The urban area of ​​Niuzhuang Port has been expanded again recently.

The growing population (currently more than 3,200 people), the workshops that sprung up like mushrooms after the rain, and the newly built houses of cattle catchers after making money. All of this has overwhelmed the originally narrow old city of Niuzhuang Port and had to expand outward to seek new space.

The Rabbit Hole Flour Mill run by Agnelli and others has built a new piece of land next to the old wharf in the city, intending to turn it into its own exclusive wharf. In the future, the wheat produced by its own plantation and the barrel flour produced by the flour mill will be shipped from here to sea and exported to the local and even overseas. It is indeed quite bold.

This large investment naturally occupies considerable funds from the Rabbit Hole Flour Factory, and also shows the firm determination of the factory's leadership to develop the cereal planting and deep processing industries in the Pampa area, although it is still unclear where they are going to get enough labor.

Speaking of this labor problem, we have to ask, is the East Coast still facing extremely serious labor scarcity as its population increases year by year? How did the huge industrial and commercial scale of United Province be maintained by its population of more than 2.2 million?

It is true that the East Coast is extremely short of people, but generally speaking, it should not be so "crazy" that it is now. To put it bluntly, the East Coast policy is that the Executive Committee has artificially created a large number of farmers with land, houses, cattle and sheep. These people do not have to worry about food and drink, and can live well by selling surplus agricultural products. In the slack season, they can also go to construction sites everywhere (even without even going too far) to work odd jobs to earn some cash and spend money, and don’t live too happily.

Although farmers' income has gradually declined and workers' income has gradually increased in recent years, at least for now, not many farmers are willing to abandon their homeland and work in factories. Even their children are somewhat influenced by their parents and are more willing to go to the border to gain a share of land than to be a worker.

In such a situation, it is conceivable how depressed the business owners and workshop owners would be. Apart from some second-generation citizens who are greedy for the prosperity of the city and are unwilling to go to the border areas to pioneer, they will find it difficult to get enough labor resources. In order to compete for the existing labor, they dare not lower their wages, which leads to an increase in labor costs. I believe that if the East Coast people had the advantage of production efficiency, they would have long been able to compete for relatively low-priced foreign goods, just like Spanish handicraftsmen who have been in inflation all year round went bankrupt.

Therefore, business owners like Agnelli are envious of the increasingly fierce land enclosure movement in Britain. The nobles and landlords have encircled large areas of cultivated land into ranches due to the rise in wool prices, driving excess farmers out of their territory (the ranch obviously only requires much less staff than the farms) and let them wander. The booming handicraft/mechanical workshops in the UK have taken the opportunity to accept these homeless people who have no food and clothing, hunger and cold, and turn them into wages in their own factories.

There is no doubt that the wages hired can only be used to support one's family (even his spouse had to work), which is far less leisurely and comfortable than living in the tenant farming era, but what can I do? The nobles and landlords no longer want them, because renting land to them to grow grain is not too much money, and it is better to run a ranch and sheep her hair. Therefore, they are destined to be unable to return to the countryside, and can only wander between cities or towns with workshops, without belongings, and are poor (the unique wandering culture of Britain in later generations also began to begin at this time). Under the pressure of reality, they can only work for the emerging bourgeoisie in order to fill their stomachs.

But this "perfect" model is somewhat unworkable on the East Coast. The weird system established by the travelers and the complex of expanding territory in the minds of many travelers made them "rush" the immigrants born in China to undeveloped land in China, and then become farmers who rely on the planting industry to make a living. This naturally squeezed the demand for labor in the industry and commerce, and thus led to the repeated expansion of the non-national labor workers in the East Coast. Construction sites, docks, forest farms, wood processing enterprises, brick kiln factories, lime factories, cement factories, plantations, mines and other places can be seen everywhere in Europe, Africa and the United States, filling the huge gap in labor demand for the non-agricultural industry in the East Coast.

But all this is not enough! Because now the domestic industry on the East Coast is developing in depth, and the domestic market is gradually growing. The Executive Committee's policies have created a huge middle-class group of farmers in China. They have considerable consumption capacity, which in turn has promoted the development of industry. For example, Agnelli's rabbit hole flour mill has set its sights on the Pampa area. However, the new production line and the new factory are obviously needed to set up workers, otherwise they will still play with it. Therefore, although the outward-looking industry on the East Coast has gradually become saturated and the growth is slow in recent years, the domestic demand market has been growing steadily, so the demand for labor will never decrease. Agnelli is also worried about where to find workers, and he may have to find a way to "buy" non-national labor workers.

Otherwise, they will soon be defeated in the fierce market competition. Haven’t you seen Linhu Flour Factory emerge in Hejian? Dafeng Food Factory steadily occupy the densely populated Beiyazihu ​​area. Nantioxin Flour Factory has also recently begun to move to the Central Valley of Chile. If the Rabbit Cave Factory does not rise up, it will be a despair in the future, so Agnelli came to Niuzhuang Port this time.

Just as Agnelli and others were busy in Niuzhuang, Lausgi and Inigor, who had just summoned the manpower, also led their teams to the shore at Niuzhuang Port. The prosperity that came to Niuzhuang Port surprised them. The dock was full of merchants and brokers, who were flying everywhere, and for the quality of each cow, the price of each bundle of leather, and the quality of each barrel of beef was very serious, and the ground was red; customs officers and tax collectors came here.

