Persuasive Essay Final

Coty Demers
Mrs. Boresen
Expos. Writing P-6
Final Persuasive Essay
2-4-09
Child Labor
How many of you either love shopping, or just love to wear clothes and new shoes? Or, how about love playing sports? Well, almost every designer store from Areopostale to Hollister or Nike to Zumiez has a background of child labor. All sports equipment, like footballs or baseball bats also come from foreign child labor camps. Child labor originated around the Industrial Revolution. It also peaked around the twentieth century in the United States. But, after that time, it was mainly foreign places that have a lot of types of child labor all over their land and still do today. The displaced working classes took advantage of any lower class families. The problems that people are facing with this, is that they don’t have enough money to support themselves. Sometimes families can’t make ends meet without having absolutely everybody in their household working, no matter what the age may be. My solution to this problem would definitely be to increase working families’ incomes and keep social services checking on families every now and then. If social workers got more involved in the ways that children are treated it would prevent a lot of illegal mistreatment such as child labor. Also, we should make sure that every child has proper education for at least a reasonable amount of school years. The downfall to this is that there are simply too many people in the world to be able to keep an eye on all of them and make this solution work.
Children are put to work all over the world in many locations in places called, “child labor camps.” Almost sixty-one percent of these children are found in Asia, thirty-two percent are found in Africa and seven percent are found in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Even though seven percent may not sound like a huge amount, don’t forget that this is millions and billions of people in the world. (http://www.childlaborphotoproject.org/childlabor.htm). In Asia, over twenty-two percent of the entire workforces are illegally hired children. In Africa, one in three children are put to work in dangerous jobs without any consent from parents. Latin America follows close behind with a little over one in five child that are working there. It is estimated that 290,200 children are unlawfully employed in the United States since 1996. A large portion of these working children are kidnapped and taken from their homes and sent to foreign places. Children that work as, “Child Laborers” are usually found in garment sweat shops. The Human Rights Watch published that “hundreds of thousands” of children work in just the agricultural portion. Girls can be found working mainly as domestic servants or maids in wealthy people’s homes. Being maids as children means getting completely cut of from all family members and all friends. A lot of children that work for people as “maids” illegally usually end up either being physically or sexually abused starting at the earliest age reported of two. Many children in dangerous and hazardous jobs have great chances of terrible injuries, diseases, or even death. Most of the time, the children are so young that if they die on the job, it is incredibly easy to cover up their death and their whole existence. In some cases, children five or six years old are forced to work 13 to 16 hour days without food or bathroom breaks. The main reason that manufacturers began hiring children in the first place is because they are a lot cheaper and have less of a chance to strike. The children also don’t fight back as much or have as good of a chance to know the difference between right and wrong. Many laws have been passed to help prevent child labor or child cruelty. Around 1916 is when the first law was passed so that hours would be no more than eight to ten a day. If the children are under 12 then it was also supposed to be against the law to be put to work in non agricultural jobs. But, still even today, people of course do not obey the laws. Parents sometimes leave their unpaid debts to their children unknowing that it is nearly impossible to work it off in just one lifetime. Imagine being born, already having a set job and have to spend your life as a child slave doing whatever you are told, having no type of education. It definitely doesn’t sound like a life well lived to me.
Obviously, I truly believe that child labor is wrong in so many ways that I couldn’t even state them all in this essay. The working conditions are ridiculously inhumane and cruel even for an adult. Child labor laws are being broken every minute of everyday, and people simply look the other way. Also remember that child labor occurs all over the world, basically in our own backyards. Clothing industries, sport equipment manufacturers, diamond industries, food industries, and even any type of mining or agricultural industries are all hiding a line of child labor that brings in their money. From this day forward, think before you buy anything with a name brand and go research it. You will most likely find some type of child labor camp that is manufacturing these items. Shoes (especially Nike Inc.) are sewn together by the little hands of three and four year olds. Any type of sports equipment that any athlete uses also has a line of child labor that has occurred to make these things for us. As you can see, child labor isn’t just the victims’ problem, it’s all of ours, and it’s the whole world’s problem. The children and their children’s children have these “debts” that will forever be worked off in these camps until action is taken. These children are our future…Don’t look the other way.