Fox of France

The words of a friend made President Hidalgo relax a little bit. Indeed, the cost of the French's investment in him is not low. If they are really suppressed by the Spaniards, then those investments of the French will be in vain.

But after a second thought, President Hidalgo remembered another serious problem.

"My friend, if we are in too much debt, then after our independence, although there will be no Spaniards to exploit us, we will continue to give money to the French every year because of this debt. Have our Spaniards overthrown us and let the French crush us instead? The old bad guys are gone, new ones are coming, each generation is getting darker, and we Mexicans are still harvesting the wheat... "

"President, independence always has a price, everything has a price. You think, if we fought better and quickly defeated the Spanish invaders, we would have less debt. On the other hand, at least There is a chance of paying off these debts, and Spanish rule is never ending."

"My friend, have you ever actually seen anyone pay off a usury with a rolling interest?"

"Well... Mr. President, I have actually seen this," said Hidalgo's friend, the Portuguese businessman Peria, "I have a friend named Mendoza, who was ridiculous when he was young, and borrowed a butt It was usury, but it was paid off in the end."

"This friend of yours must be very rich, right? Or was he once very rich?" President Hidalgo asked.

"Well, Mr. Mendoza's family is indeed very rich, so after his father died and he inherited his father's estate, he sold a family estate and paid off the usury." Peria replied.

"You see, my friend, people are different. Your friend is rich, and we, Mexico, are a poor country." Hidalgo shook his head.

"No, Mexico is a rich country, but its richness has not yet been developed." Peria replied, "The Spaniards only want to use the simplest and rude way to grab quick money, and we don't care. They are even worried that if Mexico becomes richer, it will have a centrifugal force away from Spain. So you see, the Spaniards have imposed various restrictions on the development of Mexico. At least the French will not worry about this, and they will We will not object to our own development and prosperity, because only when we develop and become rich can they earn more from their investment.

In addition, Mexico has a large territory, but those territories in the north of Mexico are sparsely populated and have limited meaning to Mexico, but the French are now constantly immigrating to the Americas. They need land. And they have railway technology, they may use these lands in the future. Therefore, they will definitely be willing to spend money for land. So if we can make up our minds, we can use these lands as collateral, borrow a large sum of money from the French in one go, and then directly create a large army to kill the Spaniards quickly. Maybe the price we have to pay On the contrary, it is the smallest. "

"Peria, aren't you teaching me how to betray the country?"

"Mr. President, this is America, not Europe. The sale and purchase of territory is too common here. How can this be considered treason? Besides, our northern border is actually blurred. In addition, Mr. President , You must know that the exchange between countries is essentially a transaction—a transaction of national interests. Transactions are transactions, so if you sell the country, as long as you don’t sell it too cheaply, as long as you don’t embezzle the price yourself, How can you call it a traitor?"

"Peria, you are always good at finding good excuses for yourself." President Hidalgo shook his head, "But..."

The New World is so far away from Europe that the revolutions on the New World have limited influence on the European continent. Although the Spaniards sent an expeditionary force of as many as 30,000 people to the New World, even Spain's own media is not particularly concerned about it. Everyone's attention is focused on London, because something happened in London.

The affair was sparked by the Textile Workers' Mutual Aid in London.

At the end of April, some business owners began to notice that the workers in their factories seemed to belong to some kind of organization. At the beginning, the factory owners were not too worried about this matter. It is very common for workers to organize gangs and so on. This doesn't seem like much cause for concern. Until one day, a person who claimed to be a representative of the London Textile Workers' Mutual Aid Association knocked on the door of the textile factory owner Wren.

Mr. Wren is the owner of the largest Wren Textile Factory in London. His factory employs more than 3,000 workers. The 24-hour factory can bring Mr. Wren considerable income every year. He was able to buy a manor from a declining nobleman, and by the way, married a young lady who had a noble surname and was much younger than him, so she could be his daughter-in-law.

Mr. Wren doesn't usually stay in the manor much. Although the place is comfortable, it is still a bit far from the commercial center. So he usually lives in a building next to Hyde Park with his young wife, twenty servants, and more than a dozen bodyguards.

