(Ed.'s Note: If you are in your 60s or 70s and grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, you probably saw people picking cotton by hand before the advent of the cotton-picking machines. If you were poor, you probably picked it yourself. Kids like the ones in the photo above carried their little sacks while the men would often have two large sacks sown to be able to stay picking in the fields and come back on two rows to fill them at the weigh in.
For some reason or other, the scales had Roman numerals instead of numbers and kids would learn the numerals when they brought their filled sacks to weigh in. Cotton was poorly paid, but school kids would earn anywhere between $10 to $15 a week which their parents often used to purchase shoes or clothes for school. For some, these were the "good old days," while to others, these days were best forgotten or remembered by the callused hands and aching back.)