Summer came in a heavy rain.
The dense rain fell on the glass window, making pitter-patter sounds. The scenery outside the window became blurred, and only the outline of the colors could distinguish the town and the distant mountains.
Roland stood in front of the French window, looking at the hazy city under the rain curtain, and the song of "City of Love" still lingered in his ears.
He did not expect that the premiere of the play three days ago, together with Echo's ability, would have such an amazing effect.
The moment the performance ended, the whole audience was silent, and the audience was in tears. Roland had thought that such a scene would only appear in the high-end opera houses in the future. Even a slightly grassroots cinema could not produce such an effect, let alone a group of ordinary people living in a backward era.
Even he, who had been bombarded by all kinds of tear-jerking scenes, felt a tremor from the bottom of his heart.
This was the power of the "Song of Resonance".
Of course, Roland knew what an inspiring song meant — in a protracted war, machines would not be tired, but people would. Even if guns and ammunition could be continuously transported to the battlefield, people would be overwhelmed by the endless pressure of survival. Especially when the situation was unfavorable and there were heavy casualties, this kind of emotion was extremely easy to be magnified, and eventually led to the loss of the army's fighting spirit.
Throughout history, many ways had been thought of to improve the morale of the troops, such as giving soldiers as much hot food as possible, airdropping ice cream, appointing political commissars and military chaplains, and so on. However, these were too demanding for Roland. The former was a great test of logistics and supply, and the latter was difficult to cultivate a group of backbone members with firm beliefs and good at encouraging others in a short period of time.
Echo's ability showed him a shortcut to improve morale.
Although it was a little absurd, it was indeed more reliable than other methods to cultivate people into idols.
While he was thinking, the office door was suddenly knocked, and Barov walked in.
"Your Majesty, the recent housing statistics are out."
"What's the result?"
"Just as you expected." He spread a list on the mahogany table excitedly. "Since the new play was performed, the number of people going to City Hall to apply for renting and buying houses has increased significantly, and the number of marriage registrations has also increased a lot."
"Is that so?" Roland returned to the table and checked Barov's statistics. The City of Love was not an aimless entertainment. In addition to advocating the glory of labor and the greatness of construction, it contained another point of view, which was the connection between marriage and stable residence. Instead of letting the outsiders slowly develop a sense of belonging and letting the locals slowly accept these foreign guests through daily contact, it would be better for him to set up a simple standard to promote the integration of refugees from all over the world.
This standard was the house.
"If you have a house, you are one of us." It seemed very crude, but in times of emergency, it could save a lot of time.
If he wanted to gain people's approval and have his own family, he would need a place to stay. Once an outsider had a permanent property, they would consciously protect everything here. Of course, these ideas were not suitable to be said directly. It was better to put them into a play and tell them through a story.
It's like a diamond.
An everlasting classic advertising slogan pushed it to the position of the King of Gems, a must-have for a wedding, making people completely ignore the fact that it was neither rare nor valuable.
The house at least had a high practical value.
For this reason, the goal should not be set too far away, which made people feel it was unreachable. One Golden Dragon could be used to rent a house, and one Golden Dragon would be paid as rent every year. When the rent was equal to the price of the house, the house would automatically belong to the tenant.
Of course, this goal should not be too easy to achieve. Even the cheapest single room needed 20 Golden Dragon, which meant that handymen, temporary workers and other workers would need more than 20 years to buy one. This kind of house was less than 15 square meters, which could only hold a bed, a dining table and a toilet. In the future, the landlord would definitely be labeled as a black-hearted real estate developer.
All in all, according to Barov's statistics, the publicity of the City of Love was obviously successful.
Most of the renting applications came from the previous groups of refugees and serfs who arrived in the Border Area. Most of the people who requested to buy houses were craftsmen with higher salaries and the impoverished nobles who had brought their properties with them. After they settled here, they would become a part of Neverwinter forever.
Therefore, Roland had even thought of the content of the next new play, which was to get married and buy a big house.
"Well done." He rolled up the list and handed it to Barov. "Also, continue to expand the scale of the recruitment of refugees. A sufficient population is the guarantee of the development of Neverwinter, so other tasks can give way to it for the time being."
"Yes, Your Majesty." The director smiled and curled his beard.
"By the way, call Scroll here. I have something to tell her."
…
"Your Majesty, did you want to see me?" Scroll, who was dressed in a white blouse and a black skirt, walked into the office.
"I want to expand the scope of education to include the refugees who have just arrived in Neverwinter." Roland poured a cup of tea for her. "If it's only for the official residents, they have to wait at least one year before they can receive primary education."
"I'm afraid it's difficult to do now." Scroll thought for a moment and said bluntly, "There are too many of them. The existing teachers can't take care of them, and there aren't enough classrooms. If we implement it according to your plan, the Ministry of Education will have to expand its staff by at least two or three times. "
"I have a way to reduce the pressure on the teachers." Roland paused for a moment. "Let them learn by themselves."
"By themselves?"
"Yes, hold an open class once a week and teach them the most basic reading and writing skills. The rest of the time, let them practice by themselves through a booklet with pictures and pronunciation. There won't be any performance tests or mandatory requirements. It's all up to them."
"This …" She subconsciously ran her fingers through her wet hair. "It may not have any effect. Your Majesty, without supervision, it'll be good if one out of ten people can learn it. "
"More than half will do," Roland said with a smile. "I just want to give them a chance."
There would always be people who would not be satisfied with a boring, low-paid job and were eager to achieve their goals faster. In order to prevent these people from going astray, it was necessary to guide them to achieve self-improvement in the right way.
In the future, the proportion of jobs that required literacy would increase, and the salary would be much higher than that of handymen. If they wanted to get a stable residence as soon as possible and get rid of poverty and tiredness, it would be a good choice to teach themselves how to read and write.
Through this method, those who wanted to improve themselves could join the construction of the city as soon as possible.
In order to maintain the vitality of a new regime, the most important thing was not to cut off the path of promotion from the bottom.
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