1992 or so as a young teen, I remember getting a nickel a bale for a pair of us (nickel each) for every square bale loaded in a day working for neighbors. Didn't matter if it was bean hay, grass hay, or straw. Looking back, I can appreciate that we were getting paid for the work done and not by the hour whether we were riding an empty wagon or sweating like we might die. Got paid per stick when hanging tobacco as well, but can't remember what that was per stick. Probably around the same if I had to guess. Looking at my online social security statement, from 1997-2000 I made a total of 47,697 if that tells you anything lol. '97 would have only been 4 months of pay as I went to basic training in early August and then the rest came from 3 full years of military pay. So what's that, an average of $1,200 a month roughly? I know it wasn't anywhere close to that starting out so the year 2000 when I made e4 and was receiving combat/hostile fire pay for several months of 2000 skews that number up. I would say I was in the $700 a month range early on which felt like a fortune to a 17 year old at the time.