Thousands of sparks

Chapter 178 Burn it!
For half a month, all national and local newspapers in the empire, from Olin to the small colonies, have been paying attention to the crazy September coal futures price.Everyone was asking the same question—what should be a fair price for Olin's coal.

In the eyes of these newspapers and media, traders who participate in market transactions are very rational.These traders bought and bid up the price of coal, which means they must have done some kind of "calculation" to confirm that the price of coal in Olin was seriously undervalued.

No one will doubt whether a trader who can spend more than 1000 million gold pounds to buy coal futures has something wrong with his brain. After all... rich people should be intelligent, rational, educated and full of various Such a brilliant person.

The wealthy must be vastly different from the most numerous commoners in the empire, or their success would be irrational.

In the "public opinion" circles of the empire, there has always been a code that can be called a "rule"-don't question all the decisions made by a wealthy gentleman.

Rich gentlemen have far more resources than reporters and editors who are poor with dip pens. Questioning the decisions of wealthy gentlemen, these newspapers often end up being slapped in the face by reality, and finally have to publish in their own newspaper pages. Consequences of a public apology.

Sometimes, though, the apology is not because reality is contrary to reports, but because these wealthy gentlemen are determined to protect their reputations - no one wants to be dismissed as a fool by their social circle, especially when the newspapers have predicted such behavior It is bound to fail.

Over time, newspaper editors and reporters in the empire have learned a trick to reduce risk-never question the actions of any rich gentleman, even if his behavior seems stupid and effervescent.And it is not enough not to question, but to find some reasonable explanations for the behavior of these wealthy gentlemen.If the other party succeeds, it means that the newspaper office has the right vision.If the other party fails, at least there is still a favor to say something good.

However, the editors of more than a dozen newspapers began to scratch their heads about the Olympian Development Bank spending huge sums of money to buy the September coal futures. This matter really does not make sense.

According to the economic theory of the empire, the goods on the market will form a balance in the game of supply and demand, and this balance is the fair value.The value of goods will only fluctuate when supply and demand fluctuate, and it tends to be stable by itself.

This theory cannot explain the logic of the crazy rise in coal prices at all, because the production of coal in the entire empire has not been greatly affected, and there is no new demand that consumes a large number of coal mines in the market.But the rising price of coal hurts everyone - small vendors selling straw have begun to appear on the streets of the imperial city, and the most popular commodity in the black market is firewood.

In the end, the newspaper simply put forward an initiative—sixteen Olin newspapers jointly issued an initiative, suggesting that the economics professors at Imperial University conduct research on the sharp fluctuations in coal prices and propose a theory that can explain the skyrocketing coal prices.

Lorraine looked at these newspapers and for a moment didn't know whether she should be happy or angry.

·
·
·
The skyrocketing price of fuel has a huge impact on the entire imperial society.The area of ​​greatest influence was the transportation between the colonies and Olympia.

Warp requires the use of fuel to heat the Ypsilon Mine.The shuttle ships of the empire basically use coal to heat the Ypsilon mine—and the amount of it is not small.In the context of soaring coal prices, transportation costs have also begun to rise rapidly.In order to supply Olin with enough coal to make a profit, the mines on other colonial planets began to increase production, and reduced or even canceled their plans to sell coal locally.A large amount of coal was loaded on the shuttle, and then flew towards Olin.

Coal began to crowd out space for other goods, and as other goods sent to Olymp began to dwindle, the prices of other commodities on Olymp began to rise.

It used to be that a commoner family with a decent job could support a wife, three children and a dog while the husband worked alone.And you can go to the paid club once a week to maintain your social level.And now, when both husband and wife are working, the family still can only eat two meals a day to reduce expenses-don't think about dogs, the price of pet feed is now more expensive than food for people.These pet dogs can either only lick the owner's plate after eating, or they can only become a dish on the plate.

Under this influence, the town environment of Olin has improved a lot—the poor have already started preying on rats, stray dogs, and wild cats.

Prices go up, while people's wages don't change at all.Those "respectable people" who have savings in the Olin Development Bank can use their savings to make a little top-up, while others...they have only one painful choice to make.

The choice is to start starving in this environment until you can't stand it or die, or choose to ask your employer for a salary increase.

Salary increases are not an easy deal, and in the past employees who tried to get a raise often only got a "you're fired" letter.But in August, apart from the skyrocketing prices, there was another thing that made ordinary people in Olin care about it.

The strike at the Russel Gear Factory lasted to No. 16 days. Angry workers blocked the entire gear factory and locked the factory manager, Mr. Marquis’ financial officer and their management relatives in the office building.

For sixteen days, Yuri, his father-in-law, and other relatives did not receive any food supplies.They insisted at the beginning that there was no room for adjustment in wages, and that they had to wait until the new owner of the factory made arrangements before they could be paid.After the sixth day, Yuri began to change his words and said that [-]% could be paid first.

Half can be paid on the eighth day, and 14% on the tenth day. On the [-]th day, Yuri stood at the window and shouted in despair that he could pay all the wages of the workers, and he could give [-]% more.

Almost everything that could be eaten in the office had been eaten up—there were still three cans in Yuri's hand.In two days, he had to start catching mice and even flies to fill his stomach.

