Sweat Shops

522 Words2 Pages

All of my life I have considered myself as a person who loves children. I enjoy playing with them, helping them, and just being around them. So when I first agreed with corporations who use child labor I shocked myself completely. After examining two articles; one “The Case for Sweatshops”, by David R. Henderson, and two “Sweatshops or a Shot at a Better Life”, by Cathy Young, I came to the conclusion that in some cases when young children work under proper conditions it can keep them out of the streets and be helpful to them and their families.

The lives of people in some third world countries such as Honduras and Indonesia are completely different than ours hear in a much more prosperous nation. So when citizens of this great nation hear about people working for thirty to fifty cents an hour they think it’s absolutely absurd. But what they don’t realize is that this amount of profit is acceptable to these people. David R. Henderson backs this up by stating, “Take the 31 cents an hour some 13-year-old Honduran girls allegedly earn at 70-hour-a-week jobs. Assuming a 50-week year, that works out to over $1,000 a year. This sounds absurdly low to Americans but when you consider that Honduras’s GDP per person in 1994 was the equivalent of about $600.” You can also see proof of this in Cathy Young’s article when she writes, “I have also wondered why, when we are shocked by reports of 50-cent-an-hour wages, we never think of those Save the Children ads reminding us that a contribution of $15 can feed and clothe a Third World child for a whole month.” Also, Young brings up another good point by stressing the fact that to many Third World country families having children is one more financial burden, “…in poor societies, a family cannot afford to support a child for 18 years. For virtually all of human history, most children worked…”

Many children in these Third World countries have no other option but to go to work and help support their families. Otherwise they are left to survive for themselves on the streets ruled by crime and danger. Cathy Young strengthens this point by saying, “Some children, left with no other means of earning a living, may even be forced into prostitution.” Yes, to most people, working in a sweat shop does not seem like a good option but for some it is the only one so why get rid of it.

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