When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 524 Salt and Ham (Two in One)

Since leaving Enrico's house, Nagmi has obviously become much more taciturn than before.

Sechinger didn't take it seriously, thinking that she was frightened by the prosperous scene of Joan of Arc.

In Sechinger's eyes, not to mention Flyover, even Jeanne d'Arc was considered a relatively large city.

For the North Mountain people who have been living in Longsand County for many years, Jeanne d'Arc Castle is probably the end of the world.

After changing to a horse-drawn carriage in Sour Melon Town, Sechinger and his companions arrived at Chateau Jeanne in just over a day.

Horn naturally went to greet them personally with a few key figures, but in order to prevent riots, they held the welcoming ceremony in the suburbs.

On the solid road paved with mortar, colorful triangular flags were planted on the roadside, dancing in the autumn wind. Occasionally, citizens or villagers passing by would look at this side in surprise.

Sechinger got off the carriage and, after marveling at the speed of the carriage and the road, he looked up and saw the temporary gate beams at both ends of the road at first glance.

Black and red vertical flags were hung on both sides of the door beam, and in the middle was a long red cloth with the words "Welcome to the friendly people of North County, Sechinger Ulynots" written in white standard Leia letters.

This welcoming ceremony, which seemed rather tacky to Horn, apparently made the even tacky Sechinger extremely satisfied.

Seeing Sechinger coming, Horn, who was wearing a bishop's robe without the complicated patterns, walked up to Sechinger head-on.

"Welcome to Chateau Jeanne, Lord Sechinger. I have wanted to meet you for a long time."

"It's an honor to meet you, Lord Horn."

At first he was surprised by the age of the farmer leader, then Sechinger smiled heartily and gave Horn a bear hug.

After a bunch of messy ceremonies, Setzinger and Horn and others split up into two groups. Setzinger's servants and daughter went to stay in a special country villa, while Setzinger himself went to the Holy Hall for a detailed discussion with Horn.

Horn pulled Count Sechinger to sit down, took out a set of bone china teacups from the cupboard, and poured him a cup of black tea.

Although black tea is the favorite drink of the middle class in the empire, especially the nobles and citizens, Sechinger does not like it. He would rather choose a glass of potato wine.

To be polite, he picked it up and took a sip: "Thank you for the tea... Well, can we talk about the issue of those Norse laborers?"

"Of course." Horn crossed his legs, took a sip of black tea, and replied calmly, "Your people can come to Langsand County to work, but I hope to sign a contract with you."

"What contract?" After heaving a sigh of relief, Sechinger became alert.

In his opinion, these high-paying jobs must be snatched away by locals and taken away by these North Mountain people.

If it were an ordinary lord, he would most likely expel them, firstly to win over the hearts of the locals, and secondly to prevent the outflow of money.

But Horn agreed so easily that he couldn't help but feel that there was some trap.

“First, people entering the country normally need to register and be issued a labor certificate.

Second, people who enter the country illegally or work illegally will be deported, and their rights will not be guaranteed.

Third, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. When you enter Langsand County to work, you must abide by the laws of Langsand County. If you violate them, we have the right to expel you. If you commit a crime, both parties will be judged together. "

"That's all?" Sechinger asked after waiting for a while.

"That's all. Just a few requests." Horn smiled and added some milk to the tea. "Northshire and Longsandshire are all Kushites. We are one family."

Sechinger stared at Horn for more than ten seconds before he let down his guard and even drank a cup of the black tea he disliked.

He thought Horn would ask Sechinger for compensation or limit the number of personnel, but he didn't expect it to be resolved so quickly.

"Then I feel relieved... When does dinner start?" Sechinger put down his teacup and asked while touching his stomach.

"No hurry, let's talk about other things first, such as North County."

"Northshire? What do you want to talk about? It's a tough place, otherwise so many people wouldn't come to Longsandshire."

"Haha, what I want to talk about is the solution to North County's poverty for hundreds of years."

"Is it 'If you want to be rich, have more children and build more roads'?" This was a slogan that Sechinger saw when he passed by some hundred-household districts, and he said it half sarcastically and half jokingly.

You know, poverty in North County is an eternal issue for the mountain people of North County.

There are no valuable mines and fertile land in North County. If there is a meadow for grazing, the cattle have to compete with the neighboring Norn Kingdom.

But this young man, who is no more than 20 years old, dared to brazenly say that he could solve the poverty in North County for hundreds of years.

Doesn't that mean that the wise men of North County over the past few hundred years have been just eating for free?

“Do you know what brings wealth?”

“Farmland and mines.”

