Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1197 Wooden Cow and Horse ([-])

There was an endless stream of children and parents who came to apply for the job. Children as young as ten years old were led by their parents to the recruitment office in front of the train station, and they kept saying good things, hoping that the recruiters would accept their children. .

It is better to go to work in the coal mines, where the wages are the highest.

The worst thing is to make briquettes. Although this can indeed solve the family's plight, after all, we still have to burn coal for heating in winter, but compared to working in a coal mine, the earning is still too little.

Just as Liu Yu added in the Songsu reform, half of a woman's wages to work should be paid by her parents or in-laws.It has greatly eased the rate of abandoned babies in the Songsu area, especially the rate of abandoned female babies has been greatly improved, and some nursery halls have begun to be run by people, after all, they can work as soon as they are old.

Half of the time, the old bustards have to be about ten years old to buy people, they have grown up, and at least they have to look upright before they buy.Otherwise, good people will have a bunch of grown-ups, and the ones bought since childhood must be cultivated into high-priced commodities, otherwise they won’t be compensated?

The development of the textile industry in the Songsu area has made it possible to make money even if you raise them at an early age and sell them like livestock when you grow up.Therefore, the rate of abandoned female babies and the death rate of abandoned babies have been greatly reduced.

Capital alienates people into labor force for sale, and the labor force for sale can be calculated based on market trends, food prices, wage levels, etc., to calculate whether adopting a child will lose money or make money.

On the capital side, it's similar.

The opening of railways, the use of coal, the mining of coal mines and lime mines, the expansion of iron smelting, the popularization of iron stoves, the appearance of cement, and the popularization of chimneys have all allowed children who were originally "worthless" to have a certain amount of money. the value of.

This is different from Kanto. Kanto has a lot of land. Even if the children don’t go to school, they go to the field to cut pig grass to feed pigs, herd cattle, and sheep, or to pick up beans and dig potatoes in autumn. It is higher than rubbing briquettes in the capital.

However, near the capital, the rich are really rich, and the poor are really poor.Poor tenants, with just such a small amount of land, not to mention picking beans, just licking them one by one with their tongues, three to five acres of land, seven or eight acres of land, will be licked up quickly, and no value can be created at all.

It has reached the limit of small farmers’ production—this is not bragging at all. Dashun’s yield per mu is the highest in the world at this time, including the British Agricultural Revolution, which is said to have laid the foundation for the industrial revolution. The yield per mu is still not as good as that of Dashun. Where is the data? It means that it will surpass the era when Dashunde and other Chilean saltpeter mines were developed as fertilizers—in this extreme state, it is useless to increase the labor force.

Of course, this means that in the state of small farmers, if organizations organize and transform those ineffective labor into water conservancy projects and irrigation, then of course they can continue to increase production.The problem is that with Dashun's fragmented organizational ability, being able to collect taxes with such a large foundation is almost unable to collect taxes from the United Kingdom. This in itself is a dream.

At this time, it is better to have a child, raise it at home and eat, and send it to work in the coal mine, and it can also supplement the family.

Niu Er was quite excited when he saw the vibrant scene in front of him.

He doesn't know what the future should look like.

However, judging from the experience of Songsu and other places, it seems that a large number of child laborers have started to be employed, which seems to be a sign of the new era.

After all, it is impossible for a person to imagine something he has never seen before. When he saw these familiar scenes in Songsu, he suddenly felt that the industry and commerce here were developing very well, and he was one step closer to the future.

After all, from the beginning to the end, the future cannot be seen, it is only drawn by Liu Yu.Europe is not advanced to where it is now, it is all based on imagination.

It is imagination, so what kind of characteristics should the future from the perspective of pure productivity drawn by this painting have?

Judging from the experience of the Songsu area, there must be three superficial features.

Black smoke.

idlers.

Ladies and children.

This is the train station, there must be black smoke.

The coal needs to be packaged and transported here, and of course the idlers have it.

Coupled with this large number of child labor, isn't this the vigorous vitality and the sudden development of everything in Niu Er's eyes.

Not far away, there is a station building made of lime cement, black and gray in color, with a huge clock hanging on it.

The black coal mines and white lime cement that symbolized the industrial age were unloaded by those sturdy unloading workers.

Many flatbed trucks waiting here will pull these goods to the coal yard in the city.

Under the huge clock, many teenagers surrounded the employer, waiting to be selected like livestock.

People from the Practical School with a pilgrimage mentality mixed with those from the capital who wanted to go to the west of Beijing to worship incense and Buddha, and lined up at the simple ticket gate, waiting to take the unloaded car.

Or go to the west of Beijing, or just to experience the process of rumbling forward with black smoke.

The yamen servants who maintained order were driving away the beggars who were trying to sneak into the car, and directly took a stick and smashed it on the head.

This is not any prejudice against beggars themselves.

It's that these beggars who go to the west of Beijing are all professionals looking for work to make a living.

Whenever they hear that a coal mine has opened, they will go to applaud.

It will definitely sing well when you come up.

But if they finished singing well and didn't give money, or didn't give much, they started singing some songs about "death", "landslide", "watering" and so on.

The song says:
As soon as it enters the kiln, it is full of white flowers, and black coal is not produced, and all slag is produced.

Dressed in sackcloth and filial piety and white flowers, ten of them went in and killed three of them.

Three were buried, three were lifted, and three were unable to get up.

The kitchen is like the coffin shop, and the cabinet room is like the coffin.

The setting up of an altar is the Sipeng Sutra, and Guzi Lama is an old Taoist monk.

Those who value filial piety are not their own flesh and blood, their eyes are red when they pretend to cry...

In general, homicide is a crime.

This kind of beggars are the most feared group of people who open coal mines. They simply give some money to the people here at the train station and beg them to help deal with it.

