The welcome banquet is very lively. Although the reception standard is not high, it is more affordable.
In order to welcome the new 2,000 laborers, the Outlet Viscount slaughtered 50 cows, 100 sheep, and several chickens, and the chef carefully prepared bread and vegetables.
No way, many people have a big appetite. As a good lord, this kind of large-scale banquet outlet naturally invites all the lords to participate.
Even though 50 cows may seem like a lot, in the 19th century African cows were all naturally fed. They were originally small, and they were not artificially modified beef cattle in later generations. Naturally, the meat production rate was not high.
One steak per person consumes all 50 cows. As for 100 sheep just for stewing soup, it is obviously not enough to make barbecue. In contrast, the supply of chicken is much more abundant.
Of course, meat is not a luxury in Europe. Especially after the opening of Austrian Africa, the price of meat products fell again and again.
The African continent is vast and sparsely populated, which provides a favorable foundation for the development of animal husbandry. Taking the territory of Outlets as an example, the population of more than 7,000 square kilometers is just over 10,000.
After excluding the elderly and children, the young and strong labor force is only five or six thousand, so much land is definitely not enough to be cultivated, and the development of animal husbandry is a good choice.
For noble lords with enough land, the cost of raising cattle and sheep that can grow up purely by eating grass is really not high. You support me as well. If you support more people, the price will naturally go down.
What really stood out was the white bread on the table, the kind that didn't add any impurities. For laborers who are accustomed to eating brick and black bread, the impact is too great.
There is naturally white bread in the European continent, but because the production cost of wheat is higher than that of rye, the price of white bread has also risen, and it has become the standard for the rich.
In an ordinary welcome banquet, the lord brought out all the white bread, which was beyond everyone's understanding.
Many people looked at the white bread in front of them and hesitated to start, for fear that the chef made a mistake and served the wrong food. Seeing that everyone around was getting white bread, I was sure it wasn't the chef's mistake.
The beautiful misunderstanding added a bit of discussion to this banquet. This is only for people who have just arrived in Africa, and they will feel this way. After a long time, they will not be so surprised.
For no other reason, the core of the problem is that rye is cold-loving and grows in temperate regions. The African continent is like a big stove, and rye, no matter how high-yielding it is, is useless.
In contrast, wheat is less demanding on the growing environment, adapts to a variety of climates, and naturally becomes the staple food on the table.
Looking at the unlimited supply of chicken, you can see that the Viscount Outlet is a master who has no shortage of food. In fact, more than 99 percent of the lords of the African continent have encountered the problem of food overcapacity.
Restricted by the African localization agreement, overseas lords could not sell food to the European continent to impact food prices, which directly cut off everyone's idea of food export.
However, in this world, there are only those who starve to death due to lack of food, and there is no one who has been forced to death by overcapacity of food.
The overcapacity of grain obviously cannot scare the shrewd aristocratic group. At first, everyone cut food production capacity and switched to commercial crops.
Later, everyone found that the income of cash crops was extremely unstable. One price last year, one price this year, and it may be rotten next year. Although the returns are high, the ability to resist risks is too weak.
Soon someone came up with a new solution. Not being able to export grain does not mean that it cannot export meat products. It's all about making money anyway, so it's not bad to develop a side business and share the risks.
Chickens and ducks that have a short growth cycle, low breeding thresholds, and can eat insects become the first choice.
The point is to "eat insects". People don't like to immigrate to Africa. Apart from the climate incompatibility, the biggest problem is that there are many poisonous insects, which makes people miserable.
Some people found that after raising chickens and ducks in the settlement, the caterpillars that were seen everywhere and often crawled into the house suddenly became rare.
Of course, this alone is not enough to make everyone make up their minds. What really made everyone make up their minds to raise chickens and ducks was the "locust plague".
Because of the dry climate, many parts of Africa are high-incidence areas of locust plagues. There are no pesticides these days, and agricultural production is most afraid of the "locust plague", and chickens and ducks can curb the locust plague. With this advantage, they have instantly become everyone's favorite.
Due to the poor management of some lords, the domesticated chickens and ducks have been left in the wild, and now they are almost flooded.
The flooding is not completely without benefits. Not only are there fewer poisonous insects and the plague of locusts has been contained, but even epidemic diseases are not as frequent as in the past.
