slightly OT: newspaper article on Amish quilts

That's another turn off for me. I recently read from several sources I trust about the Amish running puppy mills and being cited many times for animal cruelty. I'm sad to say that IMNSHO they aren't as "plain" nowadays as they used to be.

Lucille

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Very sad, indeed. If you can't trust the Amish, where are we in the scheme of things? I was especially saddened to read about the woman made to wait in a cellar so as not to be seen.

Dianne

Susan Hartman wrote:

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Susan Hartman ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

No surprises there really. There are many more items that generate a picture to me of little fingers, oriental rugs, soccer balls, designer label clothing. Two edges, the one that makes some village industry and is a good thing, but the other is the thought that we can carelessly buy something that is taking away childhood for some and is a bad thing.

I finally had the time to read this. I have conflicting emotions about this. Since I read no mention of sweatshops (in fact some of them worked out of doors), I feel the Hmong in Thailand are getting a great deal in many ways (keeping their preferred rural lifestyle while adding to the village income and educating the children), I would like to see them get more money for their craftsmanship.

Some Amish and Mennonites (since both are mentioned) appear to be ripping off the public with false claims of local manufacture.

Guess if I want a quilt, I'm going to have to make it myself.

Cheryl

That's pretty much what I felt, too. I didn't have any problem with local Hmong women working alongside Amish women to produce quilts together, but importing them and passing them off as authentic is fraudulent. And charging so much money when so little goes back to the artisans is just immoral, IMHO.

Sue

I found myself wondering about that part. The only $$$ mentioned were the sum of $1/40 baht for hand stitching a binding - no mention of what size quilt (lap or king?) and more importantly about how much 40 baht buys? What a dollar buys here is quite different than what it buys elsewhere.

And while you call them artisans, I'd call them pieceworkers - it's a pleasant job to them, not a craft or an art. I am not saying they don't deserve more in the paycheck. This is not a slam - I did piecework and my in laws owed a business sewing garments.

Cheryl

That's the important part. While we might be horrified from a US perspective that someone's working for 2c an hour, if that 2c will buy them a 5 lb bag of rice, then they're doing about as well as someone here earning minimum wage.

There are countries where the average income is $300/year. Someone there who earns $1/day is in great shape (as opposed to here, where $300 might rent you a garage for a month).

That is what I have never been able to understand from the "activists"( not the right word, but the right one doesn't jump to mind right now).

The complaint that someone only earns "x" many cents(US) an hour in any part of the world, doesn't necessarily equate to what it can buy, and even more, what "luxury" items are even available to buy. In many areas and cultures, being able to feed the family with familiar foods etc, while still living in whatever housing is the local dwelling, gives them a good life.

I think that in the US , we are totally spoiled, and we have far too many luxury items, that are now considered *necessary* for ordinary day-day living. Cellphones, fast foods, convenience foods, TV, even cable, are all deemed to be important. Consequently the populace tends to believe that those who do not have this are deprived. Bull-hockey!

Every kid is supposed to graduate from High School. Some don't want to, or are unable to do so. So be it!! If they can't or won't there are jobs they are capable of doing; floors DO need sweeping,trucks need driving, shelves need stocking etc. A HS diploma is totally unnecessary for such jobs. If schools graduate 100% of the students, to my mind they have not done their job, and are passing through those who do not deserve it!

Flame proof skivvies on, and I don't give a damn!!

To this tough old "Maxine", you get what you work for.

Man......that Soap Box felt good!!

Gillian

Gill Murray ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

I decided to check out the Baht and it is 0.026738 of a US Dollar.

Gillian, are you including child labour as being okay? Frequently the children are not allowed to live at home, they live on the job site, they are worked all day in miserable conditions, often unhealthy conditions which severely shorten their life expectation.

No matter how spoiled we are here, and I would definitely agree we are, I can never purchase items that I am all too aware have been made by little fingers. Whichever way I look at it, it means I condone it, which I cannot.

The cost of those few cents is way too high for anyone, particularly a child.

I am mulling this over. The first thought is that if it is the difference beytween life, albeit not good, versus starvation or worse, one takes the lesser of two evils.

Obviously I hate the idea of little kids slaving away; however, our nations did the same thing a century or so back. Ok, we are *advanced*, and require education etc to all kids. Think of the little kids in the mines and the sweat shops of a hundred years ago. I think the undeveloped countries are in the same situation, but they are accelerating their rate out of it much faster, because of the world's abhorrence of such things.

On the flip side if we do not purchase such items, how will the families of such underdeveloped cultures eat and live??

