Chapter 24 Children must receive a complete education
The next morning, the four little girls did not get up as early as usual because they were drunk last night.
Johnny just pretended to be four little girls sleeping together, playing with each other until very late, and didn't think much about it.
The four little girls got up in a daze after knowing that lunch was about to be eaten.
The four of them were surprised to find that they woke up in Amy's bed. Amy was the first to roll over and get out of bed. The "rope" of the sheets under the bed was also in the same place. The experience last night seemed to be a dream.
The four little girls did not dare to take the initiative to reveal what happened to them when they sneaked out last night.
All the European nobles and capitalists on board, except the Smith family, also disembarked.
After all, in this era, there are still only factory owners and capitalists in the Yangtze Great Lakes region. These nobles who have not successfully sold their glory on the ship can only place their hope in the "matchmaking and buying and selling exchange meeting" after docking.
There is no more "blind date meeting" on the ship to attract the attention of the four little girls, but because there are no outsiders except these sailors and boatmen who have been familiar with the Smith family for a long time, the scope of the four little girls' activities has also expanded a little.
In the first few days, the four little girls were still scared, fearing that someone would tell Johnny about their secret play.
A few days later, he discovered that no one had told cousin Johnny that the four of them had sneaked away to the dance, so he relaxed and started having fun on the boat unscrupulously.
Only then did the four little girls discover that there were hundreds of Irish people living at the bottom of the cabin, and that from the highest-ranking captain to the lowest-ranking sailor, the majority of the people on the ship were Irish and mixed-race with more than half Irish ancestry.
Less than ten years have passed since the Great Famine in Ireland, and these people were all witnesses of the Great Famine in Ireland.
Of course, compared to these tragic famine histories, the four little girls preferred to listen to the stories of sea adventures made up by these sailors, especially some of the fictional terrifying sea monsters.
The happy time is always short-lived. The paddle steamer will soon enter the Port of Houston, and the four little girls will soon face their devilish life.
"Woo~"
The paddle steamer's whistle made a deafening sound, and the paddle steamer, which started from North Germany and ended in Houston, finally ended its mission.
"Brother Frederick!" x4
"Don't call me Frederick anymore, remember to call me Tom."
"Okay, brother Tom." x4
The four little girls saw Tom, whom they had not seen for more than a year, and ran off the ship excitedly. The four little girls were also warmly embraced by Tom.
After the hug ended, Tom took a few documents from the Irish captain, then took the Smith family and his family into the carriage that had been prepared and returned to the Smith farm.
Sitting in the carriage, Tom pointed out the general scope of Smith Farm to the four little girls in the carriage. The four little girls were shocked by the vast farm.
Even the vineyard farm I worked on in Bavaria was not one-tenth the size of Smith's farm.
"Brother, can such a big farm be able to grow grapes?"
"The four of us can't plant so much grape land. We will be exhausted."
"That's right, you're a bad brother, you're just going to tire us to death."
"Hahaha, don't worry, you four will never have to grow grapes again."
Tom touched the distressed hands of the four little girls, which were pitted with calluses and had old scars, and smiled and promised the four of them that they would never have to plant grapes again.
"No more grapes?"
"Then what do we do?"
"You guys, you have to learn knowledge every day."
"Learning knowledge? Isn't that something only nobles can do?"
"Brother Tom, have you become a noble?"
Tom didn't answer the four naughty little girls this time, he just kept smiling.
The carriage stopped in the only building on Smith's farm. This time, the building was expanded again.
After handing over the four little girls to Diane, who was one or two years older than them, Tom took the documents that the Irish captain had just given to him and entered his office and bedroom.
"Are there fifty thousand Irish already?"
Tom looked at the document in his hand and realized that without knowing it, since he came to Houston a few months ago, 150,000 Irish people had left their homes and came to Houston to become builders of the Smith Engineering Team and the Smith Factory.
The first workers in the district.
Tom pulled out several other documents about population and employee numbers.
"African Americans - 80,000, native Texas whites - 20,000, gays recruited by equal rights activists - 40,000..."
Unknowingly, Tom's several Smith factories scattered across Texas have gathered 200,000 employees.
This number of employees is even greater than the previous population of Texas.
Tom began to handle the half-meter-thick documents alone. The documents Tom needed to process every day became thicker and thicker, which also represented the vigorous development of the Smith Factory area.
"Dong dong dong!"
"Enter."
John Mueller pushed open the thick wooden door and sat down opposite Tom angrily. Tom did not raise his head and continued to look down at a series of reports about the sharp increase in the number of employees and the unsaleable products.
Just looking at the data in these documents, it seems that Tom's million-dollar assets can only last for another six months at most. After half a year, Tom will be bankrupt and penniless.
Tom, however, signed his name on the payment slips of several suppliers indifferently, as if he was not worried at all about the urgent need of unsalable products and rapid loss of funds.
"Why did you come to me in such a hurry? Have you visited the Smith Factory area?"
"Look, why are there so many employees who are about the same age as our sister?"
"What? You said our sister has joined as an employee?"
"I said! Why are there employees who are about the same age as our sister? There are so many!"
"What? My sister really went to unclog the chimney pipe? Come on, go and pull her back. Didn't I ask them to go to class with Diane?"
John looked at the shameless Tom, who completely refused to acknowledge the tens of thousands of small employees in Smith's factory area. He looked so shameless and kept using their sister as a shield, which made John lose his temper.
"John, you don't know that in the current Smith factory area, there is no need for technicians at all. It is all purely manual work."
"Only positions like technicians require labor with complete education. Most of the jobs in the Smith factory area still only require labor, and there are many suitable jobs for semi-large and medium-sized employees."
"For example, special types of work such as unblocking chimneys."
"Isn't it good to let them get jobs early, experience their parents' labor, and understand the hardships of their parents in raising them, so that they can be filial to their parents?"
"If you insist on letting them live a good life, that's fine."
"In the past, all employees in special jobs did not receive any salary and only had a few pieces of bread every day."
"Thanks to your great blessing, their daily bread from sawdust will be replaced by confetti bread."
"It just so happens that the Smith factory area has almost been expanded, and we no longer need wood. Imported wood chips are quite expensive."
With a heartbroken expression on his face, Tom proposed his plan to improve employee treatment. Judging from Tom's expression, it seemed as if replacing sawdust bread with confetti bread would make Tom Smith bankrupt tomorrow.
"Oh, Tom, you have really changed. You were not like this when you were in Bavaria."
Tom's move made John laugh out of anger, but John also understood what Tom meant. No matter what, his sister would be better off if she could get an education and not eat sawdust, but confetti bread.
