Pulling the rug out
McCarthy, Abigail
OF SEVERAL MINDS Abigail McCarthy pulling the rug out Let's end child labor We have become a dispirited people because we do not celebrate our victories-or even recognize them. This is the thesis...
...To our shame, however, the most successful have been initiated not here but in South Asia where a coalition, funded in part by German organizations, is attacking the problem piecemeal, and in Germany itself where consumers have achieved a really significant effect on one of the most ancient forms of child labor-the manufacture of hand-knotted carpets...
...This industry, once centered in the Mid-East, is now worldwide, extending from Egypt and Morocco to India and Nepal, and blights the lives of hundreds of thousands of children...
...Our indignation and our responses have been slow to rise...
...National awareness grew and a national consensus was formed...
...For the first time ever," says Darlene Adkins of the Child Labor Coalition, "consumers can choose hand-knotted carpets made without child labor...
...Today they are clean...
...They are made under the Rugmark label in India...
...When we fail to celebrate what we have done, says Shields, we lose heart for the struggles which must yet come...
...But coalitions are forming and their boycotts and protests are beginning to take effect...
...It also includes underage workers in American-owned companies which assemble goods abroad for export to this country...
...He elaborated on it in a summer's talk at a benefit for the Brewster Ladies Library Guild on Cape Cod-not a place where his thesis would attract the media attention it deserved...
...Controls would bring the prices of cars beyond the range of competition...
...How did these changes come about...
...A similar cause crying out for our attention and our effort is the battle against worldwide child labor...
...Today 99 percent of the lead that contaminated the air has been removed, largely by the control of auto emissions...
...Even now the heart lifts when we hear it sung again-"We shall overcome, we shall overcome some day...
...Too often what we eat, what we wear, what we use, is priced as it is because somewhere forlorn little ones drag out their days in dusty fields or in dingy factories and sweatshops...
...Today, surprisingly enough, despite the controls, Detroit companies, manufacturers of cars, are robust and alive and competing successfully with their foreign challengers...
...phone (202) 835-3323...
...Let us summon the energy fueled by our own past victories to join others in liberating the children of the world...
...Twenty years ago the Great Lakes were polluted and dead or dying...
...First, caring people identified the problems...
...This is the thesis of commentator Mark Shields...
...Workers would lose jobs...
...They include The Gap, Eddie Bauer, Gap subsidiary The Banana Republic, J.C...
...We need the optimism bred by past victories to sustain us in gathering together to attack the evils we face...
...Whether we are carpet buyers ourselves or not, those who see the promotion of Rugmark as a giant step in the fight against child labor ask our help...
...Bob Herbert of the New York Times has written several of these columns...
...It is important that we recover that optimism because common effort unites and inspirits people...
...They gathered in groups and associations to do something about these problems...
...Our effect on the environment is only one example but it is impressive...
...Our attention has been called to the plight of these children by Robert A . Senser in Commonweal (October 8,1993, August 19,1994), the occasional television documentary, and by a few public-spirited reporters and columnists...
...Legislation and regulation followed and things changed greatly for the better...
...A Rugmark activist's organizer kit is available from the Child Labor Coalition, c/o National Consumer's League, 1701 "K" St., N.W., #1200, Washington, DC, 20006...
...The Department of Labor issued a report By the Sweat of Children: The Use of Child Labor in American Imports "to identify any foreign industry and their host country that utilize child labor in the export of manufactured products from industry or mining to the U.S...
...Past history shows that we can effect great change if we will...
...Have we forgotten...
...A surcharge of 1 percent of the value of the carpet is assessed for a Uni-cef-administered program to educate and rehabilitate former child workers...
...When environmentalists first urged controls, both labor and management resisted and made dire predictions...
...Penney, and Levi Strauss-all, alas, outlets favored by liberals...
...The goal is to convince retailers and importers to make Rugmark carpets available in the United States...
...The groups coalescing became a movement...
...Who involved can forget the heady days of the civil rights movement or the camaraderie engendered by the sit-ins, the freedom rides, the marches...
...The industry would suffer...
...We can refuse to buy but there are other means as well...
...Yet we fail to congratulate ourselves on this progress or take pleasure in it...
...In his July 26 column, for example, he lists some of the American companies which benefit from children's sweatshops...
...His talk, appropriately enough entitled "Optimism," cited one example after another of what our concerted efforts have achieved but of which we seem unaware...
...Today they are clear andfisherman line the banks...
...In 1970 three-fourths of our rivers were unswimmable and unfishable...
...The faith that we can overcome the injustices and the social ills we still face is weakened...
...Because of the globalization of the market place we have become passive collaborators in this widespread exploitation of hapless children...
Vol. 122 • September 1995 • No. 16
