Slavery; The World's Greatest Growth Industry

Most persons in the Western world think of slavery as some old time invention of British and American evil that exploited manily Blacks from Africa for workers for a profit machine that churned out tobacco or cotton. But slavery is not only around in the world, but now bigger than ever, involving as many as 27 million slaves worldwide including persons sold as slaves from Darfur for as little as $10, children or young women forced to work as prostitutes in brothels, worker families permanently forced as workling an endentured labor for some sort of company store or business arrangement, and human trafficking.

It would be great to think that some major slavery opponents such as William Wilberforce, Fredrick Douglas or Abraham Lincoln broke the back of the slavery industry in Britain and the U.S. But instead, many nations in the developing world still have thriving business interests that profit by slavery. The sheer joy of Valentine's Day should be tempered that much of the world cocoa supply is harvested by either child labor or family slavery.

A new film about the life of William Wilberforce and John Newton, the former evil slave owner, turned Christian who opposed slavery, and who wrote the great hymn Amazing Grace is due out in theatres. Hopefully this will lead to a new discussion of the evils of slavery and renew the world community to stamp out this very evil and unfortunately growing form of human exploitation.