Defending Child Labor on This Day in History

This Day in History: Today is World Day Against Child Labour. I am actually FOR child labor so I will not be celebrating World Day Against Child Labour. No one likes the image of children working in factories, but no one ever asked what the alternative was, or is. No one seems to ask those three important words that should always be asked when it comes to pointing out how bad something is: "Compared to What?" or "At What Cost"" It may make some bleeding heart feel good to shut down a sweat shop, but we never see the negative effects of doing so. The people, and children who worked there are now out of a much needed job in an area where poverty is already rampant. The solution to poverty for many children is labor. When you take labor away, these children now fall prey to child traffickers, the sex trade and or a life of crime. 

It was this way in the West as well. In 1697 John Locke urged families to put their children to work at age three or else they would have only “bread and water, and that very scantily too.” "These children were destitute...Their only refuge was the factory,” which “saved them from death by starvation.” ~Ludwig von Mises

"Before the Industrial Revolution pretty much everyone other than the Kings and the Priests lived like this. Incomes in 1600 AD England, one of the richer countries at the time, were not above $2 a day (yes, in modern money and modern prices). Incomes in China in 1978 were also about this level. Sad as it is to say this, this is normal, the natural state of mankind over the past 10,000 years. Nineveh, Rome, Medieval Italy, Elizabethan England and, even sadder to say, some 500 million of our current fellow human beings, all lived or currently do live at around this level." Tim Worstall

When the factories in the West were shut down, children were forced to look for usually lower-paying and more dangerous jobs in the countryside. Over time, conditions improved to where children did not have to work so hard. I however appreciate the work my parents made me do when I was a child. I hated it at the time, but in looking back I am glad they did it. To this day, I think less of someone who has never picked up a hammer or a shovel. Oh, and keep the above picture handy for the next time someone wants to talk to you about "white privilege."

How "Sweatshops" Help the Poor

https://mises.org/library/how-sweatshops-help-poor

In Praise of Cheap Labor

Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all.

By Paul Krugman 

https://slate.com/business/1997/03/in-praise-of-cheap-labor.html

“Africa desperately needs Western help in the form of . . . sweatshops.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/06/george-reisman/in-defense-of-sweatshops/