Many day laborers already began living off borrowed money; they obtained credit from the village peddlers or asked a farmer they knew for a small cash advance that they intended to work off in the summer. For most of them, it was the same thing every winter, and many – particularly those with large families – had to struggle all summer long just to pay off the debts from the previous winter; when the next winter came, they were broke once again, and the whole business of borrowing started all over. Anyone who could no longer get credit, however, was forced to turn to the parish poor relief fund; indeed, it wasn’t at all uncommon for the children of day laborers to be sent from one farm to the next with a beggar’s basket.
By now, the situation that had arisen as a result of unemployment had become unbearable to me. Was I to begin going into debt as well? No, I preferred living apart from my wife and children for a while and seeing if I could find work elsewhere. So, together with a few other day laborers, I set off on an eight-hour walk to the Kiel Canal, which was under construction at the time, and I was hired there as an excavator. I stayed there until springtime, when the farmers in the marshlands once again had work to give us. But in the early summer, another period of unemployment set in. As a result, I decided to work at a brickyard until harvest time. I worked there as a finisher for 20 marks a week. The hours, though, were from four o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night, with a two-hour break overall – this meant a 14-hour workday. I only went home on Sundays. During the week, I ate at the company canteen with the brick workers from Lippe. Every day, God willing, I should say: the fare consisted of peas, nothing but peas! To this day, I get a queasy feeling in my stomach when I think back on all the peas.
A few weeks earlier, my former employer, the farmer “Peiter Pink,” had offered me work at harvest time. My wife faithfully lent a hand. Up to then, I had always resisted having her work alongside me, as I hated the thought of subjecting her to the very same yoke; in my opinion, the man alone had to earn enough to provide for the family, especially a small family like ours. But my wife figured there was no telling what the next winter would bring, and she insisted on working with me during the harvest. We took our little boy to the fields in an old, second-hand baby carriage and bundled him up behind a stack of sheaves, where he could sleep, play, or cry to his heart’s content; at some point, he had to get used to the fact that he was merely a day laborer’s child.
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