According to the United Nations, 40,000 children work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, mining for the mineral cobalt. They work for up to 12 hours a day under dangerous conditions that can be deadly when they have to go underground.
Americans may be partly responsible for their work.
Cobalt is an essential ingredient of most electric vehicle batteries, and demand for electric vehicles is growing. The U. S government is promoting and subsidizing EVs. Recently, in a House-passed infrastructure bill, a Republican congressman tried to ban the purchase of battery ingredients that depend on child labor. His amendment was struck down.
Around 1780, thousands of children as young as 5 or 6 years old began to work 12 hours or more daily in British textile mills.[1] Can we learn something from that experience?
Children had always been expected to work in England, often for long hours, but the mechanized factories brought them out of homes and workshops. The textile mills didn’t need brawn; owners wanted women and children to monitor the moving machines and piece together broken threads. Their work cost less than men’s and they were more docile.
You’ve read the Dickensian versions of this story, and the images Dickens painted were sometimes correct. Children did suffer from cruel overseers; some were crippled; many tried to run away. That is not the full picture, however; in New Lanark, Scotland, Robert Owen treated his children well, created a school, and forbade corporal punishment. And he was not alone.
Even so, young children still had to work long hours at tedious and dangerous work, often sent there by their parents.
As the plight of children became known, Parliament took up the subject. In 1802, it supposedly banned apprentices (pauper children, often orphans, sent by their parishes to reduce the cost of relief), but there was no enforcement mechanism. An 1816 law shortened the hours of young children, but again it had no enforcement mechanism. It was not until 1833 that children under nine were forbidden from factory work and children 13 and under were limited to nine hours a day. Even then, children working in silk mills were exempted.
Mill owners blocked every move. In 1815 Robert Owen brought Glasgow cotton manufacturers together to discuss two items—ending a tax on cotton (their chief raw material) and reducing work hours for children. As Owen wrote, “[A]lthough all were enthusiastically in favour of asking for the remission of the tax, not one would second my motion for the relief of those whom they employed.”[2]
Flash forward. Do we in the United States have some responsibility for the Congolese children? We would never allow our children to live under such circumstances and now we are increasing the demand for cobalt.
But if we stop buying cobalt (and some companies are striving to find replacements) will we help those children? Or will we deprive them and their parents of a living?
[1] A chapter of my master’s thesis is devoted to child labor in Great Britain’s factories (not to child labor in mines; that existed, too, and was probably worse).
[2] Owen, The Life of Robert Owen Written by Himself, Vol. I. Reprints of Economic Classics (New York: Augustus M. Kelly [1857] 1967), 114.
The public domain photo from Pixabay is of a young textile worker, probably around the the turn of the twentieth century.
I just read (August 5, 2020) that over the 28 years between 1990 and 2018, the GDP of the Democratic Republic of the Congo fell an average of 1.8 percent per year. * This is tragic and almost unbelievable (worst in the world, I think). Does this affect our views on how to address (or ignore) the problem of children working in the cobalt mines? I don’t know.
*James D. Gwartney, Richard L Stroup, Russell S. Sobel, David L. MacPherson, Economics: Private and Public Choice, 17th ed., forthcoming (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2021), 348..
I understand the moral indignation. I have that. Otherwise, however, why blame the U.S. and its citizens? The Congo is a sovereign nation, not one of our protectorates. That government is responsible for enacting regulations on working conditions.
In essence, by blaming the U.S., one is blaming the marketplace. Admittedly regulation of the US market could affect the supply chain coming out of the Congo, but while the Congress could do so, and did not, indignation against the US or the marketplace is misplaced.
David, one of the points mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article and summarized at the Liberty and Ecology site (https://www.libertyandecology.org/child-labor-democrats-hypocrisy/) is that Democrats have insisted that textile manufacturers “certify that their supply chains don’t source materials produced with child labor. “ That’s where some hypocrisy turns up.
But I agree that there is little we can do and perhaps we shouldn’t do anything. It’s a dilemma. Classical economists at the time of the extreme child labor in Britain largely ignored the issue, with a few exceptions. They didn’t like interference in the market but they also recognized that children aren’t free agents.
A quick check shows minimum monthly mining wages in Congo about $50. And unemployment about 30%. So, why do they employ children? Expendable? Easy to manage?
And since both Europe and the US are big cobalt consumers, why can’t they demand adult labor? Is it because China is the largest consumer and uninterested in social impact?
Wallace, are you sure that the minimum monthly wages of $50 don’t go to children? Whatever the answer, my guess is that families are requiring children to work. Possibly they are helping their fathers or mothers; that was often the case in Britain. I think the real “scandal” in Britain was the pauper apprentices–parishes could conveniently get rid of orphans (which they were required to maintain) and could reduce their financial responsibilities to families by demanding that the children go off to a factory.
Even as I write this, I think of many caveats and qualifications to the British story. For example, some of the parish overseers were quite conscientious. And the outdoor relief (welfare) in England is usually considered an early example of humane treatment of the poor; on the other hand Tocqueville argued that it increased the number of the poor (https://janetakesonhistory.org/2020/04/21/a-tocqueville-insight-largely-ignored/). The complications go on and on.
The $50 figure was a quick check, but in any case your point is well taken that the money certainly isn’t pocketed by the kids but by whatever adult sent them to work in the mines.
China seems to control most of the cobalt refining, almost all the cobalt from Congo, and Congo supplies some 60% of the world’s cobalt. If any country has a moral obligation to, that’s China second–after Congo.
The US, however, and especially the promoters of the big lithium batteries, shouldn’t feel free of responsibility just because Congress hasn’t acted.
My question about why not employ adults in a country of 30% unemployment stands. I’m not very familiar with the economy and culture of Congo, so perhaps the 30% are employed in their own black market work, growing family crops, etc.