Chapter 1036: A Different World

  Chapter 1016: A Different World

The welcome banquet was very lively, although the reception specifications were not high, but the victory was affordable.

In order to welcome these new 2,000 laborers, Viscount Orteles very cheerfully slaughtered 50 cows, 100 sheep, and a number of chickens, plus the chef carefully prepared bread and vegetables.

It could not be helped that there were many people with big appetites. As a good lord, this kind of large-scale banquet Ottles naturally had to invite all the lords to attend together.

Don’t look at 50 cows seems to be a lot, but in the 19th century Africa’s cattle are all natural fed, the head was not big, and it is not the later generations of artificially transformed beef cattle, the meat yield naturally is not high.

Each person a steak, 50 head of cattle will be consumed. As for the 100 sheep just for stew, if you do barbecue meat is obviously not enough to share. In contrast, the supply of chicken is much more abundant.

Of course, meat was not a luxury in Europe. Especially after the opening up of Austrian Africa, the price of meat products fell again and again.

The African continent was vast and sparsely populated, providing a favorable foundation for the development of animal husbandry. Taking the territory of Austrian, for example, the population of more than 7,000 square kilometers was just over 10,000 people.

After removing the old people and children, the young and strong labor force was only 5,000 to 6,000, and so much land was definitely too much to cultivate, so the development of animal husbandry was a good choice.

For the noble lords who have enough land, the cost of raising cows and sheep that can grow up by eating grass is really not high. You raise me also raise, raise more people the price will naturally go down.

What is really remarkable is that the table is full of white bread, without any impurities of the kind. For the laborers who are used to eating slabs of black bread, the impact is much bigger.

Continental Europe is naturally white bread, but because the production cost of wheat is higher than rye, along with the price of white bread has also risen, become the standard of the rich.

A common welcome party, the lord actually took out all white bread, which is beyond the cognizance of the crowd.

Many people looked at the white bread in front of their eyes, and hesitated to lay their hands on it, fearing that the chef had made a mistake and served the wrong food. Seeing that all the people in the neighborhood had white bread, it was only then that they were sure it wasn’t the chef’s mistake.

Beautiful misunderstanding, to the banquet added a few points of conversation. This is only for those who have just arrived in Africa, but if they stay longer, they won’t make such a fuss.

There is no other reason, the core of the problem is that rye is cold-loving and grows in warm and cold regions. The African continent is like a big furnace, even if the rye is more high-yield planting can not live, it is useless.

In contrast, wheat is less demanding on the growing environment, adapting to a variety of climates and naturally becoming a staple on the table.

Just by looking at the unlimited supply of chicken, one can tell that Viscount Outlet was a master who did not lack food. In fact, more than ninety-nine percent of the lords on the African continent had encountered the problem of excess food production capacity.

Restricted by the African localization agreement, the overseas lords could not sell food to the European continent to impact the food price, directly cutting off everyone’s thoughts of food export.

However, in this world, there are only those who starve to death due to lack of food, but not those who die of overcapacity.

Food overcapacity, obviously can not scare the shrewd aristocratic group. Initially, we all cut down our food production capacity and switched to cash crops.

Later, we found that the cash crop income is extremely unstable, last year a price, this year a price, next year may rot in the ground. Although the return is high, the ability to resist risk is too weak.

Soon someone thought of a new way. Can not export grain, does not mean can not export meat products. Anyway, it is all for the sake of making money, the development of a side business to share the risk is also good.

Chickens and ducks with a short growth cycle, a low threshold for breeding, and the ability to eat insects became the first choice.

The focus is on “eating insects”, people do not like to migrate to Africa, in addition to the climate is not adapted to, the biggest problem is that there are a lot of poisonous insects, which is very painful.

Some people have found that after breeding chickens and ducks in the settlement, the caterpillars that used to be everywhere and often crawled into the house have become scarce all of a sudden.

Of course, this alone is not enough to make people make up their minds. It was the “locust plague” that really made people make up their minds to breed chickens and ducks.

Because of the arid climate, many areas in Africa are highly prone to locust infestation. These days there is no pesticide, agricultural production is most afraid of “locust plague”, and chickens and ducks can curb locust plague, by virtue of this advantage, instantly become everyone’s favorite.

Because of the mismanagement of some lords, the domesticated chickens and ducks have strayed into the wild, and now they are almost flooded with locusts.

The flooding wasn’t completely without its benefits, not only were there fewer poisonous insects and the locust plague was contained, even the epidemic diseases weren’t as frequent as in the past.

