“…the social state is advantageous to men when all have something and no one has too much” -Rousseau (Social Contract).
Values
are not constants. Different historical-times have different political,
developmental and socio-cultural values. For centuries, beheading a
murderer was an accepted practice across civilisational-divides. So was child labour.
In those Western nations caught in the ferment of the first Industrial
Revolution, children as young as six-years worked for 18-20 hours in
mills and mines. Politicians and prelates, kings and society ladies
accepted this brutal exploitation as a necessary condition for the
wealth of nations. The initial demands for marginal improvements in the
harsh labouring-conditions of these ‘new slaves’ were decried as
inimical to national wellbeing: “It was asserted….that the restriction
of the labour of young persons and children would be ruinous to industry
and that foreign countries in which enterprising employers were not
hindered by factory laws would secure trade which would be lost to Great
Britain”[i]. The US Supreme Court declared any attempt to provide
