London-based journalist Seabrook (Travels in the Skin Trade), who has written widely on labor, Asia and the sex trade, compares child labor in contemporary Bangladesh with that of industrial Britain in the 19th century. By including extensive testimonials from Bangladeshi children, he illustrates many disturbing similarities in the mills and factories of the two nations—in the exodus to the city, social attitudes to poverty, and the absolute necessity of child labor to supplement inadequate family income. Seabrook describes the work of nongovernmental organizations in Dhaka, which envision a gradual elimination of the need for child labor and educate (with the cooperation and involvement of their employers) children under the age of 15 who work long hours. Seabrook questions whether the need for child labor will ever be eliminated in this part of the world, given that the region does not have the same historical means of creating wealth that the industrialized world had. The author poses many questions: Are we imposing normative or subjective values? Does a child really need an education? Can the South increase its wealth without slavery and colonialism? But he fails to answer any of them himself; instead, he relies on broad generalizations ("the disregard in Bangladesh for the individuality of children is a mirror image of our own excessive concern with individualism. It seems that human societies are destined to oscillate between extremes, neither of which brings satisfaction or fulfillment") to make sense of the phenomenon of nine- and 10–year-olds working 12-hour days and earning some 100 taka, or $2, each week. (Sept. 1)
