Child labor USA

WHEN I was growing up as a child in the 1960s in Providence, R.I., I did homework when I wasn't in school...Homework meant work... My family took in homework for the costume jewelry industry. At night after school got out, we put together necklace chains, linking the chains by hand with a pair of pliers. Over the summer, when we didn't have to go to school, my mother, my sister and I spent the day in a cellar with no windows and no ventilation...We got paid according to a piece rate...

Technically, the factories don't know about this--much like Nike and Kathie Lee today claim not to know about labor violations in their factories abroad. And chances are that there are no labor department statistics documenting homework in the jewelry industry, then or now. But in Rhode Island when I was growing up, everybody knew about it... And... the same subcontractor which gave us homework in the 1960s--Ron Dee Jewelry, it was called--is still there. So I guess Ron Dee Jewelry hasn't been busted in the last 30 years for violating child labor laws.

BUSINESSES THAT do get caught for child labor violations get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. In fact, an Associated Press (AP) investigation several years ago found the typical fine that the government gives to employers who violate child labor laws ranges from $275 to $850. The maximum fine that can be imposed is $10,000. But that fine is only given when a child is killed or seriously injured on the job.... three-quarters of all fines for child labor violations are never collected.

AP's investigation estimated--using the government's own statistics--that close to 300,000 children were working illegally in 1996. Yet the U.S. Labor Department claims that child labor is nearly impossible to find...Yet AP reporters had no trouble at all finding child laborers. Less than an hour away from Miami, in a single day, reporters found eight children working on farms near Homestead, Fla...

http://www.www.socialistworker.org/2011/05/13/child-labor-usa

that was before the child labor laws were introduced in america.

is there any wonder why the capitalists moved to any country that did`t have child labor laws.

if you can find it read.."children in bondage" by edwin markham.