Chapter 258 Commodity Exhibition
Richard stayed in the recruit camp for three months, watching the recruits complete their training almost every day.
Starting this year, Richard will try to hand over a large part of his daily work to his assistants. He himself grasps the key points of territory management.
Now the Harland territory has an area of nearly 30,000 square kilometers, and the number of troops exceeds 10,000. Managing such a large stall makes daily tasks very complicated, prompting Richard to further delegate power.
He handed over the government affairs to Rogge, who was Sophia's third brother and had served the Harland Territory for ten years.
After Richard was promoted to earl, Rogge was appointed as the Chief Administrative Officer of the Harland Territory, which was equivalent to Richard's cabinet prime minister. He had an overview of the overall situation and was mainly in charge of taxation and financial work.
Now the earldom of Harland has been divided by Richard into one county and eleven cities, forming a three-level management system of county, city and village.
This management system is still relatively simple. In fact, the area of the Harland territory is only slightly smaller than the Gedda province. Normally, it should be divided into two or three counties, and management would be slightly easier.
It's just that the population of the territory is relatively small now, so a county was established. When the population increases, it will be better to divide it into three counties according to the geographical conditions of the Earl of Harland.
After entering November, heavy snow began to close the mountains, and the demon hunting team that went deep into the Eagle Mountains returned to Fort William to rest.
Sura once again joined the demon hunting team. Unfortunately, they were unlucky this year. They entered the Eagle Mountains for two months and returned with almost no success. On the contrary, the scout cavalry captured three wind wolves and made some profit.
In just three months, Sulla found that Fort William had changed a lot. People were coming and going on the streets, and it still looked very lively even in winter.
All the shops on the roadside have been rented out and basically all are open for business.
Looking at the unfamiliar sight, Sura felt as if he had gone to Black River Castle.
After Sura returned to the Odaye Hotel, he asked doubtfully: "What's happened recently? There are so many people on the street?"
"Tomorrow Earl Richard will hold a commodity expo. In recent days, many foreign caravans have come to Fort William. I heard that there are also caravans from the Church of the Goddess of Wealth, who want to sell goods from the territory to other countries." "This person is here
. Will the secrets of the territory's craftsmanship be leaked? Why is no one trying to persuade Mr. Richard?"
Sulla has been a squadron leader for many years and has developed some political sensitivities. In order to cultivate the overall capabilities of officers, Richard will show the territory's annual economic report to mid- to high-level officers.
Through these reports, Sulla understood that the monopoly goods produced in the territory made the greatest contribution to taxation.
Most of the soldiers' pay and supplies depended on the income from the trade of brown sugar, liquor, woolen cloth, steel and other commodities.
These trade revenues are heavily dependent on the production process. Once the production process is leaked and the monopoly advantage is lost, the trade revenue will fall seriously.
In the past few years, the liquor distillation process was stolen by Viscount Cisse, which caused the profits from the liquor trade to drop by 70%. It took almost five years to recover the original profits.
This incident had a great impact on the Haaland territory. Many officers in the territory had objections to Richard's policy of relaxing the ban.
Sula was very satisfied with his current life and had a sense of belonging to the territory. He had doubts in his heart and decided to go to the city lord's mansion to talk to Mr. Richard in person.
It is very easy for mid- to high-level officers like Sulla to meet Richard.
When Sulla came to the city lord's palace, Richard was talking with Rogge, who was responsible for preparing for the product exhibition.
After discussing the work with Rogge and giving some specific instructions, Richard met with Sulla. After listening to Sulla's persuasion, Richard explained a few words to him.
"The fact that you can come to me to talk about this matter shows that you have a sense of belonging to the territory and have some overall view of the political situation. Now most of the secret-related units have moved to the swamp basin. Although the larger factories cannot be relocated, there is a lot of intelligence Personnel keep an eye on it and outsiders are not allowed to get close, making it difficult to leak the craftsmanship.
The most critical issue is that brown sugar, steel, and textile trade rely on business scale to make profits. Even if the production process is leaked, it will take a long time to cultivate brown sugar saplings and raise a large number of sheep. When others produce goods, we can sell them at a reduced price, or even sell them at a loss, to seize their market and create a backlog of their goods, making this business unprofitable in the short term. If you want to compete with territorial commodities, the threshold is very high. Seeing that Su
La could not understand what he meant, Richard poured Su La a cup of tea and asked, "Su La, when you talk about this matter today, is it your own idea or the opinions of many officers and soldiers?" "
Sulla was a cadre from the army. Richard was tolerant to cadres from the army and attached great importance to their opinions. Especially the ideological trends of army cadres, Richard had to have a general grasp of them. He would adjust his policies at any time. , cannot go too far away from the mainstream ideology of the officers and soldiers.
