Holy Roman Empire

The welcome banquet was a lively one, and although the reception was modest, it was affordable.

In order to welcome the new 2,000 workers, Viscount d'Orteles slaughtered 50 head of cattle, 100 sheep, and a number of chickens, plus bread and vegetables carefully prepared by the cook.

It couldn't be helped that there were many people with big appetites. As a good lord, it was only natural that he invited all the lords to this big banquet.

Don't look at 50 cows seems like a lot, but the cows in 19th century Africa were all naturally fed and were not big, and they were not artificially altered in later years, so the meat yield was naturally not much higher.

One steak per person, 50 head of cattle would be consumed. As for the 100 lambs, they are just for stewing, which is obviously not enough for roasting. Chicken, by contrast, is in abundant supply.

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

The African continent is vast and sparsely populated, providing a favorable basis for livestock farming. In Austrian territory, for example, the population of 7,000 square kilometers is just over 10,000.

Excluding the elderly and children, the young and strong labor force was only five or six thousand, so such a large amount of land would definitely not be able to be cultivated, and developing livestock farming was a good choice.

For the noble lords who have enough land, the cost of breeding cattle and sheep that can grow up purely on grass is really not high. You raise and I also raise, raise more people the price will naturally go down.

The really striking thing is all the white bread on the table, the unadulterated kind. For the labourer used to eating slabs of black bread, the impact is far greater.

The European continent naturally has white bread, but because the production cost of wheat than rye is high, even the price of white bread has gone up, and become the standard for the rich.

An ordinary welcome banquet, the lord brought out actually all white bread, this is beyond the knowledge of the crowd.

Many people looked at the white bread in front of them, hesitating to make their move for fear that the chef might have made a mistake and served the wrong food. See all the people around to get is white bread, this is to determine that the chef is not a mistake.

The beautiful misunderstanding added some talk to the banquet. It's only for people who are new to Africa, and they won't make such a fuss after a long stay.

For no other reason, the core of the problem is that rye likes cold and grows in temperate regions. The continent of Africa is like a big furnace, rye even if the high-yielding seeds do not live is useless.

In contrast, the requirements of the growing environment of wheat is not so harsh, adapted to a variety of climates, naturally become a staple of the dinner table.

You can tell by the unlimited supply of chicken that Viscount Orteles is a master of no shortage of food. In fact, more than ninety-nine percent of the African continent's lords had experienced food overcapacity.

Restricted by the African Indigenization Agreement, the overseas lords could not sell their grain to the European continent to impact food prices, directly cutting off everyone's idea of food exports.

However, there are only those who are starved to death due to lack of food in this world, and there is no food overcapacity that has been propped up to death.

Excess food production capacity, obviously can not scare the smart aristocratic group. Initially, people were cutting back on food production capacity and switching to cash crops.

Later, we discovered that cash crop yields were extremely volatile, with one price last year, one price this year, and the possibility of rotting in the ground next year. Yields were high, but the ability to resist risk was too weak.

Someone soon came up with a new approach. Just because you can't export food, doesn't mean you can't export meat products. Anyway, to make 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", we do not like to migrate to Africa, in addition to climate adaptation, the biggest problem is that the poisonous insects are numerous, unbearable.

Some people have noticed that the caterpillars that used to be everywhere and used to crawl into the house have suddenly become less common after the chickens and ducks were raised in the colonies.

Of course, this alone is not enough to make people decide to raise chickens and ducks. The real reason why people decided to raise chickens and ducks was the "locust plague".

Because of the arid climate, many areas in Africa are prone to locust infestation. In the past few years, there is no pesticide and the agricultural production is afraid of locusts, but chickens and ducks are able to contain the locusts, so they have become an instant favorite.

Due to the mismanagement of some of the lords, the chickens and ducks that were raised by the family were left in the wild, and now they are almost overflowing.

Not only are there fewer poisonous insects, the plague of locusts has been suppressed, and even epidemic diseases are not as frequent as in the past.

Of course, whether the reason for the decrease in diseases is because of the decrease in vipers or because the source of the virus has been eliminated, the medical community is also divided on this question, and there is no precise answer at the moment.

