Earlier today I was reading about the exploitation of children in the England of the early nineteenth century. Coal was the fuel that fired the early Industrial Revolution in England, turning skies and skin black with soot. Making profits for the coal company ever so much easier were little children who could crawl into spaces too small for adults. Such work foisted upon needy families is almost unthinkable today. Yet it was the norm in the early 1800s, though largely obscured from the general public.
In our time, though children no longer are made to become miners, they nevertheless are exploited by a rapacious capitalist economy which sees children in aggregate as a multi-billion dollar profit center. The article linked below has much more to say about this subject with some valuable footnotes.
http://www.truthout.org/040309J
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