Cheap Raw Material: How Our Youngest Workers are Exploited and Abused

Cheap Raw Material: How Our Youngest Workers are Exploited and Abused, Milton Meltzer, Viking, 1994

Many American teenagers have a job after school or during the summer. Not only is it a good way to earn some extra spending money, it's something of a rite of passage into adulthood. This book looks at the history of child labor, mainly in America. It's not pretty.

In the Americas, the abuse of children for profit started at the time of Columbus. When the European nations were planning their foreign colonies, they realized that children would be useful in the Americas, making things for profit. In 1600s England, there were plenty of poor street orphans who wouldn't be missed if they were thrown on a ship heading to America. Officially, they were indentured servants, to be freed after a certain number of years. Actually, they were slaves.

Throughout American history, children have worked long hours. They have picked cotton on Southern plantations from sunup to sundown. They have worked in cotton mills or deep in coal mines for 12 or 14 hours every day. Education is haphazard or non-existent. If the children aren't maimed or killed by the unsafe machines or conditions, they contract something like tuberculosis or black lung disease and die anyway. In the early 20th century came the garment sweatshops, where the children would go to a factory and run a sewing machine all day, or do it all night in their unsanitary apartment.

In the present day, with child labor laws on the books, one might think that the child labor problem is gone. Think again. Migrant farm workers still spend all day in the fields, being exposed to all sorts of pesticides. Underage, and untrained, workers are still maimed and killed by dangerous machines at bakeries, supermarkets and fast food restaurants.

This is an excellent and eye-opening book. The author has plenty of passion, and, whenever possible, lets the young people tell their own stories. Written for young people, this is highly recommended for anyone just starting out in the work force. It's also recommended for those who employ young people.