by Ted Sherman

Created on: September 06, 2008

Trying to eradicate child labor in the world would be as futile as attempting to eliminate war. During the recent Olympics, Jay Leno joked about how childlike the Chinese gymnasts looked, and said that they should not be forced to compete with older gymnasts. He said they should be with all other Chinese children ... working in factories making Nike shoes.

The joke has more than a hint of reality to it. Walk through any K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens or other big chain stores and look at the labels on clothing, toys, candy, shoes, appliances or scores of other items. Many will read Made in China.

It is no joke nor secret that many emerging industrial nations, such as China, Korea, Vietnam and Mexico, competing for business in the rich American economy, depend on low-paid child labor to get their goods out cheaply. The only countries with any kind of child labor laws, such as the U.S., Britain and France, are those that are the customers of those with flourishing child labor populations.

America may take the high road these days in calling for child labor laws, but it wasn't too long ago when our children were regular members of the work forces. Look at any coal mine photos from the early 20th Century, and you'll see many very young soot-covered faces. My mother and her five sisters were working full time in clothing industry sweat shops at age ten.

Other photos from that era, taken in crowded tenement buildings, show children working alongside their parents in producing piece work at home. Kids on farms and ranches then, and still today, worked long dawn to dusk hours with their parents and siblings.

You can find similar scenes today in many parts of the so-called Third World where people and their governments don't have the economic advantages of enacting and complying with restrictive child labor laws. Even in America, if you were to check many farms and orchards at harvest time, you'd see many child immigrants, legal and otherwise, working stoop labor with their parents.

Of course, it would be morally correct for all nations to allow their children to enjoy untroubled growing years without being confined to grueling factory or farm work. However, it isn't likely that such a utopian dream will ever be realized. The best we can hope for is that all of the so-called civilized nations will allow their young citizens to enjoy those precious childhood years before being sent off to factories and battlefields.

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