From Chief to Ball

The ideas are good and the reasoning is correct, but two words are missing.

conscience.

Chapter 40 Conscience, Cold Heart

Seeing the cotton-eating people, silkworms eating people, and machines eating people that Chen Jian talked about a few years ago became reality day by day, but he was powerless to see all this happening, even if he was elected as a member of the new council, I can only watch helplessly as all this is artificially accelerated.

Hu Lin even felt a little cold all over his body. This coldness was the same as when he said that Chen Jian's heart was dead. Sitting here and listening to the terms discussed in these meetings, he deeply felt the chill that penetrated into the bone marrow. In fact, it started a long time ago.

For the sake of free competition in the cotton spinning industry, cotton gins were used to destroy the upstream of the cotton spinning guild, and a large number of unemployed and cheap hired workers who flowed into the city because of cotton planting on the farm were produced in batches; The construction of canals created a false bright future and concealed the frightening chaos that might arise; in order to create a false prosperity of cotton yarn and accumulate more funds for those original cottage industries Cloth machines rely on cooperatives to support a group of small workshop owners who have no land interests to complete accumulation; in order to sell cotton cloth better, they go to sea to seek smuggling markets, set up marine insurance companies and Nanyang companies, and continue to accumulate while ensuring sales; when the market After the prosperity, the hydraulic spinning machine was launched, allowing those small workshop owners who had no land interests to rely on their previous accumulation to set up hydraulic factories, relying on the cheap hired labor that appeared before the cotton-eating people to guarantee their benefits, and created a new class, which expanded those people by the way. The number of working-class people who would not have supported unintentionally but now definitely support...

One ring, one step.Hu Lin thought that after scolding Chen Jian that day, Chen Jian would be touched, but now it seems that the brush on the cold canvas has not stopped until now.

The discussion in the meeting continued, but Hu Lin felt a little boring. If everything is predestined and unchangeable, then what are people like himself fighting for?What are you fussing about?

There is neither foreign humiliation nor enemy bandits, and there is no enemy who can pose a threat when looking around. So is it the kind of non-fussing or even slowing down, delaying the completion of these unchangeable fates from ten years to a hundred years? Would it be better?

This kind of bewilderment and loneliness made Hu Lin feel like he was choking in the esophagus when eating steamed buns without chewing carefully, and his stuffy ears became more and more blurred until bursts of applause came.

He thought, I don't know who finally came up with a proposal that everyone accepted, which is really rare.

However, when he came back to his senses, he heard someone say in his ear: "Mr. Zhu Gan, what are you still doing sitting here? Today is over."

Only then did he raise his head in a daze, and realized that many people had already left. The one who called him was the young man from the Mexican Party who had given him tobacco when he voted against that day.

Hu Lin smiled awkwardly. When he got up and was about to leave, he asked in a strange way: "Do you think you can solve the problems of Mincheng? Or solve the various problems of the 36 counties in the north and south of the country?"

"Mr. Zhu Gan was joking, we are just a hired labor party. Since being divided is inevitable, we can only move forward along the future we imagined. We are not in power across the country, and we have not saved the crisis of the ethnic group, so we cannot solve it now All the problems, you can’t bear the big pot you mentioned, and you are not qualified to bear it, right? We are not a party of ethnic groups, nor a party of the whole people, at least not now.”

Hearing this, Hu Lin felt that this so-called sacred council was not sacred at all, it was just a place where groups of people fought for their own interests.

Not dirty, but definitely not pure, and few people can even stand up and say that I want to think about everyone, or maybe I think about it, but I think about the future instead of reality.

Once the sanctity of that kind of meeting is removed, it becomes a bit absurd.

Hu Lin looked at the people who were gradually leaving, and said with a wry smile: "If today's meeting does not meet your minimum requirements, such as the issue of voting rights, rent reduction and prohibition of smashing machines, you can't retreat, but go back to the guild era. , what will your Mexican party do?"

The young man's answer hit Hu Lin's heart like a heavy water hammer hammered in a wrought iron workshop.

The young man smiled, and said in a half-joking, half-serious, but always casual tone: "If it's what you said, we're going to turn the tables and use flintlock guns and cannons to reason Already!"

This not-so-funny joke made Hu Lin laugh up and down. The young man who laughed was at a loss. He didn't think this sentence was so funny, but he didn't know why Mr. Zhu Gan laughed so hard.

When Hu Lin exited the conference hall, he took many steps, until he could see the whole conference hall, looked up at the many things he thought he could solve, but none of the things he wanted to solve. place, thinking about the joke about flipping the table just now, he couldn't stop laughing.

……

After the establishment of the new council, the compromised Mexican party did not lift the table, but the hand-spinning practitioners in the towns near the densely populated hydraulic spinning mills in the upper reaches of the Min River did.

If they can't survive, they will go bankrupt, be reduced to the lowest level of hired workers, or even be completely unemployed. They have lost the last bit of dignity of free laborers. They have enough reasons to throw the table.

Soon after the establishment of the new council, after many proposals were passed, the picket team of the Mexican Party left Mincheng and returned to the mines and party-owned factories to continue working. The picket team in the city no longer kept armed every day, but they still kept Tons of weapons.

