Of course, Gwen and Heti's' beating up the child '(in a real sense) was basically just to scare her. After all, Rebecca was now an adult and had the title of Countess. It would be inappropriate to hang such a big girl from the ceiling beam and beat her up or chase her around the house. Of course, there was another reason, and that was that Rebecca's head was really hard. Basically, beating her up would not work, and her hand would hurt if she was beaten up too much.
But speaking of Rebecca's title, according to the kingdom's inheritance law and the rules of the aristocratic system, after Gwen opened the coffin and secured the title of Duke, Rebecca, as the only heir of the family, should be given the title of Marquis according to the lower title. In other words, this silly girl who ran around the territory all day long and smoked herself with big fireballs from time to time should actually be a Countess. Who would believe that?
But back then, Gwen and Francis II made an agreement to prevent the royal family from being too wary of the Cecil family. Gwen? Cecil's title of Duke was currently only a personal title. Before the Cecil family regained enough aristocratic capital (including land, population, property, and military strength), the title of Cecil's descendants could not be promoted. So, Rebecca was still holding the title of Countess.
But looking at the silly roe deer's happy face every day, she probably did not even consider such a complicated matter.
"After several large laboratories in the Institute of Magical Engineering are up and running, some temporarily shelved mechanical projects can be started." After Heti removed the fork from the ceiling with her Evocative Hand and knocked on Rebecca's head, Gwen continued. "At present, the north-south road between Kant Hill and Cecil has been repaired. It only takes a day for a carriage to go back and forth between the two places, but more convenient means of transportation are still needed to really connect the two lands. As I said, the control of land depends to a large extent on the degree of transportation."
Rebecca was covering her head and pretending to be in pain, trying to gain sympathy. But when she heard Gwen mention the word 'machinery,' she immediately forgot about it. The maiden's eyes lit up as she looked at Gwen happily. "Is it the magic-powered vehicle that you mentioned before?"
"From a technical point of view, we can already produce 90% of that thing," Gawain nodded. "The only thing we've been lacking all this time is manpower. When you gather the manpower and activate the large laboratories of the institute, the project will begin. "
Creating a more advanced means of transportation that could match the pace of industrial development in Cecil Hill was an idea that Gwen had been brewing for a long time. Now, the magic-powered engine in Cecil Hill had developed to the second generation rotor engine. In the mines, factories, buildings and other places, large and small magic-powered engines and the steel machinery they drove had become the biggest driving force for the development of the territory. However, the rapid development of mechanical engineering and the overall rapid development of the territory had also put a higher demand on transportation. The factories needed more and more industrial raw materials, the territory's area of control was getting bigger and bigger, and all kinds of large and heavy machinery were emerging one after another. The traditional human and animal transportation had obviously become the bottleneck of the further development of the territory.
They could not always use carriages to transport ores to the steel factory, right? Carrying the parts of the construction machinery to the construction site was also not a long-term solution.
However, although Gwen proposed this idea, there was a serious shortage of technicians in the territory. Even if the magic of this world was very convenient and could greatly speed up the development and manufacturing process, the lack of magic-powered technicians was not so easy to make up for. So, after the concept was proposed, it was just a concept. The project had not yet started.
Rebecca, on the other hand, had always been interested in it. The girl had a natural passion for machinery, especially when she found out that the automaton could be equipped with a 16-pack of fireball launchers that would allow her to run at a speed of over a hundred kilometers per hour while firing fireballs. She was so excited that she almost got hit by her aunt again.
After getting an affirmative answer from Gwen, Rebecca immediately laughed foolishly, and no one knew how many things she had imagined. Heti helplessly looked at the simple-minded girl, and felt that she would not be able to think for a while. So, she directly changed the topic. "There's one more thing, Ancestor. The new immigrants at the port have completed their registration today, and the immigration administrator reported a situation …"
"Oh?" Gwen raised his eyebrows. "What's the situation?"
"There are more than a dozen apothecaries, herbalists, and alchemists in this batch of immigrants from the north and northwest of the southern territory," Heti reported seriously. "They also mentioned that more 'colleagues' are leaving their homes, so there should be more people coming here in the future."
"… The impact has begun to appear?" Gwen listened quietly, and there was no surprise on his face. "The northern trade route is personally managed by Frederick, and the northwest trade route is promoted by Viscount Andrew. The progress is similar to what I expected."
