Picked By Children?

When I was a kid it was pretty common practice for children to work on farms in the summer time. I spent a few summers picking and weeding the modest fields of a small market farmer that was located down the road from my family’s home. My brother spent several summers’ detasseling corn and even raised the ranks to ‘supervisor’ after a few seasons. He was still young enough that he rode his bike about three miles to work every morning, probably around 5 a.m. A good percentage of the kids I knew also did similar jobs: weeding, picking, detasseling, operating sprayers, tractors, and combines. One thing you must understand though, is that when I say “when I was a kid” I am referring to the 1990’s, the very near past; after all I am only twenty seven years old. For those who are not familiar with agriculture, this is the case because child labor laws exclude agriculture. It was never much of a problem in the past but now that agriculture has turned big business a very serious problem is popping up.

All of the kids, including my brother and me, were between the ages of twelve and fifteen. Once you got a car and could drive yourself into town, you would go out and get a job that didn’t involve itching and sweating. As children we worked for these farmers voluntarily, to earn some extra spending money or to save up for something special. The video accompaning this post tells a very different tale from the one I've shared.

Any thoughts?
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