Mincheng set up a new "patrol team for maintaining stability loyal to the Republic and loyal to Mincheng civilian council". Many of them were former street hooligans and some armed employees of Nanyang Company. The picket team has the right to maintain order, and these people become the new patrol team of Mincheng.

Mincheng's council meeting is not completely reasonable and legal. Even if it is reasonable and legal, it is limited to Mincheng and Nan'an, where the Mo Party controls the grassroots, not the entire Min County.

However, Min City is theoretically the center of Min County. Even if the wider surrounding areas did not participate in this meeting, in a sense, Min City can still be regarded as Min County.

Regardless of the new council or the old council, the resolutions on certain matters are consistent, such as the "Prohibition of Smashing Machines Act", the only difference is that the hanging is abolished.

When those people ridiculed this bill and secretly stabbed the Mexican party, they questioned the rationality of hanging?Is human life more valuable or machines more valuable?

However, this is an unsolvable problem. Those who smashed the machine must not be able to afford the machine, and it is impossible to smash the machine if they can afford the machine. Then it would be meaningless to ask these people to compensate, because they cannot afford it.

But the problem is that as long as no one dies, it is still only a property issue, not a life issue, so hanging is unreasonable anyway.

This involves an issue of the right to life, not just a simple issue of bills. It belongs to the category of ideology, and it is also a microcosm of the entire council's change from customary legislation to ideologically based legislation.

The significance of this debate is enormous. It not only abolished the decision to smash the machine and the highest hanging, but also taught a lesson to the general public in the street debate. The three-day debate on the Internet enlightened many people.

But the result...was not satisfactory.In the end, the highest penalty for smashing machines without hurting people was abolished, but all those who smashed machines were imprisoned for labor until death, and all property was confiscated for compensation.

Enlightenment such as ideology and the right to life in Mincheng did not spread to the outside on a large scale. It took time, so many spinners outside Mincheng became angry-what is the difference between this and hanging?

A new council has been established, and those that should be speculative are still speculative, those that should go bankrupt are still bankrupt, the handmade yarn that should be difficult to compete with hydraulic factories is still unsalable, and the price of cotton is still controlled by people when it should fluctuate...

There may be many new places, but for a certain group of people, there is no change at all, so the excitement at the beginning turns into disappointment and anger.

Since your Fujian city can set up a new council, why can't our town?Anyway, the hydraulic spinning workshop is not in Mincheng, but here.

Your new council has not been approved by the real people's council of the Republic and the king, so we can deny it.

Don't blame us for doing the fifteenth day of the first day of junior high school!

When will your Min city be able to build the spinning machine driven by coal and steam that you imagined in the city, and then regard your Min city as the center of Min County!

With this kind of mentality of looking for loopholes or out of anger and revenge, or the darkness that someone secretly manipulates and fuels the flames, or the restlessness of some young people out of conscience and pity, a table-turning action unfolds like this .

In the spinning hydraulic factory in the valley area of ​​the upstream tributary of Mincheng, hundreds of people read out the council resolution of their town, announcing the legality of smashing machines, and refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Mincheng council resolution.

Already four spinning mills have been smashed, just not killing people.

The stability maintenance patrol team in Mincheng and the armed employees of the Nanyang Company who had obtained the qualifications immediately went to the upstream town.

Many people who followed asked who was the leader, but they didn't want these hundreds of people to answer in unison: "Every one of us is the leader, each of us is the general of this 'riot', come on, come and put us Catch and hang them all!"

Seeing nearly a thousand people in a threatening manner, not many people went, so they retreated in despair.

That night, the mill owners in Mincheng got together and pooled a large sum of money. More than 800 armed street hooligans and armed employees of Nanyang Company were given the task of "capturing these criminals".

This is done in accordance with the law and does not require the authorization of the council.

Four bronze cannons also marched with them, saying that it was to prevent "those desperate lawbreakers from armed resistance, so the cannons are necessary, but if they are willing to accept punishment to compensate for the loss of the smashed hydraulic workshop or voluntarily surrender to serve for life Imprisoned forced labor, no guns or cannons."

Hu Lin, who heard the news, exclaimed, and ran to the new council overnight, begging Ye Yuanshan to stop this bloody action that was bound to bleed.

However, Ye Yuanshan told him not as the deputy governor of the county, but as the chairman of the new council: "The council has no right to interfere with the implementation of laws and regulations that have already taken effect. This was established at the beginning. It is completely legal at this time and there is no stopping The reason. Besides, this is just to capture criminals, not massacres.”

In a word, the already shaken New Council completely collapsed in Hu Lin's heart. He rushed to the street regardless, snatched a carriage, whipped the horse until it was about to go crazy, and ran frantically in that direction.

A person and a carriage stopped in the middle of the road like this.

He spread his arms.

Behind him was the road leading to the tributary valley area. The river beside it was clear, but he seemed to see blood stained red.

Before him were eight hundred armed patrols, four shining cannon, and the divine right to deliberate the laws drawn up by the council.