Anil Kumar Nauriya misapplied my explanation, "When one appreciates that the 'poor worker' would be worse off in the absence of such an opportunity to work, it gets one to think differently about the employer." He claimed that "This is the precise argument that is sometimes used to justify child labour." I thought his misinterpretation of my explanation was obvious to readers and decided not to correct it, but Sam Bostaph's post shows that I was wrong. Richard Sutch's discussion of the economics of child labor is brilliant, as it stands, but yet misses addressing Nauriya's misinterpretation of my explanation. Before the point gets totally lost, let me repeat it. I think Nauriya (judging from the name) has in mind the plight of children mortgaged to weaving-loom owners in South and South East Asia by their parents for some money. We've seen Western film or documentary makers go to record the plight of such children, sometimes asking that consumers in the West boycott textiles manufactured by such childlabor. I think it is terrible that children would be *exploited* that way. But unlike Nauriya, I do not regard the loom owners as the exploiters, but the mothers or fathers who mortgage their children to such servitude. I don't think loom owners go around canvassing for young, unskilled children to hire as workers. Rather, it is a poor mother or father who goes to ask for a loan and pledges the child's labor in payment. Now imagine the following: A poor mother goes to ask for a loan from a loom owner in exchange for the child's work. The owners rebukes the mother: "How callous of you to mortgage your child for your own subsistence! You should send the child to school to acquire useful skills for the future." The mother goes home with the child, does not have much to feed the family, and the child does not go to school either. Imagine another situation: This time the loom owner grants the request. The mother gets some money to feed the family. The child also acquires some training in working looms. Does this loom owner deserve all the condemnation that people like Nauriya would like to heap upon them? I don't think so. Better to understand clearly the circumstances we may find repulsive than to act upon our passions. Working directly to relieve the causes of poverty the lead to parents mortgaging their children to loom owners would be a more reasonable approach than penalizing those who, in fact, are directly helping poor families with loans and training their children in income-earning skills. Simply banning the incidence of childlabor does not provide subsistence to poor families, and neither does it get poor children to school. James Ahiakpor