America And China, Historical Perspective Research Assignment

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Sweatshops
America and China have had some significant history. Dating back centuries, the union has been a platform for either of the nation to prosper. However, there have also been cases where the countries have been involved in some very inhumane practices putting them in the limelight of human injustices as late as the 21st century. One of the aspects that has been associated with the American and the Chinese industries is the reliance on sweatshops. Both countries have for the longest time benefited from exploiting workers in factories where they work in below world health standards and even breaking some of the human rights codes (Pugatch, Todd). Most of the industries that have been involved in the practice have been in china, where the American companies have outsourced most of the production processes relative to the low costs in raw materials, cheap labor and poor labor policies.
The idea of sweatshops is one that can be traced back to the 1840s. The workers are exploited as companies try to make the best of the situation and make insanely huge profits from the large production lines with little liabilities to their workers and cheap labor (Pugatch, Todd).
‘The plight of sweatshop workers first gained a public audience with the publication of The Condition of the Working Class in England, by Friedrich Engels, in 1844. Charles Kingsley offered a formal definition of "sweating" in 1849. The "sweating system," he wrote, "is a surviving remnant of the industrial system which preceded the factory system, when the industry was chiefly conducted on the piece-price plan, in small shops or the homes of the workers." The framework of this definition – that sweatshops are defined by a relationship of subcontract – was common in the early attempts to define the term. In 1888, the British House of Lords conducted an investigation into sweatshops and presented its own definition: "although we cannot assign an exact meaning to ‘sweating,’ the evils known by that name are shown in the foregoing pages of the Report to be: 1) an unduly low rate of wages; 2) excessive hours of labor; 3) the insanitary state of the houses in which the work is carried on. These evils can hardly be exaggerated." Such a sweeping definition of "sweatshop" permits a wider range of workplaces to come under scrutiny, but offers only vague terms -- "unduly low," "excessive," "insanitary" -- to distinguish sweatshops from humane places of wo...