H. B. Fuller & The Street Children Of Central America
In judgment, no one is responsible for the addiction of street children to Resistol products but everyone involved in the situation has either knowingly or unknowingly contributed to the problem. If guilt and responsibility have to be assessed, the first two owners of responsibility in the situation would be the government of Central America which has been unable to develop the region to the point where its inhabitants have a decent education and an opportunity for decent employment. This has contributed to the deplorable condition of many abandoned street children. The second of the two parties mainly responsible for this condition is the parents of the children, particularly the fathers who abandon their parental responsibilities and the mothers who do not practice birth control. However, H. B. Fuller is not responsibility-free but they have gone to extensive lengths to help solve the situation where children being addicted to their toluene-based products are concerned. We certainly cannot blame them for the deplorable economic conditions in Central America. To the contrary, by selling their product to local manufacturers who in turn profit from their manufactured goods they are helping the economy. They have reformulated their product contents to prevent as ready addiction in children. They have paid social workers to help educate street children to the dangers of addiction. They have repackaged their products to make them less available on the individual level and they raised the price of their product in order to keep the cost prohibitive to most children. Certainly, this is a company that is acting responsibly when any number of these measures could have lost them revenues but they did them nonetheless. H. B. Fuller makes a profit of approximately half a million dollars a year from selling its toluene-based glues in Central America “According to the company, it...