Child Labor

As we could see during the Gilded Age that child labor was very shown during this time. Many companies used children because children were small and had tiny hands so they could fit through many things, they also were cheap so business owners would pay children so little for the high amount of hours they would work, and they were easy to manipulate and intimidate so it was easy to tell children what to and also threaten or scare them to listen. Many muckrakers these were people who would expose bad business practices and the poor immigration living conditions they were working in. Many found these people and children working in horrible conditions many girls were working very close the machines and would be easy for their hair to become tangled with the textile machines. Also, many of the small children were put to do one job all day and their hands would become numb by the end of the day and become very dry, hurt, and also affect their bone structure. They also discovered that many families that worked in these factories would end up living here so the factory ended up being their homes for many families. But has child labor really gone away or is it still happening?

  So whenever you're eating a chocolate do you ever wonder where did it come from or how it was made? Recently they found out that many even after a decade and a half big chocolate makers have promised to child labor in their industry but they just estimated that 2.1 million West African children still working in dangerous and physical work of harvesting cocoa. During a BBC documentary filmmakers interviewed young boys of the Ivory Coast and they said that they'd been beaten and forced to work long hours without pay. During this interview, they asked a boy that has been working the cocoa farm for five years and asked him how he thought about how people enjoyed chocolate in other parts of the world. His response the question was "They are enjoying something that I suffered to make", "They are eating my flesh." Wow, that's crazy to think how there are children making and harvesting the main ingredient that every person loves in a chocolate bar. Many of the U.S and Europe consumers were shocked when they found out that companies like Kit Kat bars and M&M's we supporting this idea of child labor. They found that 71% of children working in cocoa are exposed to sharp tools and in the Ivory Coast 37% of kids farming cocoa had suffered "wounds" or "cuts". After collecting the cocoa and filling up baskets the boys then have to line up and place the baskets on their head and carry them 75 yards to the clearing and dump them in a plastic sheet for fermentation. Could child labor be in the food industry only or has it gone to the fashion or clothing industry?

Well, of course, all of us have gone to Crabtree Valley Mall and have gone shopping with our friends and have gone to the famous store called Forever 21. I guess you've never thought how are all these clothes made. Well, actually all those clothes are made out of cotton that is from Uzbekistan, a country where children are taken from schools and put working in alarming conditions by the government. So while you are wearing that cute shirt it was made by a child whose education was taken away because they had to make that shirt for you. Forever 21 has remained silent about this situation and has refused to support human rights and speak out against forced child labor in the cotton industry. There all these problems with child labor but is there always can be a solution to these problems.

For a moment we can look back and see how in the Gilded Age during the child labor to fight against this idea the used Union Tactics. Usually, people would do strikes by walking off the job and protesting and refuse to work for higher wages. Another tactic they did was a boycott by encouraging the public not to buy goods from companies. This can connect cleary to present child labor many of researcher or muckrakers write these articles to show us the public not to buy these certain goods from companies who do support or use child labor to create their products. A great example with Forever 21 people can stop buying there and buy at Abercrombie & Fitch, Gymboree, Carter's and the Children's Place these companies have policies prohibiting the use of Uzbek cotton. For cocoa problems, people can buy fair trade chocolate meaning that this type of chocolate does not use child slavery and it's also organic so that makes it better. So just cause child labor was in the past doesn't mean it's fully gone, now we see that there are still children working making and harvesting things that we love and use today. So next time you go to the store ask yourself how was this made?








Cites:
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com
https://fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/cho03_b.jpg?quality=80
http://fortune.com/big-chocolate-child-labor/
https://www.careeraddict.com/10-companies-that-still-use-child-labor
https://www.change.org/p/tell-forever-21-to-stop-forced-child-labor-in-cotton
http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies/