As the farmers had to pay taxes to their liege lords, they were happy to accept monetary compensation in lieu of field work. With the economic boom in Holland at the end of the sixteenth century many heuerlings, or their family members found seasonal work in the moors or as deck hands on whaling ships. At its peak, over thirty thousand workers were crossing the Ems bridge at Lingen each year to work in Holland. While the men went abroad seeking work, the women and children worked at home spinning yarn and weaving. Together they earned enough money so that most heuerling families could be counted as middle class.
In the fist half of the nineteenth century the social and economic conditions began to change for the heuerlings. Holland suffered a depression, thus curtailing the need for foreign workers and England began flooding the continent with textiles made in the factories of the new industrial age. At the same time, the rural population was again on the rise, thus depressing the wages for farm work and increasing the rent the heuerlings had to pay the farmers. The combination of these developments drove many heuerling families into dire poverty.
Its little wonder then that heuerling families in particular joined the mass emigration to America of the nineteenth century. The migration from Lower Saxony hit its peak in the years between 1840 and 1860. Many of those that stayed behind took part in the revolution of 1848, which although it brought about some improvements in the social conditions, did little to ease the peoples economic plight. This only improved as a result of the mass emigration and the consequent scarcity of farm workers.