Labels
By 
“100% cotton. Made in Cambodia by Behnly, nine years old. He gets up at 5:00 am every morning to make his way to the garment factory where he works,” reads the label on this yellow sweater. “It will be dark when he arrives and dark when he leaves. He dresses lightly because the temperature in the room he works reaches 30 degrees.”
That’s the equivalent of 86 degrees Fahrenheit—a temperature most of us would find difficult to work in for an entire day. The effects of the heat on Behnly are compounded by the room’s atmosphere. “The dust in the room fills his nose and mouth. He will make less than a dollar, for a day spent slowly suffocating. A mask would cost the company ten cents. The label doesn’t tell the whole story,” the tag reads.
Of course, hiding those working conditions is the goal of corporations so that we don’t think of any of that when we shop. Workers may be dying making our clothing, but the sale is so good! Moving production across the globe makes this far easier. We can’t even find Bangladesh on a map so no Triangle reaction here when 1129 workers die to make our clothes. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see country of origin labels challenged under the corporate rights provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so we’ll see if even this minor knowledge of where our clothes are made remains five years from now.