Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 266 Territory High-level Meeting
In late autumn in the northern wilderness, Harvey held a high-level meeting of the territory in the castle's conference hall.

When he first started to build the frontier territory more than two years ago, Harvey could only rely on two alchemical life forms, one hybrid vampire, and a dozen or so wasteland refugees rescued from the evil orcs. Most of them, except Asdalen, were illiterate and pure illiterates.

Now, the territory management team under his command has grown to nearly a hundred people - some of them were apprentice knights abducted by evil orcs, ordinary watchmakers, hunters living in poverty, tax-evading serfs from the southern nobles' fiefdoms, refugees from the wasteland, and orcs...

Ninety-nine percent of them kept up with the pace of territory development, successfully completed literacy education and vocational training, and became a qualified "feudal civil servant."

This is a completely advanced configuration in the human kingdom of the southern border at this time. In a sense, it completely subverts the traditional model of rule by feudal aristocrats and kings.

Most nobles who owned fiefs would generally only hire two or three stewards to coordinate and issue the lord's orders. Under them were tax collectors for different types of taxes. These middle and lower-level officials were scattered throughout the vast fiefdom, and all daily management work revolved around collecting taxes and accumulating wealth for the lord.

Agricultural tax, commercial tax, road toll, believers' tax collected on behalf of the church, etc. These are relatively common and reasonable taxes.

Aristocratic lords who were a little more harsh and greedy would also impose a wider variety of additional taxes - the subjects had to pay forest tax when cutting down trees and collecting firewood, grazing tax when raising poultry and livestock, brewing tax when brewing wine privately, and mill tax when going to the mill built by the lord.

Harvey had heard of some even more absurd reasons for taxation in the past. Regardless of whether the serfs or free farmers under the lord's rule got married or had funerals, they had to pay a tax to the lord. Even if they died and wanted their descendants to inherit the land and estate, they had to pay an inheritance tax before they were eligible for burial.

The highly concentrated trinity of wealth, land, and power would inevitably hinder the development of the regional economy and population, and in the long run would breed irreconcilable and sharp contradictions between the ruling class and the common serfs...

Harvey, a time traveler who has seen enough lessons from history books, has deep feelings and understanding about this.

Thanks to the rapid accommodation and growth of the population, each administrative and production department in the Frontier Territory has gradually taken shape. As the core for coordinating all affairs of the territory, the City Hall has finally become the mature and complete appearance that Harvey expected.

He no longer has to do everything himself like he did in the beginning, and bury himself in the tedious work of studying laws and regulations and formulating development plans all day long. Now Harvey only needs to casually propose a simple idea and thought, and Reiner and Asdalen, who have long cooperated with him tacitly, will immediately understand the key points, and then break down the work into subdivisions through city hall officials and quickly assign it to various departments, so that tasks and responsibilities can basically be assigned to specific people and implemented quickly and efficiently.

Allowing two alchemical beings capable of "absolute rationality" to assist him in managing such a vast pioneering territory was the most satisfying and wise choice Harvey had made. It almost completely eliminated most of the possible top-down corruption and bureaucratic problems, and ensured Harvey's absolute credibility among the people as the supreme ruler of the territory.

……

This was the first time that Harvey had convened such a formal high-level meeting. Those summoned to attend the meeting were the top leaders of various institutions and departments. In addition to the City Hall General Manager Reiner and the Lord's Chief Advisor Asdalen, there were also Army Commander Pierce, senior military officers headed by Vaughn and others, Construction Minister Haru, City Hall Deputy General Manager Orange Peel, Police Department Chief Superintendent Yurio, Minister of Agriculture, Director of the Medical Institute and Deputy Minister of Agriculture Egno, Minister of Industry and Deputy Minister and Director of the Alchemy Laboratory Chris, Minister of Education and others.

In addition, the Spellcaster Academy, which was established not long ago and is affiliated with the Ministry of Education, also welcomed its first principal and professor of major theoretical courses - Durt Holden, a young mid-level spellcaster directly assigned by Harvey.

