Picking potatoes in the '70s was just as hard. I've done it.
AHAHA _ If you did it in the '70's you weren't a child because that had long been outlawed.
When I under 10 years old, we kids used to get out of school 2 weeks each fall to help pick potatoes. We LOVED it. We were paid, and we loved not just the money, but the pride of having earned it ourselves.
That also made us more careful how we spent it as we knew it wasn't easily come by - a very important lesson for life.