Answer to Child Labor?

Your cover story on child labor, published five days after the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., was a chilling reminder that the world has long been a dangerous place for children (“A Stitch in Time?” by S.L. Bachman, Sept. 16). It was refreshing to hear from an author who suggests with such probing caution that simply eliminating child labor will not magically solve the problems of desperately poor children and families. Surely it is time to ask why children might find the back-breaking labor of sewing baseballs for six cents an hour preferable to staying at home. Perhaps part of the answer rests in the fact that around the world more children died quietly of hunger on Sept. 11, far from the cameras, than adults in the World Trade Center’s twin towers. As we seek to heal New York, we also must seek to heal the lives of the world’s poorest children.

Tobias Hecht

Claremont