Of course, the reason for the reduction of diseases is because of the reduction of poisonous insects, or the source of the virus has been retreated, the medical profession also has different opinions, and there is no accurate answer for the time being.

As a matter of fact, not only chickens and ducks have been flooded, but also cows and goats, wild boars and rabbits in certain areas of the African continent.

It is not a matter of species invasion, but mainly because of the sparseness of the land. Coupled with the fact that the noble lords, for the sake of the safety of their subjects, went on a hunting spree to kill predators, destroying the cycle of the ecological chain.

Once anything is flooded, it will lead to a decline in profits. Seeing the animal husbandry industry thinning out, someone else started the grain industry.

One by one, small workshops came into being, the most common of which were naturally refining vegetable oils, brewing wine, making alcohol and jerky, and the more upscale ones were making sugar, starch, flavorings, and so on.

To this day, almost all of the local supporting food processing industries have been moved over. The only problem is that the self-sufficient lord’s economic model restricts the development of these industries.

However, in the eyes of the people involved, these are not problems. He even expressed deep disdain for the “self-sufficient and primitive economic model” evaluation given by the outside world.

How can we make money if we don’t play like this?

Don’t look at the proliferation of these small workshops, in fact, they are all forced out. Shen Luo occupies more than 85 percent of the African continent, but only less than 16 million people, the sparseness of the land to what can be imagined.

If the population is small, you can’t expect the transportation to be good, although the Vienna government also built several railroads in the African continent, but this is only the main line, the vast majority of the noble territories are not covered.

The railroads were impassable, and the roads were not perfected. The main means of transportation were horse-drawn carts, ox-carts, donkey carts, and camels, and automobiles were only available in the first areas to be developed.

In the inland territories like Outlet, all the large-scale machinery and equipment were first disassembled into parts and then reassembled after being transported in.

In this context, do not play decentralized small workshop processing, it is difficult to expect to transport all the grain together processing?

As for the development of small workshops, it’s not too late to consider this issue after the roads have been cleared. Anyway, with the advantage of more land, small workshops will be competitive for a long time to come.

Just look at the international market, thirty percent of Europe’s meat products are from Africa. Alcohol is more than forty-three percent of the market share, beer production capacity of the world’s first ……

The original conditions of limiting food exports not only did not restrict the development of African economies, but on the contrary promoted industrial upgrading.

From raw grain export to small workshop processing, is also a big progress. Don’t look at mankind into the industrial age for many years, but the mode of production is still dominated by small workshops.

The big factory economic model only exists in a few countries. Only “existed”, until the age of monopoly, a hundred or eighty people workshop-style factories were the mainstream.

……

After the banquet, it was already evening, back to the assigned dormitory for eight people, because of the lack of language, everyone just said hello and went to sleep.

In order to facilitate the management, the dispatched laborers were all scattered and assigned, the eight people in the dormitory in front of them were from eight countries.

In this world of “ten miles of different winds, a hundred miles of different customs”, even if the same country has a variety of languages, laborers from eight countries naturally do not speak the same language.

Although they had received language education on the way here, there was really no way to force them to be gifted.

The vast majority of the people, in more than a month of language learning, had only mastered simple everyday phrases. Some of the wooden fish lumps, even more so, only learned limited vocabulary such as “hello”, “eat”, “sleep”, “work” and so on. limited vocabulary.

They can greet each other, but if they want to communicate in Austrian, only the laborers from Switzerland and Belgium are able to do so.

The problem is that in order to communicate freely, you have to know Austrian, but you also have to be able to communicate with other people. Of course, if you know other languages at the same time, you can, but the problem is that if you know a foreign language, will you still be so poor as to live in a dormitory with eight people?

In this cruel world, even labor dispatch is divided into three, six, nine classes.

If you are a language genius, you would have shown it when you were learning the Austrian language, and now you have been promoted to the role of a temporary team leader, and occasionally you have to do some translation work as a guest.

Although the salary has not been increased, but the accommodation treatment has gone up, eight-person dormitory into four-person dormitory, which is also a small preferential treatment.

Suddenly came to an unfamiliar world, normal people will feel apprehensive deep inside. The lively welcome banquet only slightly alleviated the anxiety in the hearts of the people.

Even though Viscount Orteles had already tried his best to be as approachable as possible, the aura that came from being in a high position for years still made everyone feel nervous.

Closeness was even more impossible.

“The dragon does not play with fish and shrimp, and the Kun Peng does not swim with the school dove.”

Viscount Outlet could be approachable, but the crowd could not be unaware of the difference. Don’t look at the large number of recruits and think that the threshold for admission doesn’t exist.