But his bribery had no effect. The organizers from Central Teco had roughly calculated the assets that Yuri embezzled during his long-term tenure as the factory director-the total value was at least 25 gold pounds.This is only the part he directly embezzled and embezzled. If you include the losses caused by him, the financial officer and other relatives in various ways, the total value should be around 100 million gold pounds.

The workers' demand now is that Yuri must spit out all encroaching property and return them to the workers.At the same time, Yuri and his "relatives" have to sell all their assets to make up for the long-term losses of the factory.

The workers certainly felt that this request was very reasonable, even quite magnanimous—they did not ask Yuri to return his wages, nor did they ask Yuri and his relatives to bear any more serious consequences.As long as the money is returned to everyone, everything is negotiable.

But in Yuri's eyes, these poor ghosts are simply killing themselves.What a fine thing is that money, those colorful gold pounds, how can they be spoiled by these poor people!
"These ignorant things are all troublemakers!" Yuri was still extremely angry even though he was too hungry to shout loudly.He tried to resolve the current predicament through other means - such as contacting the police or the Heraldry Administration.However, several relatives who risked their lives to report to the police were picked up by angry workers, and two of them were hanged on street lamps.

Fortunately, the newspaper knew about everything that happened at the Russel Gear Factory. No matter how lazy the powerful department in the Imperial City was, it was time to make some "response".

Holding the last hope, Yuri stood behind the window and looked at the wall in the distance—since this morning, there were more than a dozen gas-burning automatic cars parked outside. Judging by the color of those cars, they should be from the Imperial City Police Department. Someone is here.

In fact, the response of the Imperial City Police Department was much faster than Yuri imagined.On the day the strike started, the Huangcheng Police Department had already sent someone to find out the situation.

And Schultz took out a series of documents to prove that he had become the owner of the gear factory, and also directly "persuaded" the police officers of the police department in the name of Grand Duke Hall.And the reason for "persuading him away" is also very strong-Schultz produced a lot of evidence to prove that the director of the factory has long occupied the assets of the Lussel Gear Factory, and the behavior has been so serious that the entire factory cannot continue to operate normally.In order to protect their own interests, the workers launched a strike with Schultz's permission.

The strike was ordered by the factory owner, and during the process, the rights and interests of the factory owner were not violated in any way.

That being the case, the police officers of the police department have no reason to continue to stay in the Russel Gear Factory.Not only that, but when they left, they also kindly reminded Schultz that if the director of Yuri needs to spit out all the embezzled money, maybe Mr. Schultz should choose to cooperate with the police.After all, the Huangcheng Police Department has very rich experience in dealing with "greedy untouchables".

In the eyes of the police officers, this Yuri, who has climbed step by step from a worker's family to the position of factory director, is still nothing more than a pariah.

But this time, the police officers of the Huangcheng Police Department dispatched again because the order was issued directly from above.

The Minister of Police issued a direct order to the police force, asking them to immediately solve the strike at the Russel gear factory.The Minister of Police made such an order because of the request of Grand Duke Hall—after a series of detailed investigations and studies, the Imperial Finance Minister and his staff determined that the root cause of the soaring coal price was Russell Strike at the gear factory.The strike must be stopped immediately before coal prices can return to normal levels.

Seeing the police officer for the second time in half a month, Schultz's attitude has also undergone a clear change.He invited these police officers to sit in his temporary office and entertained them with good black tea and desserts.For the police officers' request, Schultz also agreed very happily. He told the police officers that the workers' strike should end this afternoon.Once the strike is over, he will immediately start to resume factory production.

"Why is there a smell of smoke?" After drinking a few cups of black tea in the office, the police officers suddenly sniffled and asked wonderingly, "Is something burning?"

Just as Schultz was patrolling the office with them to rule out possible fires, there was a sudden loud knock on the door.The police guarding outside shouted to the immediate superior in the office, "Sir, you'd better come out quickly, the factory is on fire!"

When Schultz and the two senior police officers walked out of the office, they realized that the office building of the Russel Gear Factory had been completely engulfed in flames.At the same time, the fire also spread to the nearby warehouse and boiler workshop.

"Hurry up!" Schultz yelled before the police officers could react, dragging several police officers out of the factory abruptly.Less than a minute after they walked out of the factory, a violent explosion occurred in the boiler workshop. The more than 1-pound boiler flew into the sky like a doll tired of being played by a noble young master.

Afterwards, Schultz showed several police officers what it should look like to be "distraught."He sat down on the ground without any hesitation about his image and began to cry loudly, cursing Yuri desperately.According to the content of his curse, it is not difficult for the police officers to come to a conclusion—the factory manager Yuri refused to refund the embezzled funds, so he committed suicide by setting fire to himself.At the same time, his suicide ignited the expensive coal in the boiler workshop, and under the violent burning of the coal, the boiler responsible for driving the hydraulic press in the factory was blown up to the sky.

In short, when the police who "recovered a life" reported to the Minister of Police, they all mentioned a desperate fact.

Under the best of circumstances, the repair and installation of the boiler will take three months.This means that in the next three months, the Russel Gear Factory will completely lose its production capacity.

(End of this chapter)