465. The royal dilemma 5

Chapter 465 – The Royal Family’s Dilemma 5
“Dear Betty, I hope that you will be able to mobilize your influence within the circle of nobles in the royal capital, and be able to deliver these sterilization measures and their great effects to the ears of the kingdom’s top brass, and in turn spread them out nationwide, which will save the lives of countless sisters.”

“A few sheets of letter paper are not enough to carry all the things I want to say, so I’ll write here for today.”

“I wish you much happiness and well being, and miss you Laddie Sertia.”

After reading the contents of the letter, Catherine looked up.

“Are you rushing off to tell father about these so-called sterilization measures?”

To be honest, when she saw the maternal mortality rate mentioned in her mind, her heart really stuttered.

Was this value really that high?
“Yes!”

A guilty look once again appeared on Erin’s face.

“I should have asked father to order the whole country long ago, at least in the royal domain! Ah, a year has passed, and how many women have given birth in that year.”

Irene had brought back the pamphlet on her return from the northwestern bay, but only a few good friends were interested in it, and very few responded.

The greatest achievement was to get those around her into the habit of drinking boiling water.

Then she devoted her energies to building the school.

She began to tear her hair out in chagrin.

Catherine immediately stopped her little sister who was becoming less and less of a princess.

“Come on, let’s go see father together, he should still be in the council chamber by now.”

The two sisters quickly made their way to the council chamber and met King Rodney, who was still pondering over the minutes.

“Father, Erin has something very important to talk to you about.”

After listening to his youngest daughter recount the purpose of her visit to him, the King read the letter in passing.

“Haha, this young lord always brings me unexpected surprises.”

Rodney XVI laughed and lamented.

“Uh …… I mean, maternal death is indeed an unfortunate event, but with these improved delivery measures, it’s a surprise that it’s much less unfortunate.”

There was no ruler who didn’t want a thriving population in his domain.

“All right. Irene.” The king decided to say, “I’ll dawn the entire king’s domain to do as your pamphlet says by proclamation, and inform the major lords of the kingdom.”

“But ……,” the king said somewhat helplessly, “if I am to use my administrative power like Lord Gleeman did and send officials to urge doctors everywhere to practice these measures, this cannot be done at the moment. ”

“Why?” Ayrin asked with a disgruntled pout and some anger.

The king reached out and touched his youngest daughter’s head apologetically.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, but I really can’t, the kingdom government is in financial difficulties right now and can’t go back to increasing administrative expenses.”

“Oh!” Erin clenched her fists in great disappointment, “It’s simply impossible to expect those curmudgeons to consciously change years of habits.”

“Come now, Irene.” Catherine advised her, “How do you know people won’t change, I’m sure most doctors will research and learn new things in the spirit of their vocation to save lives.”

Erin asked, “Father just said financial difficulties, why?” Catherine sighed and replied, “It’s not because of that group of southern nobles, we spend large sums of money to maintain their status and livelihood, and to appease them, father is having thoughts of dividing the royal domain to compensate them.”

Erin looked at the king, only to see her father nod helplessly.

Looking at her father and sister who had fallen into depression, an idea popped up in Ayrin’s heart.

“I do have an idea that might provide some way to resettle those nobles who have lost their territories and save money for the kingdom government.”

“What about?” The king and Catherine looked at her together.

A hint of pride surfaced on Erin’s face as she received the attention of her normally respected father and sister together.

“Developing a secondary industry!”

“Secondary industry?”

The father and daughter heard this term for the first time.

“Wouldn’t you say that most of our current wealth is produced directly from the land, i.e. agriculture.”

“That’s right.”

The king and Catherine favored this statement.

Before the birth of true industry, a world’s most important wealth was land, which produced almost everything that humans depended on.

There was a twinkle in Erin’s eyes, “But I saw another way to produce wealth during my time in the Northwest Gulf.”

“Another way?”

“Yes, the secondary industry!”

Erin excitedly explained to them, “An industry such as agriculture, which directly utilizes the land to obtain wealth, can be called the primary industry, then one can call the exploitation of natural resources, and the production activities of processing and reprocessing of extracted and agricultural products as the secondary industry, or, rather, as industry.”

She lifted Paul’s definition of industry directly.

Catherine was a bit puzzled and asked, “This so-called secondary industry of yours has existed throughout thousands of years of human history, ah, they have not produced a great deal of wealth, ah, and how can they solve our current predicament?”

The expression on Erin’s face turned serious as she explained, “Yes, it has always existed, but, compared to the primary industry of agriculture, it only exists on a disproportionately small scale, and it certainly does not produce a large amount of wealth. Let me give you a simple example, in many places several villages share a single blacksmith store, and there are only a handful of blacksmiths compared to the huge number of farmers.”

The King and Catherine were thoughtful, “That is so.”

Erin’s right hand stretched out three fingers and continued, “Based on my own little shallow thinking, there are many factors that limit the size of the secondary industry, and they can be roughly categorized into three.”

“The first limitation is technology, this is the most direct reason, whether the technology is advanced or not directly determines the value that the industry can produce, for example, the sword created by excellent craftsmanship is superior to the sword created by ordinary craftsmanship, but the limitation of the technology has another important aspect, that is, the scope of the dissemination of the technology, some skilled artisans because of the fear of competition from their peers, tend to keep their own unique techniques secret and only pass them on to their heirs or carefully selected apprentices, which allows advanced technology to be applied only on a small scale, thus limiting the value it can produce.”

“The second limitation is the form of organization; the secondary industries that are now widespread, blacksmithing, leather, and tailoring, exist in the form of small family workshops, a form of productive activity that is very low yielding and very inefficient.”

“The third limitation is demand, and it has to be admitted that even if some great invention, such as some advanced apparatus requiring only a small number of human hands to operate it, of great force and deployable in large quantities, were to suddenly appear now, and at once the first two limitations – technology and form of organization — were to be solved, and the output of industrial goods were suddenly to increase enormously, it would be impossible to absorb the extra products with the present demand of the people.”

Irene’s outstretched fingers changed to two.

“Regarding the limitations of demand, it can be further divided into two aspects ……”

(End of chapter)