After all, the army officers and soldiers are working with Harland's territory with their heads up, and their interests cannot be ignored in the slightest. If any ruler ignores the interests of the violent institutions, they will naturally be defeated by the violent institutions. Overturned.
"This is just my own idea, because the army's military salary and logistics mainly rely on trade income. If the production process is leaked and we lose our monopoly position, our trade income will drop sharply. At that time, our military pay will be reduced, we will lose sufficient material support, and our combat effectiveness will be severely reduced. The officers became demoralized. "
"You are right to think so. Commodity trading revenue is really important right now. But if we want to develop in the future, we cannot permanently suppress commercial flows, prohibit the migration of our citizens, and refuse to communicate with the outside world. Seclusion will limit our vitality and will be detrimental to the economic development of the territory in the long run. "
Richard was very satisfied with the fact that the officers below could take the initiative to think and give him some suggestions. However, he could not relax in the counterintelligence work. After sending Sura away, he summoned Noel, George, and Vitas. System officials.
"During the commodity expo, what measures have you taken to prevent spy infiltration and leakage of commodity production processes? "
When Noel took office, this was the first fire he encountered. If the matter is not handled satisfactorily and the process is really leaked, his life will not have a future, and he might be charged with dereliction of duty. Life.
Hearing Richard's question, Noel stepped forward and said: "During the expo, all factory employees are not allowed to leave the factory and will stay in the factory for a few days. Our people will cooperate with the city defense army to block the factory. responsibility to prevent employees in the factory from meeting outsiders.
In addition, we will arrange special personnel to keep an eye on the caravans sent by several big nobles, and let some intelligence personnel with special talents come forward in person.
Finally, we will strengthen border inspections, Think of it as the last line of defense."
Richard knew in his heart that only the first one would be effective. Since the decision to relax the ban will inevitably bring about the risk of leaks, the choice is just a matter of weighing the pros and cons.
Nothing is perfect in the world. You don't know how covert information transmission work will appear. This world has magical power, and some methods are almost impossible to prevent.
Now we can only do our best to delay the leakage of the process for a few years.
The Harland territory is still developing at a high speed, and every time it is delayed for one year, the territory will become stronger. The leakage of the technology was delayed for ten years. According to the development speed of the Harland territory, it was enough to compete with the Dukedom of the Grant Kingdom.
"The work of preventing espionage must be closely coordinated with the territorial mages. To allow magicians to participate in intelligence work, I will issue an order to the Harland Wizards Association and assign some magicians to the intelligence department to prevent the enemy from using magic to transmit intelligence. ."
After seeing off the officials of the intelligence system, the first commodity expo was held the next day.
The November Commodity Expo was very successful. During the expo, the Harland Territory reached a foreign trade order of 60,000 gold coins.
The fastest growing foreign trade channel is the Church of the Goddess of Wealth. In just a few years, the trade volume between the two parties has exceeded 80,000. Among them, 30,000 were imported and 50,000 were exported.
The main imports are some magic materials and potions. The magic materials are mainly super magic metals such as orichalcum and mithril. Some of them are used to make magic equipment, and some are used for research and magic experiments. Magic potions are mainly Tenghui potions plus a small amount of meditation potions.
Nowadays, the shortage of Tenghui medicine in Harland Territory is not small. In addition to the two channels of Grant royal family and northern Xinjiang nobles, plus the channel of Fortune Church, the annual import volume has reached 800.
The total number of advanced professional soldiers this year exceeds more than a hundred soldiers. Now there are more than 500 professionals in Harland's territory, almost catching up with the Northern Army.
After the expo, it was already December in the blink of an eye.
Entering December, Harland Territory began to compile various reports and make its annual year-end summary.
Today, the largest output value of Haaland territory is still agriculture.
The territory has reclaimed 1.9 million acres of farmland, of which about 500,000 acres are free private land and 1.4 million acres are official land.
This year, there are about 200,000 acres of official land left fallow, and the scale of economic crop cultivation in the territory is not large. In addition to 30,000 acres of cotton, there are about 1.2 million acres of official land for growing grain.