After all, the death rate is really a bit high, and no one wants to be called a mourner for opening a business.

If people who don't know the specific situation, as soon as they come to the station here, they will see the yamen servants beating beggars, which will inevitably make people feel that it is really cruel.

Fortunately, the people here are all from Dashun. They have seen this kind of thing a lot, and they know what it is all too well, so they don't think it's strange.

Now that the coal mines in the west of Beijing cannot be visited, these professional beggars choose to howl at the train station.Whenever there is a situation of recruiting workers, they go to sing happy songs. If they don’t pay, they don’t even go to the coal mines, and start singing mourning songs directly at the place where workers are recruited.

Some people who want to go to work may refuse to go after hearing such a howl.So now not only the coal mines in the west of Beijing are catching beggars, but even the capital is starting to drive them away.

Since there are beggars, there are also low-level opera singers, prostitutes, etc., and they are willing to go there to make money.When you get there, the opera singers will set up a stage to sing there, and the prostitutes will rent a big kang there to take care of their own profits and losses.The management over there is loose, and you have to pay donations to do this business in the capital.

Those who sell vegetables near the station, those who sell eggs and melon seeds in baskets, or those who want to bring some goods to sell in the Jingxi mining area also gather here.

Even though the railway has not been open for a long time, people have become accustomed to the existence of this thing and have begun to adapt to life with this thing.

However, life with such things is not necessarily all good.

When Liu Yu and Niu Er arrived at this station, even though the entourage was very streamlined, after all, there are many people here who are practical and learned, and they think they are Liu Yu.

After the meeting, everything seemed to be business as usual.

However, some people in the crowd in the distance gritted their teeth when they heard Liu Yu's name.

A middle-aged man named Xiangzi couldn't help spitting on the ground when he heard the voice of Xing Guogong in the distance.

The people next to him also cursed in a low voice: "When did this person die? Why is he still alive? Thief, treacherous minister!"

There were not just a few people who cursed, but many people, just looking at the guns and bayonets of the guards in the distance, they had to lower their heads and continue to carry the heavy coal basket.

Before the railway was built, Xiangzi was a common camel driver in the capital.

His family didn't have much money, so he worked with the camel team when he was a child. The work he did was to use camels to transport coal or lime to the city from the Jingxi Coal Mine.

Every working person has a dream at this time, that is to save money and become a petty bourgeoisie.

Buy a camel that belongs to you, rely on your own ability to drive camels, and slowly save money with the familiarity you have accumulated from selling coal over the years.

One camel becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes one, one becomes a string, and I will have my own camel team in the future.

The capital needs coal, lime, and even firewood, all of which have to be brought from the west of Beijing.The camel walked slowly, and walked unsteadily to Fucheng Gate, where it slept overnight outside Fucheng Gate.At dawn, the gates of the city were opened, and they went into the city to sell coal and lime, earning two hard-earned money.

Xiangzi was a hard-working man who endured hardships, so he started as an apprentice and survived until he was 28. Finally, he saved all the money and bought his first camel.

On the day I bought the camel, I went to the city to find acquaintances and rang a big yellow bell for the camel.When I pulled it up, I just felt that the bell was ringing, and it was crisper than others.

When the camel's bell rang, Xiangzi would always calculate how much money he had left to buy a camel.I can hold a hand by myself, seven or eight, and when I can really hold a hand, I will ask for a wife and work hard.

However, his bell hadn't rung for a few days before the train started running, and the carloads of coal and lime were transported directly to Xizhimen without the need for camels.

The price of camels in the capital plummeted.

How can a camel dealer in the city let go of such an opportunity?Just procrastinate and refuse to accept, keep lowering the price.

Camels also have to eat, chewing every day, how can these people who have no work afford to support them?

The capital city is a capital city, and there are even guilds for excavators, even if they change careers, they can't do it.Those who carry water from Xizhimen push carts and sell water in the city every day, and it is impossible to squeeze in this job.

Seeing that the camels lost weight day by day and had to eat every day, they had no choice but to beg their grandpa to sue their grandma and find a camel dealer.

The camel dealer only said that your camels are so skinny and afraid of heat. If you want to sell them for money, you have to go to Zhangjiakou to fatten them, and you can sell them in autumn.

If you want to sell, you can go to Zhangjiakou to hide from the heat and let the grass grow.But Xiangzi didn't have the money to go to Zhangjiakou. Seeing that the camels were getting thinner day by day, and they were worthless if they didn't sell them, even the soup pots were worthless, so he could only endure the distress and sell them for a few bucks.

After selling the camels, he still has to live, so he can only go to the station he hates most, and find a job as a coal unloading laborer. This is because a large group of unemployed camel households are doing this. Finally, he recognizes him for the sake of face I asked him to do it.

The story of Xiangzi is not as simple as changing a career.

It was Liu Yu who destroyed their illusions.

They were suffering and tired before, but at least they still had hope.Have your own camel, and then one will become two, two will become one, and you will become the dream of a big camel household.

This is not simply a matter of changing careers, but it completely destroys the dreams of many people who are only hired workers but have the dream of small producers.

The hatred of broken dreams is much greater than simply changing careers.What is broken in the times is the dreams of small farmers and small producers, because in the future of the real school, it is not that there are no dreams, but that there is no room for these people to exist at all.

At this time, there was a sound of camel bells in the distance, and I don't know where it came from.

A rush of hot blood rushed straight to Xiangzi's forehead, thinking about his shattered dream, he gritted his teeth, felt a piece of black coal, and rushed out quickly.

Before the guard could react, he threw the coal in his hand towards Liu Yu.

The moment he threw it, he knew that the guards wanted to beat him to death, so he used the greatest strength in his life to vent his despair.

"Liu Yu! Me! In! You! Blind! Mom!"

(End of this chapter)