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In your opinion how have child labor laws changed?
I dont know I don't know how they changed. I know before I don't think we had the labor laws in place until Caesar Chavez came. Then he started working for the migrant worker and then the labor laws changed to where you couldn't be a certain age, you had to be a certain age to go out there and work in the fields to where as before there was no age limit. you just go out there and work period.
How old were you when you started working?
I wanna say I was about 6 maybe 7 when I started to go out and do the field work.
How long did you work?
I worked every summer from age 6 all the way to age 17 and every summer we would go out there to work in order to get clothes and school supplies for the school year.
Where did you work?
We worked in Colorado, we worked in Wisconsin we worked in Michigan and all these different states had different fields that you would go out to work in as far as cotton cucumber the apples stuff like that.
How many hours a day did you work?
We workedfrom sun up to sundown. It usually meant that we started work around 5:30 in the morning till about 8 at night.
Were there other kids there working with you?
Yes. There was a lot of other families that went out there with us. Although, we didn't really know the other families we all came together because where we stayed it was a certain area where the owners would establish to keep the families for that summer.
Did you miss school to go to work?
I did missed school. I missed part of the school year every year. I missed atleast the first six weeks of school every year.
What was it like working as a child?
It was hard, it was hard work. I mean you go out there whether your picking cotton or apples or whatever. It's a long day and you really didn't have enough time to be a kid.
Do you know how much money you earned?
That was so long ago I don't remember what we earned. It wasn't really a whole lot of money but it was a certain base pay that they had for everybody but i don't remember what it was.
Last updated on: 05/14/2015 16:38:08