Child labor laws: Removing child labor protections

Any one of many breaker boys pictured in [“These photographs helped ban U.S. child labor, till now,” May 7, Business] might have been my father.

Born in 1908, the oldest son of Lithuanian immigrants, my father began working as a breaker boy within the anthracite coal area of Pennsylvania when he was 6 years outdated. He went underground at 12 and died from black lung at 52.

I used to be eight years outdated when he died and a few of my earliest reminiscences are of my father hardly in a position to breathe, struggling to stroll the size of our yard.
The considered stress-free little one labor legal guidelines sickens me. What number of kids should die or get injured earlier than we perceive that the younger ought to be protected?

What number of staff have to be disadvantaged of a full life earlier than we acknowledge that each particular person deserves the prospect to labor in secure circumstances? What number of poverty-stricken households have to be exploited earlier than we perceive the worth of all human lives? We can not purport to be a simply society till we prolong the precise to develop, work, and stay in dignity to all folks from delivery onward.

Jeanette Norris, Seattle