Copyright 2026, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)
'Sweatshop Christmas' balanced, informative
by Bill Steigerwald, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
December 15, 1996 ''Sweatshop Christmas,'' U.S. News & World Report's cover story about the Third World elves who slave away making the Barbie Dolls and Disney toys for America's children, could have been a real bummer.
Under less sophisticated or more manipulative editorship, the magazine's survey of the low pay and lousy working conditions in the factories and sweatshops of Pakistan, China and New York's Garment District could have been just a cheap way to ruin many a merry First World Christmas.
But the editorial intention of U.S. News obviously was not to instill guilt or incite outrage. It was to inform consumers about the complexities of global trade in a comprehensive, balanced and unhysterical way and to provide them with some practical advice about finding out where and how an item they want to buy was made.
As described by writer/reporter William Holstein, and as most people already know, the global workplace is often not pretty:
Children in Pakistan bloodying their fingers sewing panels on Reebok soccer balls. Factory workers in China earning $ 1.99 a day manufacturing millions of dolls for Mattel. Mexican couples in Los Angeles working for a Guess jeans subcontractor forced to take work home with them to meet their weekly quotas.
But as Holstein makes clear, we fat and happy Americans have to keep things in perspective. What look like horrific working conditions or slave wages to people in the world's wealthiest country ''are not just acceptable but actually attractive to others who live overseas or even in 'Third World pockets' of the United States.''
Also, Holstein says, the current system of global sourcing used by America's $ 1.3 trillion retail industry is not all bad. Lower labor costs have greatly benefited American consumers - apparel prices have actually declined in real terms in recent years.
And in many poorer countries, he points out, if workers weren't sweating away for pennies an hour making Nikes, they would be making much less elsewhere or wouldn't have jobs at all. Also, squalid Third World countries of today can turn into developmental success stories of tomorrow - Malaysia and South Korea, for example.
Many labor, civic, religious, investment and consumer groups are pressuring American manufacturers and retailers to improve working conditions in their Third World operations. Some, like labor unions, are merely looking out for their own interests, says Holstein.
Companies like Levi Strauss and Reebok have changed the way they operate overseas, but Holstein says it's unlikely that any sweeping solutions or improvements in working conditions will emerge any time soon.
Meanwhile, American consumers have more power than they realize to make the world reflect their values. ''The silver lining,'' Holstein says, ''is that if Americans respond to even some of these concerns, they could enjoy their shopping and improve the conditions that millions of people around the world encounter in their daily lives.'' -- -- --
QUICK READS: In the Weekly Standard's ''Maybe You Should Carry a Gun,'' William Tucker looks carefully at a new study out of the University of Chicago that says there has been a significant drop in crime rates in states like Florida that have made it extremely easy to get permits to carry handguns. Tucker, no enemy of guns, concludes the stats aren't conclusive but says the debate over right-to-carry permits is about ideology, not dispassionate data.
Kiplinger's, the personal finance magazine, celebrates its 50th anniversary in the usual ways - by looking forward and backward in time. The future world of 2047 looks like it could be fun: a Dow at 700,000 and bathrooms that scrub themselves might be nice.
But based on Kiplinger's piece comparing inflation-adjusted prices today with prices from 1947, we should feel sorry for our consumer forefathers. That clothes dryer grandma bought back then for $ 220 sounds like a steal today, but in watered-down 1996 money that was the equivalent of $ 1,620. Gramps' 12-inch black-and-white TV was no Christmas present in '47 either -- it cost $ 3,280 in '96 dollars and was lucky to get three channels.
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