You may have recently read about a blueberry farmer in Michigan who was castigated for using child labor to pick his crop of blueberries (Michigan is biggest grower of blueberries in the country).
Kroger, Meijer and Wall-Mart immediately cancelled all orders for blueberries from the farmer. The news media was all aghast at the inhumanity of it all. We were aghast also until we did some thinking.
On closer inspection, the blueberry pickers were from Mexico; they make this seasonal trip to Michigan every year for the harvest as do hundreds of Mexicans. They brought their children with them as they always do because they did not want to leave them behind and they may actually help the parents a little. In the rural days of America, this was also the custom where kids went to school after the harvest was in.
The grocery chains and the media may actually have done more harm to those kids than the physical labor they performed. The farmer now has no market for his crops and so the Mexican families now have no job – great!
The farmer hired the Mexicans to pick his crop. He did not hire the little kids, they just happen to be part of the blueberry picking family.
We are just so quick to jump at perceived wrongs that we just forget to think. I blame the media for that; they just lead us to conclusions that may not be fair or even true but hey, it made for a good human interest story even if it cost people jobs they really needed.
Kroger, Meijer and Wall-Mart immediately cancelled all orders for blueberries from the farmer. The news media was all aghast at the inhumanity of it all. We were aghast also until we did some thinking.
On closer inspection, the blueberry pickers were from Mexico; they make this seasonal trip to Michigan every year for the harvest as do hundreds of Mexicans. They brought their children with them as they always do because they did not want to leave them behind and they may actually help the parents a little. In the rural days of America, this was also the custom where kids went to school after the harvest was in.
The grocery chains and the media may actually have done more harm to those kids than the physical labor they performed. The farmer now has no market for his crops and so the Mexican families now have no job – great!
The farmer hired the Mexicans to pick his crop. He did not hire the little kids, they just happen to be part of the blueberry picking family.
We are just so quick to jump at perceived wrongs that we just forget to think. I blame the media for that; they just lead us to conclusions that may not be fair or even true but hey, it made for a good human interest story even if it cost people jobs they really needed.
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