Later, they moved to San Francisco, where Nikolai worked as a day laborer and carpenter. One denarius was roughly equivalent to a day's wages for an unskilled laborer. His father was a sharecropper in Arkansas and a farm laborer in California. He spent his early years as a landless farm laborer. His father worked as a laborer in an iron foundry. As a young man, he worked as a laborer on the railroad. His father worked irregularly as a day laborer. These were not the possessions of a menial laborer. Her father was a meal company laborer. There he was forced to work as a slave laborer in a coal plant. His mother worked as a farm laborer to help in his studies. He had little schooling and worked as a farm laborer at the age of 8. He proclaimed that every citizen would belong to one of two categories, laborer or soldier. Vichy rhetoric exalted the skilled laborer and small businessman. He is shown as the farm's most dedicated and loyal laborer.