by John J. Tierney Jr.

About the author: John J. Tierney Jr. is faculty chairman of the Institute of World Politics, a private graduate school of statecraft and national security in Washington, D.C.

To most Americans the problem of exploitative child labor disappeared generations ago with the passage of child labor laws and the elimination of dangerous “sweatshop” conditions. But the problem of child exploitation—an iniquitous subset of a much larger economically and socially legitimate and family- friendly culture of child work—is a living reality in many areas of the developing world, and the issue has commanded growing attention in the Western world.

As Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) told a U.S. Department of Labor hearing in 1997,

In an age of computers, fiber optics, and space...