I came upon a great letter from Robert Southey today. Southey was one of the Romantic Poets, along with better know ones such as Coleridge and Wordsworth, and was Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843.
Source

In this letter he was writing about working conditions in factories, and te use of child labour. The letter, dated 1807, begins:

  • There is a shrub in some of the East Indian islands which the French call veloutier; it exhales an odour that is agreeable at a distance, becomes less so as you draw near, and, when you are quite close to it, it is insupportably loathsome. Alciatus himself could not have imagined an emblem more appropriate to the commercial prosperity of England.

Things haven't changed that much. Even the longer body of his letter, describing the appalling conditions of child labour, could have been about the factories of Asia using kids to make sports shoes, clothing, and fireworks (there are Chinese schools with contracts to make fireworks). There is a reason why supermarket clothes are so cheap...