The grain harvested from the 1.2 million acres of government land totaled approximately 105,000 tons. The average yield of dry fields plus paddy fields is 175 catties per mu, which is slightly worse than the 200 catties in good harvest years. One hundred and five thousand tons of new grain, plus part of the old grain left over from last year, the grain accumulated in the Guantian grain storage this year exceeds 120,000 tons.
In addition, there is a lot of taxed grain this year, about 10,000 tons.
The accounts for tax and official ration are calculated separately, and tax and ration will be included in the tax revenue. The grain harvested in official fields is equivalent to the profits turned over by state-owned enterprises, which is calculated in another ledger.
There are now 90,000 free people in the territory. In the next two years, a large number of indentured servants will become free people. By then, there will be more than 200,000 free people in the territory.
As of this fall, there are still 230,000 indentured slaves in the Harland territory. Among the indentured slaves, there are 40,000 children under the age of fourteen and 30,000 elderly people over the age of forty.
According to sampling statistics from the Harland Territory Hospital, the average lifespan of serfs in the Dawn Continent is only thirty-five years old. The key reason why the average lifespan is so low, in addition to poor living conditions, is that the infant mortality rate is too high.
Within the Harland territory, after so many years of development, some diseases can be treated. According to this year's sample survey, the average life expectancy has increased to forty-eight years.
According to this standard, those over forty years old among the territorial population are considered old.
As for the aristocracy, because they are all professionals, they have strong bodies, good medical care, and their life span is far longer than that of ordinary people. For example, Duke Brenner lived for more than 160 years.
The average life span of ordinary nobles is more than eighty years old, which is better than that of developed countries in previous generations.
There are only about 160,000 young and hardworking indentured slaves in the Harland territory, and the rest are old people and children.
Indentured slaves did not have complete freedom of life. The elderly and children had to do whatever work they could, such as collecting dung, collecting firewood, making bricks, raising chickens and ducks, cutting grass and herding sheep, cleaning wool, working night watch, etc. Basically, the elderly and children did the work. Dry.
There were 230,000 indentured slaves, and Richard needed to support them with daily food and clothing, and he needed to leave 50,000 tons of rations. In addition, 12,000 tons of grain need to be left for planting. The wine market has expanded a lot. Next year, 5,000 tons of grain will need to be left for brewing.
In order to prevent accidents, Richard planned to leave 25,000 tons of grain reserves this year.
The army will be expanded by 4,000 people this year. The soldiers and horses are all big-bellied. People eat and chew the horses for a year, and the army rations will also consume 8,000 tons.
There are only 30,000 tons of grain that can be sold externally, including taxes.
Thirty thousand tons of grain are invested in the Heihebao grain market, which will cause grain prices to fall.
However, the Harland Territory sells grain and has a stable large customer, the Northern Army. The Northern Army consumes more than 16,000 tons of military rations every year. Through William's relationship, the Harland Territory can occupy a large share of the military grain sales. Ten thousand tons.
Richard also opened up the channels of Fortune Church and sold 5,000 tons through Fortune Church channels this year.
Richard will not sell the remaining fifteen thousand tons of grain at the Black River Fort grain market, but will exchange slaves with the Duke of Guise.
Fifteen thousand tons of grain can be exchanged for six thousand slaves. These 6,000 slaves are all slaves with complete families. There are only 2,000 young and middle-aged slaves, of which only 1,000 are male slaves.
According to the agreement between the two parties, the Duke of Guise's caravan began escorting slaves to the northern border in February and returned to the south with food in March.
The size of the annual transaction needs to be negotiated in the previous winter. In order to trade with the Haaland family, Duke Guise established a large-scale trading station in Black River Castle.
In addition to selling slaves, the trading station also sells some southern specialties.
This year's battle with the orcs resulted in heavy casualties for the Harland Territory army. Seven hundred officers and soldiers were killed, and another four hundred officers and soldiers were disabled and unable to continue fighting.
As long as the physical condition of the disabled officers and soldiers was still good, Richard arranged them to work in factories or in the countryside as cadres at the lowest level, and received disability subsidies.
Including the soldiers who were injured or killed this year, the pension paid out by the Haaland Territory now amounts to about five thousand gold coins per year.
Time can heal the pain of war, and it’s already December in the blink of an eye.
(End of chapter)