Media-acclaimed exhibitions in Galerie Loujetsky of The Hague and De Drie Hendricken of Amsterdam did not lead to any sales.

[5][2] At the age of 32, on the brink of being expelled as an artist without money, he started working as a packer at the Honig food plant in Koog aan de Zaan.

[5] One month later, a concrete male figure stood in front of Honig's new building: a laborer carrying a heavy burden.

The artwork for Honig was received so positively that the Zaandam municipal council commissioned him for 15,000 guilders to make a statue for the new Beatrix Bridge.

In 1986, the 100-year-old newspaper De Zaanlander still tried to get a bronze copy of the statue in Zaandam, but the municipality did not want to make a place available and the budget also did not add up.