With our nation just having celebrated its birthday, I'd like to make a modest proposal for a project that might occupy us for the next century or so: Taking the regulated, more-social capitalism that created mass prosperity in this nation and Western Europe in the second half of the 20th century and re-creating it on a global scale.

WASHINGTON — Government purchases from some factories manufacturing employee uniforms could inadvertently use tax dollars to support sweatshops, according to a report released today by SweatFree Communities, a network of U.S. antisweatshop campaigns affiliated with the union UNITE HERE.

I remember one particularly bad factory in China. It produced outdoor tables, parasols, and gazebos, and the place was a mess. Work floors were so crowded with production materials that I could barely make my way from one end to the other. In one area, where metals were being chemically treated, workers squatted at the edge of steaming pools as if contemplating a sudden, final swim. The dormitories were filthy: the hallways were strewn with garbage—orange peels, tea leaves—and the only way for anyone to bathe was to fill a bucket with cold water.

MANILA, Philippines -- It was a group that went against two Korean firms to fight for workers’ rights, but it ended up being given South Korea’s most prestigious human rights award.

There really was no contradiction there, said Fr. Jose Dizon, executive director of the Workers’ Assistance Center Inc. (WAC), the church-based group that bagged the prestigious award this year.

In fact, Dizon said, the Koreans were even “ashamed and apologetic” to the Filipino awardees for what they had to go through in the hands of some “oppressive Korean nationals” in the Philippines...