Chapter 393: Challengers and Defenders

  Chapter 383 – Challengers and Defenders

Early in the morning, the roar of steam engines rolled in. No one was surprised, this was the Port of Venice, the largest trading port in the New Holy Roman Empire, with more than triple-digit numbers of ships coming in and out every day.

Here the roar of the steam engines had become a part of people’s lives. Workers on the docks have converged, waiting for the ships to dock.

Life is not easy, and in this age of limited productivity, being able to fill one’s stomach is no easy task.

Arnaud was an ordinary dockworker, working here for three years at a time, his young dreams all worn out in front of reality. He wanted to go overseas a few times, but thinking about his wife and children, he finally gave up.

The work on the dock is very tiring, very hard, and very demanding on physical strength. Those who can’t carry a hundred or eighty kilograms won’t be able to eat.

This is not a problem for Arnaud, he is not afraid of the pain or the tiredness, he just wants to take more work, earn more money, so that his family can live a good life.

It would be better to send the children to school. Austria has already implemented compulsory education, but this is not Arnaud’s share.

Because he was not a local resident, he did not have Austrian citizenship. In daily life and work, there is no influence.

After all, he was doing hard labor, no one would care about the nationality of the lowest level laborer. But when it came to social welfare benefits, it had nothing to do with Arnaud.

As early as ten years ago, he followed his father from Ancona to Venice to make a living. He’d been back to his hometown three times in all those years, once to get married and the other two times with the ship.

Austria was very strict about nationality, and if one was of the same German ethnicity, then naturalization was very simple as long as one had no criminal record.

Other nationalities are different, even if Arnaud has been in Venice for more than ten years, he still does not meet the conditions.

Except for scientists, designers, engineers, doctors, other professions want to immigrate to Austria, there are a lot of restrictions.

Arnaud all memorized clearly:

1, no criminal record, correct political thought;

2, 20 years of residence in Austria, or born in Austria, and live here for a long time;

3, have a certain contribution to society (significant contribution, can be directly naturalized);

4. Must not be less than a university degree (other criteria may be lowered for outstanding students of science and engineering);

5, be able to use German proficiently, inherited the Austrian cultural tradition;

6、Personal assets must not be less than 8000 guilders;

……

It is not that Franz deliberately excluded immigrants, but mainly because when he first succeeded to the throne, Austria’s ethnic ratio was seriously unbalanced, with less than a quarter of the main ethnic groups.

In that context, and then accept other nationalities immigrants, is not too much trouble enough?

In order to avoid such a situation, the Vienna government set up an almost impossible to fulfill immigration conditions.

This policy has proved to be very sound and has had a marked effect on improving the proportion of the principal nationalities.

If no restrictions had been imposed, hundreds of thousands of Italians would now have been added to Austria. The number of foreign Italians living in Lombardy and Venetia now exceeds half a million.

Not only Italians, but also large numbers of expatriate Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Bulgarians in Austria ……

Faced with this situation, Franz, the gatekeeper of immigration restrictions, was even more afraid to open it. Originally ethnic integration is not even easy, add millions of people in, is not looking for uncomfortable?

Anyway, it’s not like Austria had a shortage of labor and didn’t need these ordinary immigrants.

And Austria needs quality immigrants, not kidding, those people in any European country can live a very nourishing.

Arnaud became a victim of this policy, and unless God favors him, the possibility of getting Austrian citizenship is almost zero.

Now Austria’s social welfare is very little, except for compulsory education, Arnaud did not feel much difference.

In any case, the income in Venice was far more than back home. Not only can the family fill their stomachs, but also have some balance.

The food at the docks was not bad, at least in this day and age. There was plenty of brown bread and meat every day.

Don’t get me wrong, the meat was fish. This being Venice, fish doesn’t cost much more than black bread, and not nearly as much as white bread.

In order to keep the workers’ strength, meat is essential. The capitalists who contracted the wharves were not stupid and knew very well that only if the workers had strength could they make more money for them.

On the surface, there was no skill in the handling on the wharf; in fact, those who knew the business knew that skilled laborers could reduce the rate of wear and tear in the handling.

Don’t look at the wastage rate as insignificant, this is the competitiveness of the docks. Austria has many ports and even more docks.

Most of them are owned by the government, and when contracted out to individuals, they are intentionally split up to break up regional monopolies.

If the loading and unloading losses are too high on a particular terminal, it’s just a matter of getting into an argument with the customer, but the bottom line is that the reputation is ruined and no ships will come behind it.

In this respect, Arnaud was lucky. This competition increased their weight in the eyes of the capitalists, who, though still insignificant, did not treat them as disposable.

For example: basically, they were paid on time, paid overtime wages as required by law, and met the state standards for food and drink in the industry.

