"Standing at the sight! Take off your hat!" On the turbid bank of the Mobile River, a group of prisoners in prison uniforms saluted in a hurry.

This was a group of poor people, hunched over and frowning, subconsciously took off their hats and saluted fifty steps away because two officers in the uniform of the navy lieutenant passed by. While saluting, they carefully peeked at the two heroic officers, as if they were afraid that they would be beaten by sticks if they showed a little disrespect.

In the Air Canada territory on the banks of the Mobile River, abuse of prisoners is not news. Beatings of sticks are common, and it is common to hang them and not give them food. The life of prisoners is far less than that of Chile's exile. However, the "murderers" who abuse prisoners are mainly Air Canada security personnel, and naval officers and soldiers rarely participate, although an infantry company in the city at the mouth of the Mobile River is stationed in a landing battalion for many years.

The prison is located on the east bank of the Mobile River and imprisons with hundreds of prisoners. The conditions are not very good because it is Air Canada's private prison. Many of Air Canada's security guards are pirates who recruit. The prisoners are very clear about the virtues of these people. They have opened up a large amount of farmland around the prison and planted economic crops such as cotton and sugar cane in exchange for various resources to survive.

As for how these prisoners came, it is actually very simple. There are captive pirates, malfeasance and corruption, and there are arrested spies or other criminals. In short, there are many different types. Like the South Railway Company's road guards, railway courts and other institutions, Air Canada also has armed forces authorized by the government (several retired warships) and judicial powers. In an independent kingdom, no less than a hundred prisoners sentenced to each year.

The prison also belongs to Mobile City. The city currently has two areas under its jurisdiction. West City is the core area, located in Mobile City in later generations. Air Canada's headquarters is also here, with a large number of commercial and industrial enterprises also located here, with a population of about 20,000. East City was a later colonial area. After driving away the local Indians, Air Canada cut down forests and planted cash crops here. Currently, there are more than ten enterprises, including wood processing plants, building materials factories, rice mills, grinding mills, oil pressing mills, and spinning mills, with a total of more than 7,000 industrial and agricultural populations.

It can be said that the entire East and West Zone of Mobile City is more than 5,000 square kilometers, which is the essence of Air Canada's territory. Every year, Air Canada can harvest a large amount of grain, wood, building materials, cotton yarn and in short supply of tropical commodities. Grain, wood, and building materials are basically used for their own use, and they are not even enough. They need to be imported from Free State. After all, Air Canada cannot invest a large amount of valuable manpower in these projects with low profit margins. Air Canada's most main self-produced products are actually tropical products such as sugar, coconut, palm oil, and tobacco. Most of them are sold to the East Coast, and a small number are sold to Europe.

Of course, we cannot forget the exclusive rights of Caribbean trade that Air Canada owns. The company purchases a large number of daily necessities, hardware products, machinery and equipment from the East Coast, and ships them to the territories of Western America, Free State, and Sioux City pirate forces for sale. Then, they purchase coffee, cocoa, sugar and other goods from the local area and transport them back to the country to make another money.

This round-trip trade has brought huge profits to Air Canada in the past many years and also supported their cultivation activities on the North American continent. However, since ten years ago, many people in the East Coast who are jealous of Air Canada's profits have great opinions on a large number of tropical products dumped into the country. They have connected with each other, accusing Air Canada of dumping of tropical products seriously squeezed the market share of similar products of Brazil and New China, posing a serious threat to national economic security.

The connection between these people, just like the East India company in England, is still very powerful, because it involves many places and departments, and is related to the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of citizens. Therefore, even though the Navy repeatedly endorsed Air Canada, it still couldn't stand it. In the end, it had to reach a compromise, limiting the import quota for tropical goods in the Caribbean, which undoubtedly had a negative impact on Air Canada's profits.

In view of this situation, Air Canada is now paying more and more attention to overseas markets. They try to absorb agents from Europe to join, trying to sell tropical goods through their channels, competing with the British, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Italian and even Coursians.

Their efforts have produced a certain effect, which has brought about a certain degree of recovery in the company's profits, and have spared the effort to go deep into the inland along the Mobile River, establishing two colonial towns, one is Bay Water City near the town of Bucks in later generations, and the other is Cuckoo City near the town of Calvert in later generations.