Mr. Wren was in his little drawing room listening to his wife read Shakespeare's King Lear to him when the steward told him that a representative of the "London Textile Workers' Society had asked to see him.

"Ah, how stupid is that old man? How could he do this? You know, the most reliable thing in a person's life is his wealth, his money. His daughters, my God, the reason why they call him kiss Dad, isn’t it because he is rich? Ah, just wait and see, as soon as he signs this, his daughters will kick him out of the house immediately..." Ren was expressing such emotion, just watching He saw his butler, Phyllis, standing cautiously at the door of the small living room.

"Oh, what's the matter?" Ren asked the butler Phyllis from the rocking chair.

"Yes, sir." Phyllis said with a embarrassed look, "There are some low-class people who claim to be representatives of the 'London Textile Workers' Mutual Aid Association', and they are clamoring that they must see you."

"'London Textile Workers' Mutual Aid Association'? What kind of shit is this?" Ryan said with a look of disdain, "Phyllis, you really let me down, you can't even get rid of such inferior goods?"

Ren's voice was not loud, but to Phyllis, it was as if a thunderbolt had fallen on his head. His face was pale, and he replied in a trembling voice: "Master, I have sent those people away, but they left you a petition, saying that they are against your decision to reduce wages, and it is full of crazy people." The words, but after all, they are written to you, master, and I dare not handle them privately..."

Hearing this answer, Ren was a little satisfied. Although the butler was a little timid and stupid, he still knew how to measure it. And as a housekeeper, being a little timid and a little stupid is actually not a problem.

"Bring me that letter," said Wren.

So the butler walked over carefully and handed a letter to Ren.

Ren took the letter and read it. After reading it for a while, his eyebrows were raised.

"Hehe, that's really good!" Ren laughed. "A group of poor people, a group of dregs of society who rely on me to have food, actually want to negotiate terms with me? I will let people brag about such things on the street. Whistle and you'll find thousands of these bastards!"

While speaking, Mr. Wren stood up and said, "Melissa, get me my coat. I'm going to the company."

The wife went to fetch his coat. Ren put on his coat and said to the housekeeper, "Phyllis, take my business card, go to the police station, find Chief Clark, and ask him to come to my house at night."

The butler responded and ran down to prepare a carriage for Ren.

Ren got into the carriage, rushed to the company quickly, called several managers of the company over for a meeting, then went home, and talked with Director Clark who came to visit for a whole night...

Early the next morning, the workers went to work in the factory as usual, but when they arrived at the gate of the factory, they found a team of police guarding there with live ammunition, and people from the factory guard team were also guarding the door. Shout out to them and tell them that all the workers who have stamped their fingerprints on the petition sent to Mr. Wren will be fired! Their work permits will be revoked.

On that petition, a total of 1,200 workers pressed their fingerprints. In other words, Ryan fired 1,200 workers at one time. That's almost a third of all workers. But Ryan felt that this was not a problem at all. The market is full of unemployed people, and the workers in the textile factory don't need any high skills, and a new batch can be recruited at any time.

According to a well-known economist in later generations, in one of his masterpieces that I don’t know whether it is economics or should be regarded as ideological propaganda, everyone must be vigilant against any intervention in the free market, because if the market is not free, If the heresy practice of public ownership is implemented, then there is only one buyer for the labor force of the workers, and then it can squeeze the workers at will, and the workers have embarked on a "road to slavery."

But in a free market, can workers not be enslaved because they have the right to choose freely? Hehe, if this is the case, how can the average life expectancy of workers in British textile factories be lower than that of black slaves? No factory owner would be willing to pay his workers more because that would increase their costs and put them at a competitive disadvantage. In a free market, capital is always scarce and labor is always redundant. It seems that companies that can make Marvel movies are always scarce, but there are always many gunmen who can draw comics and write stories for Marvel without any rights. Those fired workers could not have found a more benevolent capitalist anywhere else. Because if there is a more benevolent capitalist in this world, he would have gone bankrupt in the competition long ago because of cost issues.

So a worker representative stood up and called on all the workers to strike together. This time, the London Textile Workers' Mutual Aid played a key role, and almost all workers stayed outside the factory.