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Child labor is defined as the paid employment of children younger than 18 years of age. It is common in American society.1 According to the US Department of Labor, more than 4 million children were legally employed in 1988, a substantial increase from a decade earlier.2 Illegal child labor is widespread, and at least one million children are employed under unlawful conditions. Despite the common belief that the problem of illegal child labor was remedied long ago, the practice has persisted in the United States and appears to be on the rise.2,3
Child labor is also a major problem internationally.4'1 According to the International Labour Office (ILO), at least 200 million children under the age of H are employed worldwide. In some countries, children constitute 15% to 25% of the total work force. Children are employed as rug weavers in the Middle East, as underground tin miners in South America, and as metal workers, fireworks makers, textile weavers, and glass blowers in other countries.
In virtually all countries, child labor is associated with poverty, inadequate educational opportunities, and failure to enforce relevant laws and standards. Particularly severe abuses have been documented in so-called free enterprise zones, special industrial areas such as along the Mexico-United States border, where relaxation has been permitted in the enforcement of labor and environmental laws.4
HISTORICAL AND LEGAL BACKGROUND
Moderri'day child labor began in Europe and America during the 170Os as a consequence of the need created by the Industrial Revolution for large numbers of workers. In that era, "Most mill owners preferred to hire children rather than adults. Above all, children were cheaper. . , but also more tractable, and as labor unions developed, less likely to strike."8 Young children, especially girls, were sent by their families to work in the mines and mills because wages they could earn far exceeded the income of their parents at home on farms.9 Six-year-old girls in the mines (of Scotland) did work that later, in times of relative enlightenment, was turned over to ponies."10 In the mines of Pennsylvania and the mills of Massachusetts and South Carolina, conditions were no different.1'
The hazards and horrors of child labor in the 18th and 19th centuries were chronicled by Charles Dickens in Hard Times12 and...