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See that littlest girl in your picture? That was me in 1939. I was picking cotton in rural southern TN as soon as I could drag a sack. I picked along with and beside of a black woman. My brothers and sisters were in those fields also, and we rode the cotton wagon to the gin at the end of the day. I never have considered my years in a sharecropper's cabin as something to be ashamed of. I learned many a survival skill.

Also I have been a mile deep in a coal mine interviewing miners. It came as a huge surprise to learn that they loved and enjoyed their job. One miner told me of how he was laid off once and went looking for another job. He found one, but finally realized that he was happy being a miner and went back to get rehired. He was really a happy man and he was not acting. He tried to explain why he loved it. Compared it to being in the service where the men become "brothers" and watch each others' back.

There is nothing demeaning about labor regardless of the conditions. I believe that many more Americans are going to experience what it's like to work to live.