Of course, the reason for the decrease in disease is whether it is due to the reduction of poisonous insects or the removal of the virus source. There are also different opinions in the medical community, and there is currently no accurate answer.
In fact, not only chickens and ducks are rampant, but cattle, sheep, wild boars, and rabbits are also rampant in some parts of the African continent.
It is not a problem of species invasion, but mainly because of the vast land and sparsely populated areas. In addition, the noble lords hunted and killed predators for the safety of their subjects, destroying the ecological chain cycle.
Anything that floods will lead to a decline in profits. Looking at the decline of the animal husbandry industry, some people started the food industry.
Small workshops came into being, the most common ones being the extraction of vegetable oil, wine making, alcohol and jerky, and the high-end ones also making sugar, starch, flavorings and so on.
Today, almost all of the local supporting food processing industries have been moved over. The only problem is the self-sufficient lord economic model, which constrains the development of these industries.
However, in the eyes of the parties, these are not problems. The evaluation of the "primitive economic model of self-sufficiency" given by the outside world expresses deep disdain.
How do you make money if you don't play like this
Don't look at the proliferation of these small workshops, they are actually forced out. Shinra occupies more than 85% of the land of the African continent, but only has a population of less than 160,000. It can be imagined how sparsely populated it is.
Don’t expect good traffic if there are fewer people. Although the Vienna government has also built several railways on the African continent, these are only the main lines, and most of the noble territories have not been covered.
The railways are blocked and the roads are not perfect either. The main means of transportation are horse-drawn carts, ox carts, donkey carts, and camels. Automobiles are only available in the first developed areas.
In an inland territory like Outlets, all large machinery and equipment are first disassembled into parts, transported in, and then reassembled.
In this context, if you don't play with decentralized small workshop processing, is it possible that you still expect to transport all the grains together for processing
As for the issue of the development of small workshops, it is not too late to consider this issue after the road is cleared. Anyway, with the advantage of more land, small workshops will be competitive for a long time in the future.
If you look at the international market, you will know that 30% of the meat products in Europe come from Africa. Alcohol accounts for 43% of the market share, and the beer production capacity ranks first in the world…
The original restrictions on grain exports not only did not restrict the development of Africa's economy, but instead promoted industrial upgrading.
From the export of raw grains to the processing of small workshops, it is also a big progress. Although human beings have entered the industrial age for many years, the production mode is still dominated by small workshops.
The big factory economic model exists only in a few countries. It's just "existence". Until the era of the big monopoly, the workshop-style factory with 180 people was the mainstream.
…
After the banquet was over, it was already evening, and they returned to the assigned eight-person dormitory. Because of the lack of language, everyone just said hello and went to sleep.
In order to facilitate management, the dispatched laborers are all distributed, and the eight people in the dormitory in front of them are from eight countries.
In this world where "ten miles are different, and hundreds of miles are different", even if there are multiple languages in the same country, workers from eight countries naturally have language barriers.
Although I had received language education on the way here, talent really couldn't be forced.
The vast majority of people have only mastered simple everyday language in more than a month of language learning. Some wooden fish lumps have only learned limited vocabulary such as "hello", "eat", "sleep", and "work".
It’s okay to say hello. If you want to communicate in-depth in Austrian, it is estimated that workers from Switzerland and Belgium can barely do it.
The problem is to communicate freely. It is not enough to know the Austrian language by yourself, and you must also ask others to do so. Of course, if you can speak other languages at the same time, the question is, will a master who speaks a foreign language still live in an eight-person dormitory
Who deserves what kind of treatment, in this cruel world, even labor dispatch is divided into three, six, nine, and so on.
If he is really a language genius, he showed it as early as when he was learning the Austrian language, and now he has been promoted, acting as the role of a temporary team leader, and occasionally has a guest translation job.
Although the salary and benefits have not improved, the accommodation benefits have gone up first, and the eight-person dormitory has become a four-person dormitory, which can be regarded as a small preferential treatment.
When you suddenly come to a strange world, normal people will feel uneasy in their hearts. The lively welcome banquet only slightly eased everyone's anxiety.
Although the Viscount of Outlets tried his best to be approachable, the aura brought by his perennial high position still made everyone nervous.
Closeness is impossible.
"Jiaolong doesn't play with fish and shrimp, and Kunpeng doesn't swim with Xuejiu."
The Viscount of Outlets can be approachable, but everyone can't be ignorant. Don't look at the large number of recruits, and think that the threshold for admission does not exist.
