ORIENTAL RUG ZINE
CHILD LABOR ISSUES
FROM A MANUFACTURER’S VIEWPOINT
Mason Purcell
Many social critics insist that child labor is endemic in Asia and is unequivocally bad. Pontificating Congressmen, NGO’s looking for funding,
bureaucrats hoping to extend their spheres of influence, those wishing to alter the cultures and religions of our Third World brethren and a few who are
simply well-meaning single out carpet manufacturers in particular as the Simon Legrees of the manufacturing world. According to them, we specialize in bonded, underage laborers, whom we chain to our looms, beat regularly for
under-production, and feed once a week, whether they need it or not. Journalists find it in their interests to promulgate that image. .
Time for a reality check. Bonded labor and child labor exist. Child labor is not, however, endemic in carpet weaving, nor is it normal nor is it universally bad. The rhetoric
surrounding this issue is emotionally charged. Graphic descriptions of isolated incidents stir up emotions, and, in some cases, “documentaries” have been made entirely from Potemkin-carpet-weaving-factories set
up specifically to film the documentary. Myths, such as the “martyrdom” of Iqbal Masih by the “carpet Mafia” in Pakistan, have been perpetuated even though the best evidence is that the boy
was killed not for blowing the whistle on carpet manufacturers but by a relative whom he discovered in a morally compromising situation. (The squalid details of his murder were thoroughly investigated in Pakistan and reported in
numerous Pakistani newspapers.)
If one examines this issue from several non-emotional directions, differing sides of the child labor issue emerge. I do so from my own personal
experience in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, where all my production is located. I write only of what I have seen with my own eyes.
It is natural for us to assume that people in other countries are just like us, allowing for a few language and cultural differences between us. The common
assumption is that children who work in trades, if they lived in societies regulated by us, would not have to work. Instead, they would be in school full-time, do after-school activities like our own children and otherwise lead a
life comparable to that of our own children. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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A Turkmen woman weaves a rug with children by her side. Are the children laboring or they merely learning to weave in family setting? Ed
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The truth is simply outside our comprehension, if we have not seen firsthand the grinding poverty of the Third World. Amongst many Third World families, the labor of the entire family is barely
enough to ensure that the family has a roof over its head and enough to eat. There is no governmental support system to fight poverty whatsoever, except from outside agencies.
We also do not take into account religious differences. Moslem women do not go out of the family compound, by and large, to go to school or for whatever reason, after they are about 10 or 12. Women stay in purdah, within the
confines of the family home, or drape themselves in bourqas or chadors when they do leave, as per the tenets of their religion, Islam, and by their personal
preference. Young girls tend the younger children, help out with the family chores and learn to weave carpets, sew or embroider, in the company of their
aunts, grandmothers, and female cousins. The families are big, extended families, as brothers live at home with their parents, with their wives, many of whom are also their first or second cousins.
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A Turkmen child weaves at what seems to be a toy, though functional, loom. Is she working or playing? Ed. |
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In my 30-odd years of visiting in a variety of Afghan/Pakistani homes, I have been repeatedly struck by how well the children are treated, and how generally loving an atmosphere they grow up in. The parents may
be poor, but they do not mistreat their children.
The closest comparison to this type of family life would be farm life in the US in the early 20th Century, or indeed, in Virginia, where I grew up on a farm. As a young girl, I threw
down hay for cattle, put out sweet feed in the winter, shoveled horse manure out of stalls, painted fences, and worked in the family vegetable and flower gardens. I was required
to do this, if I wanted to receive an allowance. The argument, reductio ad absurdum, could be made that farm life in America uses child labor. In
actuality, it was simply the whole family working on the farm, just as family members work as a group, to support themselves in the Third World.
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