In fact, it's not just chickens and ducks that are overflowing; cattle, sheep, wild boar and rabbits have followed suit in certain parts of the continent.

It wasn't so much a matter of species invasion, it was mainly the sparseness of the land. Plus, the noble lords were hunting down predators for the safety of their people, disrupting the ecological chain cycle.

Anything that proliferates will cause profits to decline. As we see the livestock industry dwindling, someone else has started a food industry.

A number of small workshops emerged, the most common of which were, of course, refining vegetable oils, brewing wine, making alcohol and jerky, and, more upscale, making sugar, starch, flavoring agents, and so on.

To this day, just about all of the local supporting food processing industries have been moved over. The only problem is the self-sufficient lordly economic model, which constrains the development of these industries.

However, in the view of the person concerned, these are not problems. He expressed deep disdain for the "primitive economic model of self-sufficiency" that the outside world had given him.

How do you make money if you don't play it this way?

Don't look at the proliferation of these small workshops, but they were actually forced out. Shinra occupied more than eighty-five percent of the African continent, but had a population of less than sixteen million, so it was easy to imagine how sparsely populated it was.

You can't expect traffic to be good with few people, and while the Vienna government has built a few railroads on the continent, it's only the main line, and the vast majority of the noble territories are not covered.

Railroads were inaccessible, roads were also incomplete, and the main means of transportation were horse-drawn carts, ox carts, donkey carts, and camels, while automobiles were available only in the first developed areas.

In an inland territory like the Outlet, all the large machinery and equipment is first disassembled into parts, shipped in, and then reassembled afterwards.

In this context, if you don't play with decentralized small workshop processing, can you expect to ship all your food together for processing?

As for the development of small workshops, it's not too late to consider this issue once the roads are clear. With the advantage of more land, small workshops would be competitive for a long time to come anyway.

Thirty percent of Europe's meat products come from Africa. Alcohol even holds forty-three percent of the market, and beer production capacity is the highest in the world ......

The original conditions restricting food exports not only did not constrain the development of African economies, but also promoted industrial upgrading.

The move from raw grain export to small-scale processing is also a big step forward. Although mankind has been in the industrial age for many years, the mode of production is still dominated by small-scale workshops.

The big factory economic model exists only in a few countries. Mere "existence" was the dominant mode until the age of monopolies, when factories with a hundred or eighty workers were the norm.

......

It was already evening when the party ended, and back in the assigned eight-person dormitory, where the lack of language meant that everyone just said hello and went to sleep.

In order to facilitate management, the dispatched laborers are distributed in a scattered manner, and the eight people in the dormitory before us are from eight different countries.

In this world of "different customs for ten miles, different customs for a hundred miles", even if there are multiple languages in the same country, workers from eight countries naturally do not speak the same language.

Despite having been educated in the language on the way here, the talent thing really can't be forced.

Most of them, after a month of language learning, have only mastered simple everyday phrases. In some cases, the only words they learned were "hello", "eat", "sleep" and "work". Limited Vocabulary.

It's okay to say hello, but to communicate in depth in Austrian, only workers from Switzerland and Belgium are likely to be able to do so.

The problem is that to communicate freely, it's not enough to know the Austrian language yourself, you have to know it as well. Of course, if you can speak other languages as well, the question is, if you can speak one language, will you be living in a dormitory with eight people?

What person deserves what treatment, and in this cruel world, even if it's a laborer, that's divided into three or six classes.

If he were a language genius, he'd have shown it while studying Austrian, and now he's been promoted, acting as a temporary squad leader, with occasional guest translation work.

Although the salary did not increase, but the accommodation treatment first went up, eight people dormitory became four people dormitory, which is also considered a small preferential treatment.

Suddenly arriving in a strange world, normal people would feel apprehensive deep inside. The lively welcome banquet only slightly alleviated the anxiety in the hearts of the crowd.

Even though Viscount Otterly had been as approachable as possible, the aura that comes with being in a high position for so many years made everyone nervous.

Getting close is even more impossible.

