[caption id="attachment_12111" align="alignleft" width="236" caption="Scrooge"]
[/caption]The notion of child labor, especially under poor and dirty conditions, undermines the very core of our humanity, that notion advanced by one of the candidates now in contention for the Republican nomination for the Presidency as he advocates child labor as a solution to the poverty in America.
Newt Gingrich, once the Speaker of the House and the designer of the Contract for America, has recently said poor children could serve as janitors and cleaning persons for the schools they attend as a way of teaching them occupational skills.
Charles M. Blow of the New York Times quoted Gingrich’s remarks made at a campaign stop in Iowa, where the former House speaker said, “Start with the following two facts: Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.” Blow points out Gingrich's second "fact was that every first generational person he knew started work early." The writer then goes on to discuss his opinion on how cruel and immoral these remarks are, particularly given in the context of the growing poverty in America.
Gingrich recently converted to Catholicism. The theological or moral principles related to his view on children and poverty are examined in an article on the site entitled Catholic Moral Theology. The author explains: “ Now, what is particularly dangerous about Gingrich’s statement is that it assumes 1. that the “really poor” do not work and thus 2. really poor children do not have any examples of hard work paying off unless its illegal. Behind this is the assumption that if the “really poor” did in fact work – then they wouldn’t be “really poor.” Gingrich’s inaccurate, simplistic and prejudicial assumptions about poverty itself masks and draws attention away from the bigger social questions – such as the social structures that perpetuate and sustain “poverty “
Poverty is an unknown to Gingrich, as he grew up in a family headed by a military officer and his wife along with three other children. Questions about his ethics have arisen many times in reference to both his first and second marriages, both of which ended in divorce as a result of Gingrich’s extra-marital affairs. His financial affairs have been questioned several times, as he had to return several million dollars of a book deal in 1995 and was reprimanded for ethics violations from allegedly using tax-exempt donations to fund a college course he had taught while serving as a member of Congress. So while Gingrich speaks of ethics and virtues, there have been questions about his own.
Laws against child labor came about as a result of the growing power of the unions in the early decades of the 20th century. As universal education became touted as the ideal, and people worried about the long hours and shortened recreational and school life of children, labor laws were passed that prevented children from working in the factories and sweatshops that had become part of everyday life for many of the poor.
While the United States condemns other nations for child labor practices, many American corporations continue to allow child labor in those same countries, with Nike among the most recent to receive reprimand for it. It is not unusual that Gingrich, who supports an isolationist America and mocks the world view of anything, to advocate a rollback of laws in the United States that protect children. The conditions of child labor in other countries are not that different than they were in the sweatshops of the United States years ago. Conditions for cleaning bathrooms in poorer schools must be among the worse conditions for children to work.
As the Christmas season approaches, it was another Scrooge that looked at the poor with the same disdain as the of today, who is Scrooge trying to take the Presidency as he tries to steal the meaning of Christmas and the peace, hope and future promise it gives to children.