……

“Arnaud, recognize that flag?”

The one who asked was Arnaud’s fellow countryman, Facher, fresh from the old country and curious about everything.

Looking at Arnaud with some envy, he said, “I don’t recognize it, it looks like it should be the family crest of a noble family.”

Ships flying the flag of a noble’s family crest are usually private ships that don’t undertake commercial transportation, which is the standard of a tycoon noble.

Of course there were occasional exceptions, and it wasn’t unheard of for certain alternative types of nobles to hang their own family crests on their merchant ships.

Facher exclaimed, “When will I be able to have such a ship!”

Arnaud rolled his eyes and didn’t follow the daydreaming. He had dreamed like this many times, yet it was of no use whatsoever.

A middle-aged man in a suit had already gone up to negotiate with the ship’s owner, if the price was negotiated, then Arnaud and the others would have a job to do.

“Honorable Baron Fikni, Manar is honored to serve you!”

Baron Fikni nodded tiredly and ordered, “Manal, arrange for men to unload everything on the ship and send it to the train station.

Will, you bring along to work with them. I’m going to be a guest at Viscount Obira’s house now, and we’ll return to Vienna together in three days.”

After saying that, Baron Fikeni began to close his eyes. As the earliest being to travel to the colonies to discover gold, Fikni was now also returning home with his clothes on his back.

Back then when he went to the colonies, Fikni was so down and out that he even mortgaged his family fiefdom and owed a considerable amount of foreign debt, and now he was already a great tycoon with a few million divine guilders.

After so many years, the gold mines have been mined to the point where there is very little left. However, in the mining of gold mine at the same time Fikeni also did not idle.

I don’t know if it’s a racial gift, originally he opened up a farm just to meet the needs of the workers on the gold mine, I didn’t expect the back of the snowball to grow.

By now his farm, plantation together, the total area has reached up to more than 4,800 hectares, became a famous local landlord.

Looking at a large area of land, Baron Fikeni helplessly realized that he could not go! The main purpose of this return is still to promote the process of integration between the colonies and the mainland.

With so many Austrian colonies, it was certainly impossible to merge them all into the mainland, this was well known. However, it is very possible to merge the already developed lands into the mainland.

In order to promote this plan, in recent times, many of the nobles who had opened up plantations in Africa had returned to the country for public relations.

Once the indigenization of the African colonies was passed, Baron Fikeni was ready to turn the farms and plantations that he had opened up into family fiefdoms.

Over the years in the African continent, he had also accumulated a lot of merit. If he then replaced the local fiefdom to Africa, then not only could he convert his own land into a fiefdom, even the land of the people who followed him at the beginning could also be included.

The total area added up to be larger than many counts in mainland Europe. With this piece of land, and a few generations of careful management, the family can enter the circle of great nobles.

Not only Baron Fikni, many nobles had the same plan. The local competition was too fierce to give birth to more great nobles anymore.

The African continent was different, as long as one was willing to invest in it, after a few generations a family of great nobles would be born again.

Including many colonial capitalists are ready to take advantage of this opportunity to transform, once localization passes, their opportunity will come.

In Europe, their kind of explosive households can not enter the upper class at all. Even if they smashed money and became nobles, there was no way to gain everyone’s recognition.

The African continent was different, in addition to the old aristocrats, there were a large number of explosive households who could have their own circle of nobles.

The age of capitalism? In reality, it was the aristocrats who kept the capitalists out of high society, and then the capitalists flipped the table and pulled the aristocrats off the altar.

Now that there’s a chance to get in, people naturally won’t overturn the table. After all, they’ve already got the aristocratic license plate and are in the process of overstepping from rule challenger to rule maintainer, and once the colony is localized their status is set.

This is what Franz would like to see, capitalists have never been his enemies, only capitalists who oppose him are enemies.

If you just crack down and don’t leave them a way up, the rabbit will bite if you push it, let alone the capitalists who are growing in strength.

Leaving a path behind, the capitalists, who are already a scattered bunch, will never be able to unite again.

Of course, this is only a part of the localization of the colonies. In fact, this is an opportunity for all strata of society as a whole.

Austria’s colonies were ten times the size of the mainland, with seven to eight million square kilometers of Austrian Africa alone, and even if a small portion of them were to be incorporated into the mainland, this would increase many opportunities.

This is a time when, if one is bold and daring, there is a great possibility of crossing class boundaries.

If we want to use data to reflect this, it is that the success rate of struggle now is 10 per cent, while after the solidification of class, the success rate of struggle is less than 1 per cent.

Of course, this is only a small step forward across the current class.

If you want to reach the sky in one step, you’d better not dream about it. Apart from rebellion, there is no such shortcut in the world.

(End of chapter)