Child Labour

Lately I have been thinking a lot about child labour, what this means, whether it is right or wrong, and to what extent I am, or am willing to, participate in this.
At Tata Spargs' we have a really hard time getting reliable people to work with us. Firstly, because most men around here immediately spend all of their money on alchohol, which means coming to work either hungover or drunk. Not so ideal when the days work includes digging trenches or other hard physical labour in the sun.
Secondly because Tata Spargs is a hard man to work for. He is a sargent major to the Nth degree! If he feels the workers are slacking off in the least he begins to yell "encouraging" curses and threats of withholding payment. So people have started refusing to work for him, even here where jobs are scarce, leaving us with only the most desperate of the unemployed.
For all of these reasons Pedro (a Spanish man who also lives and works at Tata Spargs) and I really struggle to get people to work with us. There are however enthusiastic youths who come to us constantly asking for work.
I have always held a strong belief that children need to be allowed to experience childhood to the fullest extent. For me this includes, going to school, playing both indipendantly and with other children, and engaging with and learning from the adults around them. Work has never been excluded from this list in so much as it does not prevent the child from being leading a full childhood. I believe household chores to be healthy and necessary for children and as they get older, and I see nothing wrong in paying children to do small odd jobs outside of the house. This keeps kids occupied through long summer days, and teaches them good work ethic and responsibility.
So when a 14 year old boy from the community asked me if he could cut our grass I agreed and showed him the job I wanted done. It is a rather large job, for which I would be paying him a lot of money so I told him to take as long as he wanted and invite as many friends to help as he wanted, but he would have to split the money with his friends and think carefully about how long he would want the job to take. We walked around and after a little consideration he took the job and found one friend to come and help him out. Knowing the job would take them several days I went about my own business and left them to it (not wanting to put Tata Spargs' like pressure on him). They worked a few hours that day and then left, coming back at 7:00am the next morning. I thought to myself "wow! What enthusiasm!" At 11:00am they came to me and proclaimed that the job was finished and wanted to be payed. Knowing they could not possibly be finished I checked the work and as I thought, they were no where near being finished. I told them that I would not pay them until the job was done, but if they needed to take a break or find some more friends to help that was fine with me.
The next morning they were back again at 7:00am. By 8:00am they had again decided the job was done and that they didn't want to do it anymore.But when I looked they were no further along then they had been when I had checked the day before. After much arguing, they agreed that they hadn't finished the task required so they would take R400 rather than R450. I was being cheated! By 14 year olds!! These children that I had felt guilty of hiring in the first place for fear of taking advantage of them, were trying to rip me off.
Finally I talked them down to R200. R100 each for the "2 days" of work they had done. However,this was only agreed to when they had to run from Mama Spargs who was threatening to throw her shoe.But I refused to pay them more because I still had to pay someone else to come and finish the job and I only have R450 for the whole job. Also because the job wasn't finished. They didn't actually earn the money agreed upon and I felt this was a good learning opportunity.
The whole situation left me feeling very angry and ripped off. Firstly, because I, like everyone, hates being ripped off. And secondly, because how is it that at 14 these boys feel no objection to cheating not only me (the white person whom everyone who works with me tries to cheat at first), but their neighbors and friends who are the real money holders. I am just the manager.
I don't really know where to go from here or how my feelings have changed about hiring youth. I just know that these boys won't be working for me again, which is too bad because they are both from poor families and I would love to help them out, especially when they are asking for work rather than a handout.
Development is difficult. Much more complex than I usually think about. Many people think that working with youth is the best way to make a lasting impression that will grow into a more fruitful adult life, which will in the long run positively influence the development of the whole community. It has become clear to me however that these children are also learning, at a very early age, the habits and beliefs that have kept previous generations from developing in what I would consider to be a positive direction.
I am not disheartened by this, it has just been on my mind as I attempt to do development work with the community in which I am working so I thought I would share my experience.
Many times over the past few months, and years really, I have come to realize that I can see injustice in the world around me and I would love to work towards ending this, however I don't have the right answers. It seems that I too must keep developing. I would love your comments.