"The Month of Recovery has come, and many mercenaries and adventurers who chose to rest during the winter are preparing to start work. They are usually the main customers of apothecaries. In the past winter, our caravan has sold alchemy potions to almost every mercenary union in the north and west, so now the apothecaries and alchemists in these areas are going bankrupt in large numbers …" Heti said and sighed softly. "Now, apart from Cecil Hill, the only choice left is the northeast, or even further east …"
"Gilan Hill is already our ally," Gwen said faintly. "Tomorrow, the first batch of 12,000 potions will be sent to Luo Peini's castle. She will promote the entire eastern region, and the caravan will use Gilan Hill as a springboard to start supplying alchemy potions to the eastern region. "
Before this, there was already a group of Cecil merchants who had successfully opened up a market in the Eastern Region. They had established a relatively fixed sales point in several towns, but due to the inconvenience of transportation and the lack of protection, the cost of supplying goods to the Eastern Region had always been high, and the supply was also a problem. But now, there was Luo Peini? With Gilan's full support, Cecil Hill's alchemy potions would be sent to Silas Castle. In the territory of Duke Loren.
"… I'm afraid that Cecil Hill is the only choice for those apothecaries," Heti said, shaking her head. "Or rather, our factory is their only choice."
"More and more people will come later," Gwen said flatly. "People like apothecaries belong to the wealthier class among the civilians, so they are more tolerant of 'unemployment'. They will not be like the mine workers in Tanzania Town, who went bankrupt as soon as the mining machinery was put in place. The apothecaries and alchemists who have come to the territory should be the kind who are relatively poor and do not have much savings. They quickly went bankrupt when they could not get any orders in the spring, and those who still have savings or fixed customers will be forced to come here one after another when the alchemy potions become more popular. "
Tyre poked the food in front of her with the tip of her tail. It seemed that she had finally given up the idea of eating and was ready to use her tail to absorb the food. She listened to the conversation between Gwen and Heti. At this time, she said faintly, "In fact, at this time, the people who go bankrupt early are luckier. They still have time to get a job in the factory. With the production efficiency of the factory, those apothecaries who come later are not even qualified to enter the factory. After all, I heard that such a large reaction group can be controlled by only seven people, and the output is almost equivalent to more than eight thousand apothecaries added together."
As an outsider from a more advanced civilization, Tyre understood a lot of things in Cecil's territory. Although the siren society was very different from human society, she had witnessed the rise and fall of many civilizations on the land. From her experience, she could see some things.
"Industrialization is a behemoth, more voracious than Typhon's behemoth," Gwen said slowly. "Typhon has made progress in the revolution, but it also needs to devour more resources and people to complete the final transformation. Cecil's magical industry has brought about more rapid progress than Typhon's. Of course, the things it needs to devour … will be more. Traditional handicrafts, small economies, traditional agriculture … all of them are its nourishment. "
"Factories will eat people," Heti suddenly said softly. "You told me this a long time ago, but I didn't understand it at all … Now I'm beginning to understand. Those factories … will have such a big chain reaction."
"Yes, factories will eat people, especially when they are not under control. They will almost use human flesh as fuel," Gwen said as he lowered his head to cut the food on his plate. In his mind, the various phenomena of the transition from agriculture to industrialization and the terrible consequences of uncontrolled "factory cannibalism" came to mind. "So we have to set up chains and fences to control this behemoth from the beginning. Whether it is to formulate a perfect worker protection system, to settle the people who are transferred to civilian work in advance, or to prepare enough peripheral jobs to accommodate the unemployed people while developing the industry, these are necessary measures to control this behemoth. "
Amber looked at Gwen for a while and blinked. "No wonder you made a lot of strange rules when you built those factories … It turns out that you had thought about what would happen later at that time?"
"I have to think about it, otherwise the factories will turn around and eat the fruits of our hard work." Gwen looked at her with a smile. "When people only have two choices, either die of exhaustion in the factories or die of starvation outside the factories, then what we have done is meaningless. The world is still as bad as before."
Gwen's words calmed everyone down, but he knew that there were still some things that he did not say.
The "control measures" he had formulated could indeed alleviate the contradictions caused by the destruction of traditional handicrafts and agricultural societies, but the effect was only to alleviate them. Especially in this world, the existence of magic made it easy for any technological breakthrough to produce extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily direct results. A large number of mechanical equipment took a very short time to go from blueprint to finished product, and the speed of industrial products from concept to mass production was also very fast. So the power of industrialization was magnified. Therefore, in this process, the pressure of a large number of handicrafts due to the collapse of the old social order and the bankruptcy of the handicrafts was not so easy to relieve.
So, how should this extra pressure be relieved and transferred?
A list of names silently emerged in Gwen's mind …
(I'm back!!!
When he came back, the first thing he recommended was the eternal "Deep Space Below". It was a sci-fi story about setting sail in the universe and exploring the future of civilization. It had already been completed. Furthermore, it was the winner of the Galaxy Award for Best Online Literature. It's really worth reading.
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