In addition to the last post-
I was the oldest boy in a family of nine kids, at 11 our parents told us we were old enough to work, if we didn't like the bike, clothes,etc. they provided then we could get a job and buy our own. I got fired from my first job at age 11 because I was more interested in watching the potato harvester than picking cucumbers. The next summer when I was 12 I worked at a radish farm bunching radishes. You know the little bunches you buy at the grocery store? Five bunches to a pile, ten piles to a bushel, 1.00 per bushel is what we got paid , 2 cents per bunch. If you were really fast you could do 15 bushel an hour. The 12 year olds werent that fast because our hand were too small. At age 15 or 16 you could do a bunch in two picks, so you could do 15 bushel an hour. When I was 14 I got to go out and mow the sod fields after the radishes were picked, washed and packed. When school started I bagged potatoes after school. That was work! How many of you have 14 year old kids that can stack a pallet as high as your head with 100 pound bags of potatoes?. That was when I was just a kid, so when I hear people say they work their butts off, I just bite my tongue or walk away.