There are currently thousands of settled residents in these two colonial towns, about half from the East Coast, one quarter from the conquered Indian tribes, and one quarter from the Black Eight Banners of South Africa secretly intercepted by Air Canada. Among these people, the East Coast people are free people, operating their own industries in the form of family farms. Some of them are even the second generation living in the North American continent. They moved all the way from Mobile City, relying on plantings, cotton, fruits and vegetables to make a living. Their lives were not so good. They basically made a living by working in plantations and forest farms run by Air Canada. Their freedom was limited and their living standards were just that, and they were just filling their stomachs. However, they were indeed much better than the hungry and full meals of fishing and hunting. This has to be admitted.

In fact, Air Canada itself is unwilling to spend money to build new settlements because it involves a series of problems such as early infrastructure investment and later defense costs. Moreover, these new colonial settlements are unprofitable in the short term, and relying solely on the pitiful taxation is not enough to offset the huge investment. It is a completely black hole to swallow funds. On the other hand, there are still a large amount of open space near the east and west areas of Mobile City. They can completely obtain new land by deforesting forests and draining the water from swamps. This is not difficult, and the cost is much lower than going to the inland to expand territory.

But there was no way. Due to the collective attack by some domestic merchants, Air Canada had to bear the pain of building new settlements to please some senior leaders who were concerned about the situation in mainland North America and reduce the pressure of being attacked. Air Canada's back-end Navy Department also acknowledged this and adjusted its deployment, dispatched a considerable number of land battalion officers and non-commissioned officers to help residents of Baywater and Dujuan cities form a security regiment system with certain combat capabilities.

It should be said that Air Canada's move has achieved certain results, which has finally escaped from the domestic opposition and preserved the exclusive rights of Caribbean trade. This exclusive rights should actually be terminated after the Spanish government paid off the loan (with tariffs as collateral). However, because of the efforts of the navy, it has continued to this day, to some extent, it is indeed quite hateful - it can continue to make huge profits.

However, there are also independent commentators in China (suspectedly sponsored by the Army) pointing out that it is unrealistic to expect Air Canada to continue to colonize north. Because this is a profit-oriented colonial trading company. Since they can earn a lot of money through trade, why should they work hard to do hard colonization? Taking a step back, even if they colonize, they should rely on Mobile, the pearl city of North American continent for development. There are many primary processing enterprises gathered here, so the most important thing is that

The reasonably choice is to develop new land nearby and build new plantations, rather than spending money to the north. He predicted that Air Canada will not choose to expand geographically for a long time, but will vigorously build the Mobile Region to increase the population density and industrial scale here. After all, only by agglomeration of industries can the cost be effectively reduced; when infrastructure is utilized, investors can recover costs faster. This has nothing to do with anything else, but only depends on the laws of the market economy.

Let me mention this. Because Air Canada is headquartered in Mobile City, and it has developed into a regional economic center, it has attracted many native white families in Florida to come to the neighboring city of Pensacola, operate various plantations, and send the harvested products to the east and west areas of Mobile for processing, which has made a lot of money. Because of this, the population of Pensacola has steadily increased in the past twenty years. More than 5,000 white people have settled here, and tens of thousands of Mestizo people live in manors or rural areas on the outskirts of the city. Pensacola has become the second largest city in the entire Florida colony except St. Augustine, and is even a city on the North American continent.

At present, the Spaniards in Pensacola are even discussing that they have joined forces with Air Canada to open up the territory of both sides, and then build a railway with a mileage of 80 kilometers, connecting the eastern district of Mobile City with Pensacola City, and better developing the economy of the regions along the way.

Air Canada doesn't comment on this, or to be more precise, they don't have much interest in it. They pay more attention to it, and farming is not their strengths, but the tricks that the disgusted army likes to play. If it weren't for the excessive criticism and the pressure, they even planned to build a city, and they didn't want to carry out extremely risky colonial activities at the cost of reducing shareholder dividends.

The Spanish in Pensacola were very disappointed. They even enhanced their persuasiveness on the grounds that the English and French were accelerating their colonization of the North American continent, but in the view of Air Canada leadership, which always focuses on the financial statements for the next quarter, this was not the best choice. They made it clear that they could borrow a loan to the Spanish to build a railway at an interest rate of 8% per year, and the railway management rights must be kept in the hands of Air Canada. After weighing the pros and cons, the Spanish finally gave up this proposal. The proposal to build the first railway in North America naturally stopped.
Chapter completed!