In fact, those who can come here are all masters who have been severely beaten by society and accept the reality of life. The unruly and pretentious people were rejected early.
As an ordinary person, Yamani, who lives in an eight-person room, lost sleep tonight.
Although the Viscount of Outlets seems to be kind, like a benevolent lord; but according to past workplace experience, the more friendly the leader is, the more vicious the manager below.
Thinking of the various difficulties he may face in the future, Yamani can hardly sleep. Various scenes of being harassed and the ways of coping that were made up by the brain could not help but emerge in my mind.
There is no way, the money is not easy to make.
There is an economic crisis in the country, and now the family has to support themselves, and this relatively good-paying job must be kept.
What's more, they have come, in this unfamiliar bump, even if they want to leave, Yamani doesn't know where to go.
The officials responsible for the export of labor services in China will say goodbye when they are sent to the ship. The so-called governments of various countries send people to jointly track and manage, and there is a high probability that there will be no such thing.
From the moment they left their homeland, they became rootless. If you really lose your job, you won't know what to eat next time.
…
The next day, the sun was shining brightly, and it was a good time to work. Yamani, with dark circles under his eyes, naturally joined the labor force.
Want to "rest", no problem. However, according to the contract, when you start working, you will start to calculate your salary.
You must know that it has been nearly two months since the departure from China. In addition to arriving on the African continent and resting for a week, the rest of the time was on the road, and everyone experienced it over and over by boat, train, car, and carriage.
Although physically and mentally exhausted, the pressure of life makes everyone have no choice. As a migrant worker, all expenses must be borne by oneself after arriving at the destination, including daily living expenses.
The vast majority of people have empty pockets, don't go to work to get a working meal, and will be hungry soon.
Don't need to be urged, get up early one by one and wait for the work arrangement. For fear of not being late, I was late for a day's work.
Yamani admitted that he did not love his work so much. He got up early in the queue and was afraid of being late. It was only one aspect, but more importantly, he was afraid of missing breakfast.
Only those who have suffered from hunger know the value of three meals a day. Regardless of the industrial age, in fact, two-thirds of the world's population cannot be full.
Even in Europe, the most developed economy, many people are still limited to two meals a day. Especially after the outbreak of the economic crisis, starvation is a common phenomenon in the bottom society.
A piece of bread + a glass of milk + an egg + a few vegetable leaves + jam is a hearty breakfast for Yamani and others.
In continental Europe, the food that only the middle class can enjoy every day has become an ordinary working meal here.
The territory was severely lacking in labor, and the Outlet Viscount, who could have been the mayor, sadly became the mayor.
All the food is produced by the territory, and it is a pure natural green food without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Even the seeds are kept by themselves. The production mode of wide planting and thin harvesting, the input cost is not high.
In order to win people's hearts, the Viscount Outlets naturally wouldn't save on food. You must know that one of the most important reasons why many European migrant workers choose to stay in Africa is that they have good food.
The effect is very obvious. From the look of enjoyment on everyone's face, you can tell that everyone is still very satisfied with the breakfast.
At least European capitalists are reluctant to provide ordinary workers with such a hearty "free" breakfast.
The content of the work is very simple. Except for a small number of skilled workers who are taken away, all the laborers, including Yamani, have the same work: repairing roads and digging canals.
Unlike before, everyone's work here is in quantitative mode.
Every sixteen people is a group, and a group leader is appointed. The management personnel divide the construction section, and each group draws lots to decide the construction section. It is all carried out under the watchful eyes of the public, and it depends on whether God bless or not.
Working hours still follow the oldest "work at sunrise, rest at sunset".
The salary is determined by the completion of the project, and you can do whatever you want. Individuals with poor performance can be reported to the management for application to be kicked out after more than three-quarters of the group members vote.
Kicked members out of a separate group, again underperforming - fired.
Hearing the word "expelled", Yamani shuddered. This is the African continent. Once fired, it is not as simple as being unemployed.
Although there is a serious shortage of labor in the territory, once you are expelled from the lord's palace, you can't even think of finding a job in the town again. As for leaving, you must first ensure that you have the toll.
Don't even think about making trouble, even though the town is small, it has all the internal organs.
The Viscount Outlets also served as the mayor, judge, police chief, militia leader, and a series of other positions. In short, he had the final say in everything in the territory.