Gillian

Gill Murray ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

There are much better ways out. In India in particular there is a loan bank. Woman (mostly) can borrow a tiny sum, maybe $50 and start a cottage industry, they are then expected to pay back the loan so others can get a loan.

This has been most successful and taken whole villages out of poverty while not selling off their children to sweat shops. I heard the failure rate is infinitesimal which goes to show, all they need is a helping hand, not charity. No doubt the woman who receives the loan is a hard task master but not apparently as ruthless as the outsiders are who run rug factories etc.

The bank of course, lends money where none of the big banks would, nor the IMF for that matter.

Moreover, if the choice is between having a child stitch something useful for sale while working at home (as the article implied) or selling the child into prostitution, I think the cottage industry doesn't look so bad.

I've got your back, Gill ... and the fire extinguisher. :)

Perhaps, but if the child is given the choice to work for pennies or to not eat, which is sometimes the case, which would you rather?

When Jill and I did some of our traveling, we saw this sort of thing first hand. I know this is only a minute piece of the whole problem, but it did give us some insight. We were in Tonga, "The Friendly Islands". There was a very nice, modern factory, with excellent lighting and working conditions. Leather came from abroad, and was not "imported". Seamstresses stitched leather coats, etc, and the finished goods were "exported". Their salaries were excellent by local standards, but a fraction of what would have to be paid for workers in the places where the leather clothes were being sold. It sure looked like a "win/win" situation to Jill and me.

Once they are sold to the factory owner, there is no choice of any sort. Very marginal food also.

That is very different to rows of five year old kids sitting in cramped conditions weaving carpets. They start at daylight, the air is full of wool fuzzies, they frequently lose fingers in the looms, they are seldom allowed bathroom trips, usually have one small bowl of rice in a very long day.

No win/win in that. They don't take tourists to see those workshops.

NOW, there are better ways out but that's in India. Once upon a time in India, things were every bit as horrific as they are in other third world countries. As Gillian pointed out, it was that bad in the States and other "advanced" cultures 100 or so years ago. In the less developed, third world countries, children are put to work, paid almost nothing and treated like the expendable commodities they are. That's not saying this is acceptable to us but it IS the way it was here generations ago. Those third world countries are slowly making the transition from that type of work society to something more acceptable to the rest of the world. It can't happen to soon for the sake of the poor people who are treated so horribly. None of us can expect those cultures to change quickly just because we are horrified by the way people are treated. We can't tell the people that they are doing something that is contrary to basic human rights by OUR standards (NOT THEIRS) and expect things to change *right now*. This type of change takes generations. India isn't the only country that has begun to give low cost loans to start-up cottage industries. This is happening all over the Middle East too; there was a great documentary about it on one of the educational channels. As the people in those countries begin to see the benefits of a more democratic, private enterprise society, they are lobbying their governments and financial institutions to help with some sort of business start-up monetary aid. BUT -- these are family businesses and the kids are still put to work and they often have to work every bit as hard as the kids who are sent to some factory. The difference is in how they are treated by their "boss" who is usually Mom or Auntie. Like many others, I have no problem with the children who are doing piece work in the article mentioned in the original post. They are at least at home, working in their own village and if the little bit they earn helps the family then good for them. The part that really chaps my tush is the retailers in this country -- be they Amish, Mennonite, Lutheran, Baptist, Catholic, etc. -- selling quilts as being hand made by the Amish. That's just plain fraudulent and false advertising.

I do think we should purchase those things, but the items should be fairly represented (in this case, not labeled as "authentic" Amish quilts) and the price should be in line with what the item actually

*is*. If it is made in a foreign place by foreign workers who earn less money, then the price should reflect that. What is NOT right is that someone in the U.S. is paying peanuts to foreign workers for an item, then selling it for top dollar over here by misrepresenting it.

A blatant commercial: I have been volunteering at the local Ten Thousand Villages shop, which is a store that sells home decor/jewelery/etc. items from around the world. Here's the model: It was started by the Mennonite church some years ago. The U.S. buyers go to another country (generally Third World countries) and negotiate for items at a fair price in the local economy and pay the artists "up front" for said items, so they can buy materials. The items are sold in the U.S. for reasonable prices (not super-cheap, but not super-expensive, either). The money generated goes back to the artisans and also back to the Ten Thousand Villages non-profit corporation to fund opening new "fair trade" stores to expand the market in the U.S. for these goods. The U.S. stores are manned by a very few paid personnel and volunteers from the community.

*That's* what I call a win-win. When I buy a gift there I can feel really good about giving it, knowing that the person who made it was justly compensated and it's improving the community that the artisan lives in.

Sue