How people live and work in other countries is determined by the traditions and practices of those cultures and their antecedents. As Americans we would no doubt be shocked at the conditions in many of these countries. I spent several months in India, and I saw legions of people living literally in the streets. These were not "homeless" people as defined by our standards, these were people who had lived this way for generations. To us - and to me personally - this is horrendous. The women spend the days collecting cow dung from the streets of Bombay for fuel with which to cook their evening meals. These dung fires cloud the skies with their smoke. It looks like a city under siege. Could we live like this? Certainly not. Should these poor people have to live this way? Not to my way of thinking.

However, is the solution to impose a stringent Western-style code of rules the answer? That appears to me to be nothing more than condescending, paternalistic interventionism. It's another case of White Man Knows Best.

On the other hand, if a group of Indians living this way find work in a shoe factory and are paid a dollar a day, is that worse than begging and collecting cow dung? What will a dollar a day buy these families? Will it improve their situation? If it wouldn't, common sense dictates that the people would not work in the "sweatshops." They would eschew the factories for continuing life in the streets. Obviously this is not the case or no one would be making Air Jordans.

Finally, there are many worse jobs in these countries than the so-called sweatshop jobs. In India, for instance, there are young boys whose job it is to deliver hot lunches to working people all over the city. They do this on broken-down bicycles in very dangerous traffic. They work from morning to night, pedaling fast so the lunches don't get cold. If they fail to deliver one single hot lunch on time they are in danger of being fired unceremoniously and tossed into the streets from whence they came. At best they have to pay for any lost lunches, and they have to pay for their bicycles. In the end, they get a few pennies for their Herculean efforts. This situation is mirrored constantly in many other similar jobs. Who are we to denigrate Nike or any other large corporation when they are giving more pay and better working conditions to millions of Third World workers? Better in our minds? Maybe not. But better according to the standards of that place? Indisputably.

-- Edmond Keenan Wynn, EKW's Writers' Block (posted 4/10, 3:05 p.m., E.D.T.)

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