"No." Horn shook his head. "It's labor and exchange."

Looking at Sechinger's confused face, Horn knew that he had not attended the classic Edenic economics course at the Holy Fathers Academy.

However, the conversation between the two will not last long. Horn does not plan to teach Eden Economics on the spot, but to give a brief summary.

“A seed held in the hand will not sprout, and a mineral buried in the mountain is worthless. It is tilling and digging that makes it valuable. The act of tilling and digging is labor.

Similarly, grain and iron ingots will not turn into money out of thin air if they are placed in the warehouse. Instead, they need to be exchanged and sold in the market to earn money. "

Picking up the black tea to moisten his throat, Horn continued:

“How to work and exchange efficiently is the key to gaining wealth. There are two reasons why North County is poor.

The first is that the geographical climate is not good, and traditional proven efficient labor such as farming and mining are not successful.

The second is that the exchange conditions are not good. Not only is the high ground in a harsh location, but there is also no merchant culture.

But this doesn’t mean that there is no hope. If the primary industry doesn’t work, there are still secondary and tertiary industries. If the roads are in bad condition, we can still repair them.”

The Thousand River Valley is said to be high in terrain, but based on calculations from the "Imperial Geographic Atlas", Horn estimated that the altitude of the four plain counties is only about 200 meters, and the altitude of the five mountainous counties is only about 1,000 meters.

The average altitude may not even be as high as that in Shanxi and Shaanxi, mainly because of the Gaotai Mountains in the middle and the Longmian Mountains on the east.

The former blocks the warm current from the Emerald Sea in the south, and the latter blocks the warm current from the Yanghai Sea in the east, resulting in the barrenness of this area.

These mountainous counties may seem large, but I’m afraid more than half of their area is uninhabited. Who knows how many treasures are hidden inside.

The three counties of North Mound, Mound, and North can barely be considered the foothills of the Dragon Sleep Mountains, belonging to the same mountain range and the same plate. It doesn't make sense that the first two have rich mineral deposits, while the latter only have forests and trees, right?

"No, our area is full of salt-alkali land and poisonous water pools. Although there are copper mines, they are very deep and cannot be mined at all."

"That's not necessarily true..." Seeing Sechinger's unconvinced look, Horn did not continue speaking, but changed the subject.

"Even if you don't have these, you can still engage in animal husbandry. With such a large area, if you can't raise cattle, sheep, and horses, you can still raise donkeys, mules, and pigs." Horn stood up and took out a pen and paper from the cabinet next to him. "I'll do a simple calculation for you. In Jeanne d'Arc, 1 dinar can only buy 3 pounds of pork, but in North County it can buy 5 pounds or even 7 pounds.

在诺斯郡，1第纳尔只能买1加仑或者10磅谷物，而在贞德堡1第纳尔可以买16甚至是18磅谷物。

Let's ignore shipping costs and price changes for now. In an ideal environment, you spend 1 dinar to buy 6 pounds of pork in North County, and then ship it to Jeanne d'Arc and sell it for 2 dinars.

再用这2第纳尔买36磅谷物，运回诺斯郡卖掉就是3.6第纳尔，往返6次，1第纳尔就能变成超过2000第纳尔。”

"It works in dreams!" When it comes to this topic, veins on Sechinger's forehead bulge. "Do you think we haven't tried it?"

As he spoke, Sechinger's grievances were about to be realized: "We have to pay for everything along the way, and there are also freight costs. If we bring too much feed, the freight will go up, and if we don't bring any feed, the live pigs will lose weight.

If it is cut up in advance, the dead pig will stink and become diseased unless it is winter.

At the beginning, my father, grandfather and I drove 300 pigs to Jeanne d'Arc to sell them, but they were either plagued by swine fever or weighed less.

The churches and lords along the way set up private checkpoints. They charged me 15 dinars for a pig, so my cost was 300 dinars. Damn the devil's bishop, he charged me once every time I arrived at a place, and repeatedly.

After finally transporting it to Joan of Arc and selling it, including the cost of bribes, he found out after doing the math that he not only made no profit, but also lost 1500 dinars.

Moreover, the loss is even greater when buying grain and selling it back, because you have to pay for the return trip, and the customs and bridge taxes paid along the way are enough to cover the original cost of the grain.

We lost 10 gold pounds at one time. My grandfather fell ill when he returned. Before he died, he said that in the future he would only sell pigs in areas that could be reached within three days.

Three days! We haven't even left the mountains yet. The nearest boar ranch is five or six days away from the nearest manor in Longsand County.