"The dragon does not frolic with fish and shrimp, and the Kun Peng does not swim with the learned turtledove."

Viscount Ortelius could be approachable, but the crowd could not be unaware of the distinction. Don't look at the number of hires and think that the threshold for admission doesn't exist.

In fact, those who could come to be admitted here were masters who had been poisoned by society to accept the realities of life. The untamed and pretentious ones, that were rejected long ago.

As an ordinary man, living in an eight-room apartment, Yamani has trouble sleeping tonight.

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

It was hard for Yamani to sleep when he thought of all the possible future hardships he might be subjected to. In his mind, he couldn't help but conjure up all sorts of difficult situations and brainstormed ways to deal with them.

There's no way around it, money is hard to make.

The country is in an economic crisis, and now that the family has to support themselves, this relatively well-paying job must be kept.

Besides, having come all the way here, in this lump of life, even if he wanted to leave, Yamani didn't know which way to go.

The officials in charge of labor export at home, send them on board the ship and goodbye. The probability of the so-called governments sending people to jointly track and manage the situation was not going to be the same.

From the moment they left their homeland, they became rootless duckweeds. If they really lose their jobs, they won't know what to eat for their next meal.

......

The next day, the sun was shining brightly, and it looked like a good time to work. Armani, who was wearing a black eye, naturally joined the workforce.

If you want to "rest", no problem. However, according to the contract, when you start working, your salary will be calculated from when you start working.

It should be noted that nearly two months had passed since the domestic departure. Except for a week's rest after arriving in Africa, the rest of the time was spent on the road, and we experienced boats, trains, cars and carriages.

Although they were physically and mentally exhausted, the pressure of life left them no choice. As migrant workers, all expenses had to be paid upon arrival, including daily living expenses.

The vast majority of people have empty pockets and will soon go hungry if they don't go to work to mix a work meal.

Do not need to be rushed, one will get up early to wait for work arrangements. Afraid of not making it late and delaying the day's work.

Yamani admitted that he did not love work so much, get up early in line, fear of being late is only one side, more importantly, the fear of missing breakfast.

Only those who have suffered from hunger know the value of three meals a day, not to mention the industrial age, in fact, two-thirds of the world's population is not full.

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

A piece of bread + a glass of milk + an egg + a few leafy greens + jam is a hearty breakfast for people like Yamani.

In continental Europe, the food that only the middle class could enjoy on a daily basis became a common working meal here.

There was a severe shortage of labor in the territory, and the Viscount of Ortelius, who could have been the mayor, was tragically reduced to a town mayor.

All the food comes from the territory, which is all natural green food without chemical fertilizers and pesticides, even the seeds are all kept by the territory.

In order to buy people's hearts, the Viscount Orteles will naturally 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 the good food.

The effect was very obvious, and by looking at the faces of the people enjoying themselves, one could tell that everyone was still very satisfied with the breakfast.

At least the European capitalists are reluctant to provide such a rich "free" breakfast to the ordinary workers.

The content of work was very simple, except for a small number of skilled workers were taken away and arranged otherwise, the work of all the laborers including Yamani was the same: building roads and digging ditches.

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

Every sixteen people is a team and a team leader is appointed. The management divides the construction sections and the groups draw lots to decide on the sections. It's all done in full view of the public, and it's all up to God whether to take the loss or the advantage.

Working hours still follow the oldest "work at sunrise and sunset".

The pay is determined by the completion of the project, you do not want to take a salary can be arbitrary. Individuals with poor performance, after three-fourths of the team members vote, can be reported to the management to apply for kick out.

Members kicked out of a separate group, again poor performance - dismissal.

Hearing the word "expulsion", Yamani hit the chill. This is the African continent, and getting fired is not as simple as losing your job.

Even though there is a serious shortage of labor in the territory, once you are fired by the lord, you will not be able to find a job in the town again. As for leaving, you have to make sure you have money for the journey first.

Not to mention causing trouble, the town may be small but it's still a small town.

Viscount Orteles held a series of positions such as mayor, judge, police chief, militia leader, etc., in short, he was in charge of all matters within the territory.