In fact, those who were able to come and be selected here were all masters who had been beaten by society to accept the reality of life. Unruly, pretentious generation, that is early to be rejected out of the door.

As an ordinary person, living in the eight room Yamani, tonight sleepless.

Even though Viscount Orteles seemed to be kind, like a benevolent lord; but based on past workplace experience, the more kind the leader acted, the more vicious the stewards below would be.

Thinking of the various difficulties he might be subjected to in the future, Yamani had trouble sleeping. In his mind, he could not help but to float out all kinds of difficult scenes, as well as brainstorming ways to deal with them.

There was no way, money was not easy to earn.

The country is in an economic crisis, now the family have to support themselves, this relatively good job must be kept.

What’s more, in this unfamiliar place, even if you want to leave, Yamani does not know which way to go.

The officials in charge of labor export in the country sent them to the ship and bye-bye. The so-called governments send people to jointly follow the management, most likely there will not be.

From the moment they left their home country, they became rootless. If they really lost their jobs, they wouldn’t even know what to eat for their next meal.

……

The next day, the sun shone brightly, and it looked like a good time to work. With dark circles under his eyes, Yamani naturally joined the labor force.

If you want to “rest”, no problem. However, according to the contract, when you start to work, when you start to calculate the salary.

You have to realize that nearly two months have passed since the departure from China. In addition to arriving on the African continent for a week’s rest, the rest of the time was spent on the road, boats, trains, automobiles, and carriages were all experienced.

Although physically and mentally exhausted, the pressure of life left everyone with no choice. As foreign laborers, they had to bear all the expenses on their own after arriving at the destination, including the daily living expenses, which they had to earn on their own.

The vast majority of people had empty pockets, and if they didn’t go to work to mix a working meal, they would soon go hungry.

Without any urging, they wake up early and wait for the work schedule. Fear of not catching up and being late, delaying the day’s work.

Yamani admitted that he did not love work so much, get up early to line up, afraid of being late is only one aspect, more importantly, afraid of missing breakfast.

Only those who have been hungry know the value of three meals a day. Don’t look at it as an industrial age, but in fact two-thirds of the world’s population can’t get enough to eat.

Even in Europe, the most economically developed country, many people can only have two meals a day. Especially after the outbreak of the economic crisis, starvation is a common phenomenon in the lower class.

A piece of bread + a cup of milk + an egg + a few leaves of vegetables + jam is the hearty breakfast of Yamani and others.

In continental Europe, the food that only the middle class could enjoy every day became a commonplace working meal here.

The territory was severely lacking in labor, and Viscount Orteles, who could have been the mayor, was sadly reduced to the role of town mayor.

All the food comes from the territory’s own production, are all natural no chemical fertilizers and pesticides green food, even the seeds are self-reserved, wide planting and thin harvest production mode, the input cost is not high.

In order to buy people’s hearts, Viscount Outlet naturally will not save on food. It is important to know that one of the most important reasons why many European workers choose to stay in Africa is that the food is good.

The effect was very obvious, looking at the faces of the people enjoying themselves, it was clear that everyone was still very satisfied with the breakfast.

At least the European capitalists can’t afford to give the average worker such a sumptuous “free” breakfast.

The work was very simple, except for a few skilled workers who were taken away and arranged separately, all the laborers, including Yamani, had the same job: to build roads and dig canals.

Unlike in the past, here everyone works in a rationing mode.

Every sixteen people were in a group, and a group leader was appointed. The administrators divided up the sections of work, and the groups drew lots to decide which sections to work on. It’s all done in full view of the public, and it’s up to God to decide whether to take a loss or a gain.

The working hours continue to follow the oldest tradition of “sunrise and sunset”.

Salary is determined by the completion of the work, and you are free to take as much or as little as you want. Individuals with poor performance can be kicked out by the management after a vote of at least three quarters of the team members.

Kicked out of the member of a separate group, again poor performance – dismissal.

Hearing the word “expulsion”, Yamani shivered. This was the African continent, and once you were fired, it wasn’t as simple as losing your job.

Even though there was a serious shortage of labor in the territory, once you were expelled from the lord’s mansion, you wouldn’t be able to find a job in the town again. As for leaving, first he had to make sure he had the money for the journey.

Don’t even think about making trouble, even though the town is small, it is also full of all the dirty things.

Viscount Outlet is the mayor of the town, judge, police chief, militia chief and a series of positions, in short, all the administrative affairs in the territory, are his say.

(End of chapter)