"The pictures of some of the children look so sad, but as I was growing up I remember the great sense of humor my aunts and uncles had, always laughing. My dad told me that each Christmas each child got only one present, but they ate like kings. They worked hard and were taught to be responsible. It was a different time." -Sue Fugate Peacock, daughter of William Fugate

The following is excerpted from Child Welfare in Kentucky, An Inquiry by The National Child Labor Committee for the Kentucky Child Labor Association and the State Board of Health, 1919 (public domain)

"Until the child laborer on the farm has been taken into consideration the task of securing protection and education to all the children will remain unfinished. The child labor law of Kentucky exempts in the first instance children employed in agriculture and domestic service, so this study does not include occupations, but the report of an investigation made by the National Child Labor Committee in 1916 and published in March, 1917, under the title of 'Farmwork and Schools in Kentucky,' may be quoted from here:"

"The latest federal Census of Occupations, taken April, 1910, credits Kentucky with 64,692 child workers, 10 to 15 years of age, of whom 82 per cent, are reported as agricultural laborers, most of them on the home farm. The proportion of farm workers to the total number of child laborers is larger in the state than in the nation, those in agricultural pursuits in the entire country being slightly less than 72 per cent, of all those engaged in gainful occupations."

"Although constituting the great majority of child laborers, these boys and girls on farms have never been considered as connected with the child labor problem. The popular conception of child labor is limited to employment for wages in factories, mines and stores, and the farm has long been looked upon as the ideal place for a child. This conviction has been strengthened by the revelations of bad conditions surrounding the city child, whether a worker in a factory, a trader in the streets, or a dweller in the tenements. Whether or not the child on the farm is relatively so fortunate as he is pictured is a question that is beginning to be asked. A few comparisons of the health and physical development of city and country children have been made, and indicate that the former are stronger and less subject to disease than the latter, but no comprehensive findings are yet available."

"The only restrictions in the statutes of Kentucky that apply to child workers on farms concern their attendance at school, and these are somewhat contradictory. One provides that children between seven and 12 years of age inclusive, living in rural districts, except those not in proper physical or mental condition, shall attend school regularly throughout the common school term, unless taught at home; the other forbids anyone to employ a child under 14 years of age at any kind of work, at any time while the public schools where he resides are in session. There is a hiatus of one year between the maximum age of the compulsory education law and the minimum age of the child labor law-the 13-year-old child in the country not being required to attend school and yet not permitted to work at any occupation while the schools are in session. However, these laws are very generally disregarded in the rural communities, so this discrepancy is apparent only on the statute books."

"Kentucky leads the states in the production of tobacco, which forms more than a quarter of its agricultural products. Farmers begin preparation for its culture in the winter, and the crop is marketed generally in the following autumn. The number of acres a farmer can cultivate varies somewhat according to conditions, the average being about three acres, and in determining the number even a child nine years of age is considered a 'hand.' Although so young a child is not strong enough to perform as much work as a grown person in all the processes of tobacco culture, in removing worms and suckers from the plants, he is just as active and efficient. Children commonly work as many hours as do the older persons-from sunrise to sunset-planting, hoeing, cultivating, worming, suckering, topping, cutting, spiking, housing and stripping. Indeed, the only task in tobacco culture which children do not perform is firing, which is done in the barn where the crop is housed, and requires the care and judgment of an adult. The other farm work in which children help in the school term, and which thereby prevents their regular attendance at classes, includes plowing, cultivating and cutting corn, filling silos, threshing grain, picking berries, making hay, and drying apples."

"The school term in the rural districts is usually seven months and schools often begin early in July so that they may be closed before the winter weather makes the roads impassable for the children. This period coincides with the busy season on the farms, particularly in tobacco culture, and in this conflict between work and school attendance the odds are at present in favor of the work. The report cites many instances of children no older than eight and nine years, together with children of all ages, who work side by side with the adults on the farm and whose attendance at school is cut down to less than one-third in some cases and in others to such an extent as to be negligible."