It is nasty and hot. You become covered with a black layer of dirt, sweat, and tar from the plants. I probably absorbed enough nicotine to equal years of smoking.
I never knew about that fun fact, and I never wore long clothes to prevent it. Even if I had known, I doubt if I would have worn them. I wore t-shirts and shorts because anyrhing else would make the heat unbearable.
I worked every summer for as long as I can remember. When I was big enough to walk, I would toddle around the barn and pick up stray tobacco leaves. As I grew older, the jobs increased and became different. The most I ever made a day was $11. I worked from 'can't see to can't see.'
Topping and suckering is the worst of the worst work. It is tedious and back-breaking. You go down row after row of tobacco breaking off the flowery plants that are on top. Suckers are smaller leaves that begin to grow among the bigger ones. They have to be pulled off so that the bigger leaves get the nutrition. Doing that requires that you practically become one with the plant.
There used to be a lot more involved, but as technology progressed, the last real labor-intensive jobs were topping and suckering. Hispanics now make up a lot of the laborers.
As far as child labor laws, I never heard of them in relation to farming. You farmed to live and you had to work no matter what age you were to help out. There were some people with larger farms who had their land sharecropped, and some were able to avoid the labor.
I picked cotton a couple of times. That was soul-crushing. Rows of crops can seem to be never-ending. If you can see one end of a row, you know you are nowhere near the other end. If you look around when you are in the middle of a row, it feels like you are surrounded by an infinite sea of green.
I learned a lot working those summers. The main thing I learned was to persevere. The saying that 'The only way out is through', was never more pertinent. You keep going through sheer force of will at times.
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