world--including our own backyard--children are sold into servitude, chained to machines, and forced to work under the most dangerous and unsanitary conditions. For most American consumers, the plight of these children has been as distant as a novel by Charles Dickens--not a present-day reality."
Some of that changed in 1998, however, when television personality Kathy Lee Gifford was accused of permitting the exploitation of children in Honduran factories that manufactured clothes bearing her designer label. Gifford denied the charge and testified against child abuse before Congress, thus defusing the issue at the time.
Yet most Americans still find the idea of abusing children for profit repugnant--notwithstanding the long tradition of child labor in U.S. industries and farms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time when America itself was a developing country. A survey conducted by Marymount University found that more than three out of four Americans would avoid shopping at stores if they were aware that the goods sold were made by exploitative and abusive child labor.
The issue also reverberated against various U.S. sporting goods manufacturers, including Reebok, after allegations of abusive child labor conditions in soccer ball factories in Pakistan. These charges forced an overhaul of the soccer industry's approach to the
... (2000 of 17143 Characters)
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