ACROSS Our PRESS DESK......

Sam Cahan, PE                          

The Way it Was

China, today, seems to reflect USA labor conditions in our past. Robert J. Samuelson, in his Newsweek column (4/5/04)

"In the late-19th-century America, factory work was typically 10 hours a day, six days a week, and layoffs were usually at the whim of foremen. Jobs were monotonous and grueling. To make the tops of tin cans, an operator had to hit a foot press 40 times a minute, or 24,000 a day!"

Samuelson says that China today is in a similar labor situation. Its migrant workers submit to "degrading work conditions at miserly pay, but accept this hoping for a step up the economic ladder."

In year 2000 about 47 percent of China's population still had incomes of about $2.00 or less a day, as estimated by the World Bank.

-SC 4-29-04