Quote:Before cheap migrant labor, it was cheap slave labor. The former is propping up major areas of the American economy, the latter laid the ground work. Let's not pretend cheap labor hasn't been an integral part of the American story.

actually farming was a family thing...farmers had lots of kids who helped in the fields...as farmers started having less kids or kids went to school, they began to farm less acres...then the teenage kids all needed summer jobs and they worked the farms and did the picking and hard work including bucking hay which I have done many times( going through the fields after the hay was cut dried and bailed and throwing the bales on either a truck or trailer and taken to a certain place and made a haystack)...as towns grew bigger there were more jobs for teenage kids to do, fast food, grocery store baggers etc so there became a shortage of farm workers...The teenagers weren't paid much to begin with but that's pretty much what the standard was for the market and the "seasonal workers came" and were more than happy to be paid 50 cents per bale of hay they bucked or row of beets they thinned...They were making more money doing that than were in Mexico and still do...IDK what the pay is now but both sides of my grandparents were farmers 

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