industrial lord

Chapter 270 The First Dispute
Olive bought the daily necessities and is arranging them with Therma.

Frederick looked at the newly bought things with some pride.

August is the hottest period in Wanjing City. The temperature at noon exceeds 8°C and at night it reaches at least 30°C. The bedding on the bed is only a sheet and a cloth blanket.

There are a lot of mosquitoes here, and the doors and windows of the house need to be hung with breathable gauze, and mosquito coils must be lit before going to bed to fumigate the mosquitoes.

The bedding, gauze and bath towels bought by Olive are all produced by the No. [-] Wessen Cotton Textile Printing and Dyeing Factory. The tableware is also the dishes and spoons made of slime hard glue exported from Wessen State, and the bucket washbasin is no exception. , Even the knives and forks are stamped products over there.

When they were ready and Therma took over the dinner, Frederick called the olives over to see how they were doing here.

Olive moved the chair over and sat down next to Frederick, leaning against him as if to lean into his arms.

Frederick said helplessly, "You can just sit on my lap."

Then Olive actually sat on his lap.

The girl was small, thin, and light.

"What?" Frederick frowned, "Aren't you afraid that I'll kill you right now?"

Olive blushed and said: "As long as the master takes me to Wessen State, I can do whatever I want."

Frederick laughed, pinched her face and said, "Hey, is that why you want to go to Wessen?"

Olive nodded desperately, put his arms around Frederick's neck and said: "You guys in Wessen State can earn two or three gold coins a year if you just do some leaflet distribution, and you can eat as much as you want with 10 copper coins." Isn't it better than the fried chicken here, where you can't even get enough of beans?"

"Just take me there. I'll do whatever you want me to do, okay?"

As she spoke, she rubbed her face against Frederick's chest.

Frederick was speechless, and could only say to her: "I will go to the Kingdom of Kush next, and the reward I will give you will be enough for you to take a boat there to Wessen State."

When Olive heard that she could finally go to Wessen, she was so happy that she hugged Frederick and kissed him.

Not long after, Therma prepared dinner. The staple food was white rice, served with a stew made of minced meat, gourds, and sweet radishes, which was praised by Frederick.

After dinner, the three of them took a bath and rubbed off half a catty of old mud for Therma, feeling much refreshed.

Fortunately, she was a high-end product before, and there were no fleas on her head or body, otherwise she would have another round of trouble.

Frederick didn't know what to do with Therma at this time, so he asked her while washing her hair, "What are your future plans?"

Therma seemed to be stunned for a moment, and asked Frederick in disbelief: "Master, you don't want me anymore?"

Frederick scratched her scalp and said, "I never thought of making you my slave. I just bought you out of anger at those people's blasphemy against heroes."

"So you are free to go wherever you want."

Therma was silent for a long time, until Frederick washed the ashes from her hair with clean water, and then said in a low voice: "I want to go back to my hometown and avenge my father's reputation!"

Frederick trembled a little when he saw her fists clenched tightly.

After she relaxed, Frederick asked Olive to fumigate mosquitoes in the bedroom. There were only the two of them in the small bathroom, and Frederick went to close and lock the door.

"Remember what I said." Frederick leaned his mouth against Therma's ear and whispered, "The fire powder raw materials used by the Guards are charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter. Power, the method is..."

The emergence and spread of gunpowder is the general trend, and it will not pose too much threat to Frederick who is researching gunpowder, then simply speed up the spread and muddy the water.

Therma was frightened. In the Ghazi Empire, the method of making fire powder has always been a top secret. I asked my father curiously, but I was locked in the room and starved for three days and three nights. After I came out, all the servants around me were replaced by New, original all hanged for espionage.

"You... how did you know?" Therma asked Frederick tremblingly, for fear that he would say that his father told him.

Frederick pinched her face lightly, and while helping her dry her long hair, he replied with a smile: "What's so difficult about it, we have already made it many years ago, but there is a better one. I didn’t use it much, I used it as a toy.”

Therma had mixed feelings in her heart. First, she was relieved because her father did not leak the secret, and second, what her father regarded as extremely important was nothing to others, so she didn't know what to say for a while.

"Thank you." She turned and hugged Frederick.

Overnight, the book will not repeat.

It was just dawn the next day, and Frederick had already got up to fill the water tank with a water pump on the roof.

The weather is too hot now, and the water consumption is huge. Every morning and evening, I have to take a cold shower, and at noon, I have to splash water on the roof and the room to cool down.

Not long after, Olive, who had overslept, hurried out to buy vegetables. There was no refrigerator here, but the vegetables were alright, and the fresh meat was not available for a long time, and they were only sold in the morning and afternoon.

Frederick also went out for a walk while the weather was still warm, and visited the market here.

There is a market near the residence, not for sea merchants, but for local residents.

The products sold here are all commodities used in daily life, from firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and tea, to cloth, needlework, tableware, stationery, paper, and several tailor shops.

Frederick, wearing clothes from the north, got hot on the back of his neck here, so he decided to buy a local coat.

He passed by a few houses to have a look, and felt that one was good, so he went in.

The boss was very enthusiastic, and after negotiating the style and price, he began to measure the size.

Suddenly there were people standing outside the tailor shop, men and women, old and young, all wearing worn-out clothes, their faces covered with dust, all holding a roll or two of cloth in their arms, looking at the boss.

Frederick asked the boss curiously: "Who are they?"

"The cloth seller." The boss said disdainfully, "they are homemade cloth woven at home, which is thick and sparse, which is not as light, fine and cheap as Wessen cloth."

"Seeing that you are from the north, Weisenbu should know. I heard that it is a cloth woven by magic. Tsk tsk, that kind of cloth used to be used only by emperors. I heard that there, beggars are dressed more than Hello, the emperor."

"Nowadays, everyone in the city who has a little money wears clothes made of Wessencloth, and only those who farm and move things wear homespun clothes, which are durable."

After hearing this, Frederick just said softly "So that's how it is", thinking that the dispute between "homemade cloth" and "foreign cloth" also appeared in the port city.

The dispute between homemade cloth and machine-woven cloth is actually a microcosm of the dispute between agricultural society and industrial society. In the Ghazi Empire, homemade cloth still has a huge bottom market in a short period of time. The price of machine-woven cloth is far away from the port because of the transportation cost. There is no absolute advantage, and the cloth production capacity in Wessen State is limited. The cloth conflict cannot shake the entire empire, but it is enough to cause some turmoil around the port.

This kind of conflict is more intense in the area near Wessen state. There have been "cloth burning movements" in some places, and even some places in the Rhine Union have imposed high tariffs on imported Wessencloth due to local protectionism.

But the wheel of history is ruthless, and advanced productive forces will always crush backward productive forces.

(End of this chapter)