Child Labor And Sweatshops Summary

Before we attempt to understand child labor in the present, we must understand the earlier stages of child labor, as well as what it entailed on a day to day basis. In “Child Labor and Sweatshops” edited by Mary E. Williams, it says, “When he was four years old, Iqbal Masih was sold into bonded servitude by his parents, a common practice of poor Pakistani families hoping to pay off debts owed to landlords and local merchants. For the next six years, Masih was forced to work in a carpet factory...for up to sixteen hours a day, six days a week” (7). You can see that even at the ripe age of four years old, kids were put into labor by their own parents. In some parts of the world, kids woke up early to help tend to the agricultural aspect of

their deeds, and it was somewhat understandable because it was the only source of income, and they were not working ridiculous hours. This, however, is torture for anyone, especially a child who has been barely exposed to the world and what is included in it. In these earlier stages of child labor, putting little kids to work to pay off debt to other people seemed like a smart idea and, for some countries, became everything that their economy was based off of. In “Child Labor and Sweatshops”, there is an excerpt from a news article from the New York Times written by Allen R.

Myerson that states, “The economies of third world nations often benefit from the introduction of low-wage manufacturing jobs. Many economists maintain that these ‘sweatshop’ jobs can offer the world’s poor a release from malnourishment and destitution”

(32). Even if the country thrived off of this malpractice, it would not change the fact that the entire basis of that country’s economy relied on the unfair and torturous labor of kids.

Another example of how child labor functioned in its earlier stages is the story of Sabeena, a young girl from Bangladesh who did not go to school in order to provide for her family. In “Child Labor and Sweatshops”, Shahidul Alam writes this about Sabeena: “Take Sabeena. Her factory is colourful with tinsel when I visit and many of the girls have glitter on their faces...She has been working at a garment factory ever since she finished Grade Five, about 18 months prior to my factory visit. Until then, schooling was free. There was no way her parents could pay for her to go to school and, with her father being poorly, Sabeena needed to work to keep the family going” (45). This little girl became the main source of her family’s income, and there was no other way for her to prosper besides that. That is an issue because that means that she will grow up not knowing what it felt like to be a child, and that will probably affect her life as she grows up. She would never know how different her life would be if she did not experience that. Now that we know what child labor was in the past, let’s take a look at child labor

now.
Child labor today has taken long strides from its conception, but it still is a hot button topic. According to the Child Labor Public Education Project, “Today, most nations around the world have child labor laws that set 14 or 15 as the minimum age for work, and prohibit children under 18 from doing hazardous work. In addition to national legislation regulating child labor, many international human rights and labor standards focus on the issue of child labor” (Herring 1). This shows how far that child labor has come from before, but there are still major strides that have to be taken. Back then, children were not even allowed to see what a normal child life entailed, and they were only restricted to work, which is damaging to the heart and mind of a