Chapter 21: The Economic Crisis by Misadventure

  Chapter 21 The Economic Crisis by Misadventure

Unable to convince a few old foxes, Ham was not angry, he knew that these people had already moved on, but only because they were too timid to say it.

He is also not a revolutionary, just for the sake of the interests of the revolutionary party stirred together, if you can rely on peaceful means to achieve the purpose, fools will want to rebel?

Here is the European continent, even if the rebellion is successful, what can be done?

Even if the rebellion succeeds, what can be done?

The answer is: yes!

If he succeeds, he will at most become the president of a bourgeois republic, and when he sits in that position, I’m afraid he won’t be as comfortable as he is now.

Failure, I guess exile abroad, is the best end.

In front of the cruel reality, Ham’s already low motivation for revolution became even lower.

Like the majority of capitalists, they support the revolutionaries, but they don’t want to lead the revolution themselves, they don’t want to be the president.

……

The party is very difficult to keep secret, the story of what happened in the Vires estate outside Vienna, quickly passed to Metternich, of course, the content of the secret meeting behind is not included.

However, Prime Minister Metternich is a man of rules, he is careful to keep the bottom line of the political struggle, and did not have to use the subject of anger, with the charge of collusion with the revolutionaries to arrest the capitalists who attended the banquet.

Because of the rules, so troublesome.

Knowing that the capitalists are conspiring, but can only passive defense, Prime Minister Metternich’s mood is naturally not good.

To describe his situation with a phrase of internal trouble and external trouble, it is more than appropriate, there are nobles inside who want to move, there are capitalists outside who are eyeing him, and all of them have a common purpose to let him get lost.

From the winter of 1847, the people of Vienna had an intuitive feeling that prices had risen, and still climbed sharply with the naked eye.

By the end of December 1847, prices in Vienna had risen by forty-seven percent, and the capitalists were testing the limits of the people’s tolerance little by little.

At this time, everyone surrendered their eyes to the Viennese government, expecting it to come up with a solution.

Obviously, everyone was disappointed. The Vienna government had no ability or function to intervene in prices. In spite of Prime Minister Metternich’s repeated measures, in the end they had little effect.

For example, the government posted a notice ordering merchants not to inflate prices, but the result was of little use.

Another example: the Prime Minister repeatedly interviewed capitalists without success.

The government also seized the opportunity to mobilize supplies from outside into Vienna in an attempt to calm prices, but unfortunately, with the capitalists blocking the way, as well as the corrosion of the internal nobility, it ultimately failed.

Of course, it is not completely ineffective, at least the rate of price increase was suppressed, and did not climb to the peak at once.

After the last failure, the capitalists are not very trusting internally, see profitable, many weak small capitalists can not wait for the price of the peak of the moment.

People are selfish, Franz is very clear, Vienna prices rose sharply behind, there is also the participation of the aristocrats, but they are in order to profit from the spontaneous behavior, and did not participate in the joint action of the capitalists.

The initial idea of these people, perhaps just want to take advantage of the opportunity to make a fortune, but by now, wealth gradually confuse people’s eyes, many people are trapped, unable to extricate themselves.

But their luck was not so good, just in time for the European economic crisis.

Starting from 1845, there were frequent food shortfalls in the European region, and international food prices began to skyrocket. Affected by the rise in food prices, the already poor European people had to spend a lot of money on food, and the private purchasing power continued to decline.

In 1846 the United States cotton, cotton products prices nearly doubled, high prices for cotton products sales decline.

With the decline in the volume of commodity trade, capitalists naturally choose to lay off workers, the British unemployed population continues to grow, the volume of railroad freight continues to hit new lows, many railroads have fallen into a state of loss, the British railroad bubble burst in the fall of 1847.

The capitalist world is always a matter of one hair affects the whole body, the bursting of the railroad bubble, the construction of the railroad is also followed by the stoppage of the demand for iron and steel.

The crisis soon spread to the steel and coal industries, with 58 of Staffordshire’s 137 iron furnaces shutting down. Pig iron production fell by a third within a month to a month and a half, and coal production fell by nearly two tiers.

In November 1847, in Lancashire, one of the centers of the British textile industry, 200 of the 920 cotton textile mills were completely shut down, and most of the rest were open 2-4 days a week. more than 70% of the workers suffered unemployment, or semi-unemployment.

The industrial crisis that broke out in England did not attract the attention of Austrian capitalists, and neither the English economic crisis of 1825 nor the economic crisis of 1837 reached Austria.

As a non-industrialized country, even if it wanted to break out in an industrial crisis, it was not qualified, and the possibility of breaking out in an economic crisis was also infinitely low.

Many people forget that Austria is no longer the Austria of the past, as a semi-industrialized country, Austria can no longer survive the economic crisis.

The first unlucky is the French, after the outbreak of the British economic crisis, in order to get through the crisis, British capitalists began to dump supplies overseas, caught off guard by the French became the first wave of victims.

By 1848, the total industrial production of France had dropped by fifty percent.

The German region was no exception, and because of its weak industrial strength, it was hit even harder.

In the winter of 1847, 3,000 of the 8,000 looms in Kleinfeld were out of operation, and in the first half of 1848, only 3 out of 14 factories in Cologne were open, and the industry in Erfurt was almost completely wiped out.

Austrian capitalists cried, want to take advantage of the fire of the nobility also cried, in order to calm prices, the Vienna government lowered the import tariffs, a large number of cheap British goods came to the surface, this really roar.

Price inflation also need money ah, in the face of an industrialized country dumping, the Austrian capitalists said, they are not stupid, head smart capitalists in the first time to choose to retreat.

January 1848, Vienna, in addition to food prices are relatively firm, all the industrial and commercial products prices have a blood avalanche, the moment of crisis everyone is self-conscious, who cares about others ah?

Running fast capitalists, but also can use the time difference stop loss, running slow capitalists, will be directly trapped.

Supply exceeded demand, and the selling prices of industrial and commercial products in the Vienna market had already fallen below their production costs, and the price-gouging capitalists and aristocrats were forced to bear the pain and cut their meat.

Everyone knows that the economic crisis is coming, in order to reduce losses, capitalists have begun to lay off employees, more capitalists because of the heavy losses in this crisis, or even simply closed the factory, Vienna’s unemployed people climbed sharply.

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(End of chapter)