Modern Day Sweatshops
Modern Day Sweatshops"A land rich in beauty. " This is how a considerable number of people view today's Asian culture. A region with a booming economy, and a scenic view at every tur4n. It truly is a beautiful place, a beautiful place blocked from the view of factory workers by the soot covered windows of our modern day sweatshops. For them, " a land rich in beauty" is merely a fa�ade used to cover up for " a land poor in opportunities ".
In today's illusioned society the thought that the clothes that we wear, and the products that we use every day are made by hundreds of thousands of people working in less than poor conditions for a payment that would hardly buy the average working man a loaf or bread, never crosses our minds. It has recently be termed today's slavery (Crossette), but it is as overlooked as a crumb on a kitchen floor. Factory life is hard, but for the workers they have no choice. This is why it is called slavery, because they must work or die from lack of supplies and sustenance for them and their entire family.
The working conditions are beyond horrid. Women anywhere from ages thirteen and up work in a dark and crowded rooms with dangerous heavy machinery, working feet or even inches from a soon to be severed limb, and just adding to the noise that falls on soon becoming deaf ears. If these women are lucky enough to have children, they are fortunate enough to come to work with their mothers, and spend the days in a dank room unattended, and sleeping on musty old mattresses.
The situation has not changed much since the publication of the writings in Rebecca Harding Davis' book Life in the Iron Mills. These labor practices still exist and are now constantly in the news. One of the more recent sweat shops incidents was at a factory in Hong Kong that makes give away toys for McDonalds. On February twenty first two hundred twenty workers became seriously ill and were forced to stop work due to acetone poisoning and overwork. (AMRC) Twenty five of the workers collapse, and three were admitted to the hospital for emergency medical treatment. Another Issue in today's society has been the Asian factories that produce Nike sneakers. The owners have just recently agreed to clean the working conditions and put in proper ventilation.
As wretched as we now know these sweatshops to be, most of the women and children do not know this as to bad, but only as their societies norm. In Fanny Fern's short narrative "Working Girls of New York"