In the decades-long struggle to outlaw sweatshops and child labor in the U.S., opponents always claimed that labor standards were incompatible with commerce. More than 60 years after Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, these tired and amoral arguments still abound.

Last year, academic economists sent a letter to universities and college presidents criticizing the Anti-Sweatshop movement. More time is needed, the “experts” said. They insisted sweatshop “issues be subjected to more critical analysis and debated and discussed more widely than has been the case to date.”

How much is enough? Sweatshops still offend human dignity!

It shows how we really have improved in the slow process of years that, where Mr. Hine is shocked at finding something over one hundred violations in 15 mills, I found 260 in one day, in one factory, the Illinois Glass Bottle Works in Alton, Illinois. There is no violation possible that was not multiplied many times in that factory.

- Florence Kelley (1915) Responsibility of the Federal Government The Child Labor Bulletin 4, 1 pp. 107