We force the pigs to go there, and the tolls and costs along the way just make up for the price difference. If we are lucky, we can make 7 or 8 dinars per pig, but if we are unlucky, we will even lose money."

"Then why not make it into ham or air-dried pork?" Horn spread his hands and said, "You have so much wood, it shouldn't be a problem to use it to make air-dried pork, right?"

"There's no salt," said Sechinger irritably.

With a strange smile, Horn turned around, took a roll of newspaper from the shelf next to him, flipped through it for a while, and then put a page on the table.

When Sechinger saw the word "Pravda" in the newspaper, he suddenly realized what Murat was talking about.

Looking down from the headline of Pravda, Sechinger saw the price list of Hongfeng Township at a glance: rice crackers were 0.6 dinars per gallon, wheat was 0.7 dinars per gallon, and salt was 56 dinars per bushel (18 pounds)...

"Hmm?" Like a turtle, Sechinger suddenly put his head close to the Pravda newspaper, as if he didn't recognize the words on it.

It is equivalent to 1 pounds of salt for 3 dinar. You should know that they have to pay half a dinar to buy 1 pound of salted fish from the Norns.

Generally, 10 pound of salt is needed to pickle 1 pounds of salted fish. In Horn, 1 dinar can pickle 30 pounds of salted fish.

"Where did you get so much salt?"

"A secret." Horn had a mysterious smile on his face and opened his arms to the sky. "It's the result of the invisible hand of the Holy Father."

This is a statement of more religious significance. To be precise, four of Horn's sacred wheel pumps are used to extract brine.

In order to be able to mine for longer, Horn only maintained a minimum level of mining to meet market demand.

If it really runs at full capacity, an average of nearly 360 million liters of brine can be extracted each month, and a small salt well can be emptied in a month.

360 million liters of brine can produce about 700 tons of salt, which requires about 1 tons of peat.

1 tons of peat is the product of 600 hours of work by 90 alchemists. This was hard to say in the past.

But now with the saliva ascension method, it is no longer a problem to transform the Saint's Favored Ones and Alchemy Priests on a large scale.

Sometimes Horn really had to sigh that the roar of industrial machines was so deafening that a clockwork rotary pump was enough to destroy the entire salted fish industry in the Thousand River Valley.

For some reason, seeing Horn's charlatan behavior, Sechinger felt a little more fear in his heart.

"Those tax cards no longer exist. Live pigs can be replaced with dried meat and ham. As for the freight, it just so happens that we need a market for our mortar, so we can use it to build roads." Horn walked around behind Sechinger and held the back of his seat. "What else do you have to worry about?"

"But why do you want to do this?" Sechinger still didn't understand. "Without our ham, won't everyone be able to survive?"

"Of course not. First, there will be more food on the table, which is an improvement in living standards. Second, the supporting industries will require a large number of workers and consumption, which will expand the tax base."

Apparently, Sechinger didn't understand this, so Horn had to switch to a simpler version:

"The principle is that the more I spend, the faster the money flows, the more prosperous the market is, the more people are willing to spend, and the more taxes I collect."

When people perceive a booming market, their expectations for the future are higher and they are more likely to increase their spending when they have more money.

This expenditure will circulate through various channels in the market, driving more consumption and investment, forming a "multiplier effect" so that each unit of expenditure can generate more than one unit of economic output.

This means more transactions, more business growth and more jobs, leading to a larger tax base.

The most important thing is that people from outside, such as the French, see that the market in Langsand County is hot and there is no reason not to invest.

As long as Horn can prevent inflation in time, it will be enough to put the economy into a period of rapid development.

As for the issue of productivity matching, Horn could only say that the empire's productivity was originally higher than its development level, but it was forcibly suppressed by the extraordinary.

If there were no extraordinary people, with the empire's current population and level, it would not be a problem to advance civilization from the late Middle Ages to the level of the Renaissance to the mid-to-late 17th century.

Even without the clockwork industry, simply removing the shackles of the empire and the church can allow the economy to develop.

"Money is only money when it flows. I pay 30 dinars a month to a small construction worker, and the tax revenue will be hundreds of millions in the future." Horn swallowed the "applause" and smiled at Sechinger.

But Sechinger didn't say anything. He looked at the price list on the table and suddenly understood Nagmi's feelings.

That indescribable complex feeling of confusion, jealousy and uneasiness.

"A new era, a new idea, a new look." Horn's voice was more tempting than the devil. "The mountain people of North don't have to leave their homes. They can sleep in warm houses and eat full meals. Your people and relatives and friends no longer have to envy others!"

Several large pancakes drawn by Shengsun hit Sechinger on the head, making him dizzy.

(End of this chapter)