LET THEM SWEAT: Nick Kristof is defending sweatshops, pointing out that the working conditions and pay in the third-world factories that campus activists love to hate are actually big improvements for many of their workers:

Ahmed, who dropped out of school in the second grade, earns $2 a day hunched over the loom, laboring over a rug that will adorn some American’s living room. It is a pittance, but the American campaign against sweatshops could make his life much more wretched by inadvertently encouraging mechanization that could cost him his job.

“Carpet-making is much better than farm work,” Ahmed said, mulling alternatives if he loses his job as hundreds of others have over the last year. “This makes much more money and is more comfortable.”

Indeed, talk to third world factory workers and the whole idea of “sweatshops” seems a misnomer. It is farmers and brick-makers who really sweat under the broiling sun, while sweatshop workers merely glow.

Such bracing realism is not encouraged on the New York Times op-3d page. Mr. Kristof can expect a short career if he continues in this vein.