Wizards: Starting as a Potions Master!

Chapter 128 Internal Reorganization of the Three Major Guilds in Maple Leaf Town

After one night, all the lords of the Southern Thrace military district knew what had happened the previous night.

The Simon family, which attempted to challenge Peter's dominant position in the Southern Thrace military district, was almost completely wiped out overnight. Almost all members of the family were killed, leaving only an illegitimate daughter and some distant relatives.

From then on, the Simon family branch in the Storm Kingdom was almost completely wiped out.

Even the town of Simon, which had been invested in by the Othello family of monopolistic merchants, disappeared overnight.

This has caused very serious problems.

Physical elimination certainly cannot solve all problems, but it can certainly solve most of them.

Simon Town was completely destroyed, but the funds and supplies that the Simon family had borrowed from various sources were all stored in Simon Town, and now they are all gone.

The supplies that merchants from various places stored in Simon Town are now all gone.

The Simon family has been utterly disgraced since last night.

Therefore, the bankrupt merchants, unaware of their own plight, were all affected. The small and medium-sized merchants who had rushed over with great enthusiasm upon hearing the name of the Othello family were now all struggling to recover compensation from Baron Simon.

On the contrary, the merchants who stayed in Maple Leaf Town did not suffer any losses. Moreover, the next day, they heard the good news that Su Nan was preparing to invest heavily in Maple Leaf Town again to expand its commercial scale and provide certain subsidies to the merchants.

As for the source of this batch of Storm Coins that Su Nan suddenly produced, opinions were divided, and everyone had their own guesses.

Inside the guild buildings of the carpenters' guild, the textile guild, and other guilds in Maple Leaf Town, every household was decorated with lanterns and colorful decorations, celebrating their unexpected and direct victory in this business competition against the Simon and Othello families.

Inside the Carpenters' Guild, Lady Is, dressed in men's low-ranking noble attire, even had a smile in her eyes. She said to the old carpenters who were registered with the Maple Leaf Town Carpenters' Guild, "Gentlemen, what did I say? I said Lord Sunan would definitely resolve this matter."

"We just need to wait quietly. Some of you are even complaining that I didn't come up with a solution sooner..."

Many of the veteran carpenters felt somewhat ashamed.

Many middle-aged carpenters and others spoke with a hint of excitement about their current benefits and income. "This morning, my shop received several times more large orders."

"But I directly raised the price by a third. The people in the neighborhood who bought furniture from our store didn't dare say anything!"

"It's because they've been so sycophantic and backstabbing for the past three months!"

A young carpenter said, "This morning, a notice was posted on the Maple Leaf Town bulletin board announcing the expansion of Maple Leaf Town's infrastructure and welcoming more outsiders to settle in. The more prosperous Maple Leaf Town becomes, the more prosperous our carpenters' guild will be."

"The more guests Maple Leaf Town has, the more money we carpenters can earn, right?"

After thinking for a moment, President Is said to them, "Regarding this, the presidents of our three major guilds have discussed it and believe that we should allow Lord Su Nan to be more deeply involved in the management of our guilds."

"This way, it's better for everyone."

"Everything that has happened in the past has demonstrated how much Lord Su Nan protects and how important he is to our Maple Leaf Town."

"In addition, we may have made many wrong decisions and ideas in the past, so I propose that Lord Warwick, Lord Sunan's subordinate, be included in our guild in decision-making regarding trade prices, issuing trade licenses, training carpenters, and so on."

President Yi's idea is to bring the originally very independent guild organization, which exists as a kind of trade union, under the management and coordination of Sunan.

Originally, the three major guilds of fur, woodworking, and textiles in Maple Leaf Town could set their own prices and trade volumes for the products they were responsible for producing, as well as the number of registered artisans.

In Maple Leaf Town, you are not allowed to do carpentry work unless you are recognized by the Carpenters' Guild.

You can make some furniture yourself at most, but you can't sell wooden furniture to others.

Medieval guilds of this era were essentially self-governing organizations from the bottom up, tasked with protecting the interests of artisans within the guild and safeguarding the interests of other members of the industry.

Basically, it won't make you rich.

If you earn a little more, you should stop, limit your production, and let other carpenters produce more and earn more.

Yes, everyone earns roughly the same amount of money.

It will not allow carpenters to starve, nor will it allow them to become rich or generate large amounts of capital through hiring others.

This is a special kind of guild that arose due to the limited purchasing power under the economy of the manor (knight's territory).

At the same time, the guild has a lot of power. For example, if the guild sets a price for the wooden furniture here, that price is absolute and there will be no price fluctuations.

But now, Chairman Yi's idea is to let the people of Sunan directly control and manage the guild, so as to make them completely dependent on Sunan.

In fact, the reason why the three chairmen made this decision was suggested by the wealthy businessman Pige.

The wealthy businessman Pig told them that just because Su Nan didn't mention the things that happened in the past didn't mean they didn't exist.

Lord Su Nan certainly wants to develop Maple Leaf Town, but that doesn't mean he'll tolerate the three guilds that house all the artisans in Maple Leaf Town continuing to develop independently.

Unless... the guild voluntarily returns some of its power to Su Nan, becoming the ruling body of Maple Leaf Town controlled by Su Nan.

In this way, the three major guilds will not be a cancer, but will instead become a powerful tool for Sunan to accurately control Maple Leaf Town, including prices, the number of workers, and even the supply and demand relationship.

Moreover, this also benefits the three major guilds. Lord Su Nan is expanding the pie, and as long as they follow Lord Su Nan, they can make money continuously.

Things are different now. In the past, everyone had only so many resources, so they had to compete and scheme against each other. But now that the pie is getting bigger, they no longer need to fight amongst themselves.

That's why the three major guilds came up with today's proposal.

To President Is's surprise, the carpenters of the Carpenters' Guild did not have much objection to this; on the contrary, they directly supported it.

"Without Lord Sunan, Maple Leaf Town would have been ruined during the Bulgarian raid."

"Yes, and Lord Su Nan's decisions are always correct. Letting him guide our guild might even be better, and it might prevent us, the true foundation of our guild—the carpenters—from being bullied by the organizers of certain guilds."

"It would be perfect if the Baron managed us directly. There are no middlemen."

It was only then that Mrs. Isbe realized that even within the guild, there were serious conflicts between the craftsmen and the guild's management.

So, the day after Su Nan destroyed Simon Town, the three major guilds of Maple Leaf Town directly handed over management rights to Su Nan, allowing Su Nan to completely control Maple Leaf Town.

It's important to understand that in this era, it was common for lords to nurture a major commercial town until it became too prosperous, at which point the town council of that commercial town would try to gain independence.

Unlike now, Su Nan is able to control Maple Leaf Town more precisely.

This is actually a good thing for the business environment of Maple Leaf Town itself, because Southern Jiangsu can make appropriate adjustments when prices in Maple Leaf Town are very high or very low, making the business mechanism of Maple Leaf Town more reasonable.

Meanwhile, three days after the devastating news from the Simon family, news came from Simon Territory that Baron Simon had suffered a stroke and was bedridden.

He could no longer stand up straight.

(End of this chapter)