Although this young wizard came from a family of spellcasters, he had worked as a clerical worker in the Federation. He was quite talented in educating and training magic apprentices. He had a good grasp of various magical theories and his teaching plans were very good. Even the always picky Asdalen praised him highly.

The temperature in the northern wilderness was already freezing in late autumn. Harvey's castle had already activated its hot water heating system, and the conference hall had been re-paved with thick animal-skin carpets, ensuring that even the lightly dressed attendees felt no chill at all. The meeting room was utterly silent, everyone holding their breath as Harvey flipped through the departmental work summary, bracing themselves for the lord's call on them.

"Today's meeting will likely last quite a while. Each department should consider it a pre-announced year-end summary report... After all, the demonic orcs will return after winter, and we won't have much free time for another meeting then..." Harvey took a sip of the warm fruit tea the waiter had brought him, pulled out a report, and casually instructed, "Let's start with the Ministry of Agriculture, which just completed the autumn harvest."

The Ministry of Agriculture is actually managed by Reiner himself. The current minister is just a figurehead. Although he is one of the first batch of experienced wasteland farmers to join the territory, he is already quite old and will probably retire in a few more years. Therefore, the work report for this part is naturally replaced by Reiner himself.

Reiner stood up and saluted Harvey. After glancing around, he confidently unfolded the work manual before him. "Sir, this autumn's grain harvest is approximately 35,000 bushels. Not counting the 5,000-plus new residents who have just joined the territory, this will fully meet the food needs of the existing 10,000-plus residents until next autumn."

He paused, then gently turned to the next page and continued, "Besides that, there are 17,000 bushels of aged wheat remaining in the grain warehouse. As per your request, half of it will be used as livestock feed, and the other half will be shipped to the food processing plant for further processing..."

The "Pu Dou" that Reiner mentioned is a commonly used unit of measurement for barley and wheat in this world. It is a square barrel-shaped container made of wooden boards. Harvey only vaguely knew that one Pu Dou should barely be equal to one hundred kilograms, but this was not important. Anyway, as long as he knew that it was enough to feed his people, it would be fine.

A small portion of the annual grain harvest is reserved as seeds for Egno's catalytic enchantment, and only about 60% of it is released on the market for people to purchase in limited quantities with their ID cards. This is to prevent people from privately hoarding grain for speculation and resale, causing unstable grain prices in the territory.

This is also the reason why he has always held the power of land and grain cultivation firmly in his own hands. Distributing farmland to the people and letting them cultivate it themselves is not conducive to the popularization of alchemical agricultural machinery, resulting in low yields. Secondly, he is worried that they will resist paying surplus grain to the lord. The frequent civilian riots in the fiefdoms of nobles across the southern border are caused by the lords' violent confiscation of the grain that the serfs and free farmers have worked hard to harvest.

Therefore, Harvey forcibly defined food planting, production, sales and circulation as the monopoly of the city hall from the very beginning. Buyers had to use their identity documents to purchase in limited quantities according to the rationing system. The real-name system could completely prevent private hoarding from disrupting market prices.

But the most pressing issue now is that the more than 5,000 new refugees from the southern border who have joined the territory will obviously cause the current food reserves in the territory to be a little tight. Before they can get jobs and salaries, they have to receive a full month's worth of relief food from the city hall for free.

Harvey frowned and thought for a moment, then stood up and walked to the territory planning map hanging on the wall behind him. He raised his hand and slapped the undeveloped primitive wasteland on the east bank of the Glacier River.

"We have to clear the land before winter so we can plant cold-resistant barley next spring."

Barley is more cold-resistant than wheat and has a shorter growth cycle. It only takes about 90 days to mature and be harvested, thus making up for the possible food shortage before next autumn harvest.

Haru, the director of the Construction Department, and Pierce, the army commander, stood up at the same time, surprised. "Sir, the east coast is not protected by the territory's walls. Even if we send a defense force to garrison there for a long time, we won't be able to withstand the frequent harassment from the evil orcs after winter!"

"Besides, we simply don't have the manpower or energy to build a wall to protect the farmland on the east bank of the Glacier River before winter..."

(End of this chapter)