Prisoner of War labor
When incoming prisoners were interviewed and classified they were sent to camps where their individual skills and experience could best be exploited by their captors. Prisoners of war worked in a wide variety of industries. They were in canneries and fisheries on both coasts. Prisoners with experience on farms assisted with plantings and harvests. Fuel shortages and rationing made them a necessity on many farms, which reverted to the old fashioned means of manual labor in many areas of operation which had long since been replaced by the internal combustion engine.
The prisoners of war were a welcome sight to rural communities which had lost much of their manpower to the draft and to the burgeoning war time industries in larger cities. Although the Geneva Convention provided that the prisoners could not be compelled to work in support of the American war effort, they did so simply by helping American food production. In the Midwest they harvested sugar beets, wheat, corn, and other grains. They worked in slaughterhouses and meat packing plants, loaded and unloaded railroad box cars, performed whatever tasks were required of them.
In the northeast they harvested, prepared, and packed fruits and vegetables, repaired facilities, and attracted in some instances the ire of labor unions which resented the lower wages being kept down by the cheap labor provided by the prisoners. Many employers found that though the German laborers were slower than their American contemporaries (possibly attributable to communication difficulties) they were typically more thorough in their work. Often the Germans worked outside of the camps using the parole system, unguarded or lightly guarded during the day.
German prisoners working on farms often took meals in the homes of the farmers employing them. Gradually suspicion and fear of the prisoners was replaced with a mutual respect. This was true across the range of the industries in which they labored. Their employer paid the government for the number of man hours performed by the prisoners, the government, through the War Departments Office of the General Provost Marshal, paid the prisoners. They were paid in scrip, usable only at camp facilities, since providing them with genuine currency was a security risk.
The prisoners also worked in infrastructure, including repair and maintenance of roads, bridges, levees, rail crossings, and dams. The War Department eventually classified the prisoners of war in 96 different work classifications and sent them to camps according to where they were most needed. Some German prisoners were even classified and used as teamsters, driving loads of cargo on American roads being repaired by other prisoners. For the most part the prisoners, guarded or not, worked under the direction and supervision of their own superiors, maintaining a sense of military hierarchy and discipline.