Walking away, I kept putting bags of silver coins into the cash box, and soon I completed today's tax quota; restaurants and brothels were filled with cattle hunters who had made a fortune and had a lot of money. They were full of red faces and proud, wearing good silk and huge South African diamonds on their fingers (this was learned from time travelers), a nouveau riche's aura, and there was no trace of the shabby sign of the past.

This situation made Lausgi, Inigor and others a little excited, and then automatically entered the lucky ones who became rich overnight because of discovering the herd of cattle. They felt that the mountains of gold and silver in the distance seemed to be waving to them. They did not realize at all that behind these lucky ones were more poor guys who had never found the herd of cattle, and even poor people who died of life because of the struggle for the herd of cattle. Anyway, people like to subconsciously think about the better.

They soon rented some adobe houses in a corner of the city as temporary residences with the help of a vulgar-looking intermediary. The living conditions were naturally extremely poor, with dim light and bad smells, and there were many parasites and mice, but the rent was cheap, which was indeed the best early residence for those of them who were eager to get rich.

At night, everyone ate some cheap roast beef, drank some bad wine, and then lie down on the broken wooden board covered with thatch and fell asleep. More than a dozen people slept soundly, except for the leader Lauski, because he lived in a mansion that cost tens of thousands of yuan not long ago, but now he lived in a humid, cold and unfamiliar environment. The gap was indeed a bit large, but fortunately, the dream of getting rich still dominated him, which made him endure it even harder.

In the morning, Lausie was awakened by the cold. It was already winter. Because of the lack of heating fuel, it was very cold in the room, in the quilt, outside. Lausie walked out the door, and there was still sleet outside. The strong wind blew several small trees that I didn't know who had transplanted. The sea roared violently, and the snow head wrapped in the gust of wind whipped on people's face like a small shotgun, knocking on the eaves and doors.

In the harbor not far ahead, the masts of ships were looming in the rain and fog. In this not-so-good weather, no one would risk sailing. Lau Siji walked up to the street in front of his residence, but saw that the bluestone slabs had been washed very clean by the rain. The weeds on both sides were covered with a layer of water, and the dry branches kept flowing down.

"What a place where people love and hate..." Lausiji's mouth suddenly came out, and then shook his head and smiled, saying, "Only people can be the best if they endure hardships. Come to Niuzhuang Port not to enjoy it! In fact, it's okay in the city, at least there is a place to shelter from wind and rain, and at least there is hot food to eat. But once you go to the wild to pursue the cattle, eating ice and snow is common. This is indeed not something that ordinary people can persist. However, what is the point of suffering for your own career?"

The breakfast for 17 people of Lauski and his group were eaten in a dirty and leaky restaurant. The beef soup and roast beef were eaten. The employees from Russia were very happy, but the other diners in the store looked constipated on their faces. They obviously didn't think it was a wonderful thing to eat beef every day, but their financial situation was obviously not abundant, so they had to come here to make do.

"Recently, local officials and men have been irritated by some exile prisoners here." A diner said to the man sitting opposite him while drinking beef soup with spices: "There are about a hundred people. I heard that they came here to farm because the grain yield here is very low, and almost no one is good at farming. The seeds planted in spring and winter can be mixed in the same bag. How can this harvest be good? I hope these exile prisoners who can farm can have some. The price of flour here is too expensive. I don't remember how long I haven't eaten noodles. Maybe a week, maybe two weeks, it's a long time."

"I have seen those poor people, and I am sure that the local officials will exile sinners here day after day to enrich the population here." The man who was also eating a bowl of beef soup continued: "To put it bluntly, it is the master who is looking at the endless Pampa Plain. To be honest, I rarely see such a large and flat land, especially if the soil in this land can be squeezed out oil. It is normal for the man to send prisoners who can farm here. Sooner or later, it will be eaten by our Great East Bank like the Hejian area."

"In addition, why do I say that the men attach great importance to Pampa? In fact, it is very simple. The men have formulated preferential policies for labor and sentenced to work here to encourage the prisoners to be motivated and build Niuzhuang better." The middle-aged diner drank all the soup in the bowl, leaving only some insoluble seasonings at the bottom of the bowl. He only licked and licked the bottom of the bowl, and finally said with satisfaction: "I have talked with some of the exiled prisoners. I heard that the labor reform prisoners sent here are classified as a type of hard-working prisoners, just like the prisoners who served in local mines and forest farms. That is, if ten months of labor reform is considered to be one year, it is very cost-effective to settle down on the spot after the sentence is over."

In fact, a labor reform like this can be worth one year for ten months, and a one-year sentence can be worth one and a half years. It is not common in the local area. It is generally concentrated in Changshan Iron Mine, Ping'an Coal Mine and other places. But there is no doubt that although there are various sentence discounts for labor reform here, due to the heavy work tasks, they generally age faster than normal prisoners. Whether their bodies have collapsed after the eight to ten years of sentence service, and whether they have the ability to work or pioneer is indeed a very serious problem.

Therefore, being able to seize the opportunity to exile to the Pampa Plain is a very cost-effective deal for many criminals. Because there are preferential treatment here, the environment and conditions are much better than mines and mines, and the workload seems to be far less heavy than that there, so it is definitely a profit.

Rausji, Inigor and others naturally heard the conversation between the two diners and understood the meaning. They did have the intention to develop this place? But it seems that it is still inconvenient to come forward at the moment, so they used some exiled prisoners to play the edge ball and test the Spaniard's bottom line. This is really interesting. Since the first batch of more than 100 exiled prisoners came to grow food, there will definitely be a second and third batch. The arrival of these people is to some extent for cattle catchers like Rausji, which is absolutely good news for them.
Chapter completed!