Chapter 21: Is this the Great Qing Empire or the Great British Empire?

  New book uploaded, seeking recommendation, seeking collection

  November 25, 1842, when Zhu Jishi left Manchester, the social order of this industrial city had been fully restored. However, the militia, police and British army stationed in Manchester were still on martial law duty, with soldiers wearing red uniforms and carrying rifles patrolling the streets everywhere. Any form of assembly, parade or strike was prohibited. All newspapers had to undergo censorship by the authorities, and no content related to "People's Charter", "Universal Suffrage" and "Democracy" was allowed to appear.

  The order inside the train station was also very good, and outside the square there were not a few British cavalrymen riding tall horses on patrol. After finding a seat in the spacious and bright waiting room, Will Heming told Zhu Jishi that those were officers and men of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, one of the elite troops of the British Army, and he had once thought about buying a lieutenant colonel position in the regiment.

  "Buy... buy?! Zhu Jishi was stunned again, "Is there also such a thing as buying official positions in Britain?"

  A blond young man named Kosperl Wilhelm next to him shook his head and looked at Zhu Jishi: "Jason, you don't even know how to buy an official position? Didn't they sell official positions in Russia and Germany?"

  Zhū Jì Shì Cháo this young man awkwardly smiled, "Kosper, I really haven't heard of these."

  This young man was a friend of Engels, a fellow who always had a straight face and rarely showed a smile. However, he was an outstanding student in the finance department at Cambridge University and the second son of a merchant who dealt with cotton and wool, with a well-paying job at the Manchester branch of Baring Bank. Zhu Jishi guessed that his serious temperament must be very suitable for banking work, and wondered if his four patented inventions - morphine hydrochloride, diethyl ether, scopolamine hydrobromide, and vulcanized rubber - could meet his standards, as he was the source of a large sum of money mentioned by Engels.

  In a "charity hospital" in Manchester, Engels saw the colored bacteria stained with Gram staining (should be called Zhu's staining method now) and then introduced his friend Cosmo Wilhelm to Zhu Zhiyu. After listening to Zhu Zhiyu's introduction of several patents, Cosmo Wilhelm expressed that he could go to London to witness those magical inventions in person. If they were really good, Baring Bank, where Cosmo Wilhelm worked, could accept patent rights as collateral or directly buy out some of the patents.

  "In Britain, it is indeed possible for a certain level of military and civil officials to obtain their positions through purchase, but not just anyone can buy them. Only those who meet certain conditions are eligible to purchase the corresponding official position." Kospel Wilhelm explained the matter of buying official positions in an extremely calm tone to Zhu Ziyu, taking a puff on his mediocre cigar and nodding towards Will Heming. "For example, if Mr. Heming hadn't been dismissed from the army, with his qualifications as a graduate of the Royal Military Academy, he could have bought any rank below colonel after serving in the army for a short period of time. For instance, the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, bought the position of lieutenant colonel when he was just 25 years old."

  What! The Duke of Wellington was actually from a charitable background!?

  Will Heming spread out his hands and smiled: "That's the British way, not just the Duke of Wellington who bought his position. My Irish fellow Hugh Gough, who defeated China last time, also bought his position. However, his family was relatively poor, so he spent 12 years in the British Army to save up enough money to buy a lieutenant colonelcy."

  A group of officers from the Donation Class, leading more than 10,000 "Double Gun Soldiers" who took opium as military supplies, actually defeated the great Qing Dynasty. This...the history of this time and space is probably different from that of the original time and space?

  At this moment, several people suddenly walked in front of Zhu Jishi and others, seemingly a family. There was a middle-aged couple with sympathetic expressions of hardship and numbness on their faces. Their clothes were very tattered, patched up many times, and dirty. They didn't wear shoes but had wrapped rags around their feet. There were five children, two boys and three girls. The oldest looked less than ten years old, short and small, not even qualified to be a child laborer. A little boy of no more than three years old was held in his mother's arms, with his eyes closed, motionless, obviously ill.

  These people just stood silently in front of Zhu Jisheng and the others, not saying a word. This was not the first time Zhu Jisheng had seen such a situation; in fact, on his way to work at the European Hospital, he almost saw families like this standing on the streets of London's industrial areas and worker gathering districts every day... They were begging for food!

  In the first half of the 19th century, in the center of the glorious and prosperous British Empire, there were people who couldn't fill their bellies and had to go out begging with their whole family! This is probably something that ordinary people in later generations can't imagine. In fact, in the strongest and richest country in the world, many people starve to death every day! If it's winter, some will also freeze to death. Because in several parks in London, there are countless homeless people sleeping on the streets. If Zhū Jì Shì hadn't been rescued by chance after crossing over and getting help from Isabella, they might have become one of them!

  Moreover, Zhu Jishi knew that these beggars and vagrants on the streets were not lazy, the British were not a nation known for their laziness, and it was still the first half of the 19th century when bourgeois dictatorship ruled, there was no social welfare to support idleness.

  But Britain is currently experiencing a very severe economic crisis, with industrial overproduction and agricultural failures leading to massive unemployment among workers, while food prices have risen sharply - strangely, only grain prices have risen, while cattle and sheep meat prices continue to fall. However, for the working class who rely on grains to make ends meet, this is undoubtedly the worst situation. For those workers who can only earn 1-3 shillings (equivalent to 20-60 pence) per week, their income barely covers the rent and food expenses of a family, making it difficult to save any money, and once unemployed, they face the fate of sleeping on the streets and starving.

  "Here you are." Probably thinking of himself as one of those who were almost starving, Zhu Jisheng took out a silver coin and handed it to the mother holding the child.

  "Thank you, may God bless you." Mother bowed gratefully to Zhu Jishi.

  "Get out! Get out!" The family's behavior of begging for food quickly attracted the police who were on duty at the station, and they came to drive them away with their batons.

  The man begged: "Sir, we really need help!"

  The police remained unmoved, "Can't be here! Go to Little Ireland for food!" They drove the whole family out of the waiting hall of the train station with a mix of beating and scolding.

  "Little Ireland is the worst working-class district in Manchester, full of poor people from rural Ireland who can't even get a penny. " Willie Heming was an Irishman himself, he looked at those British poor people who were driven out and sighed, "Jason, your shilling can keep this family from starving and freezing for the next few days, and also delay that woman's standing on the street to sell her body." He suddenly turned his head and looked at Zhū Jìshì seriously: "Do you know now why those workers want to participate in the Chartists' struggle?"

  "What does universal suffrage and democracy have to do with this? That system will only mess up society, and what economic development needs most is stability." Kossel Wilhelm took over the topic, his views were apparently consistent with Zhu Jishi's.

  He then coldly said a very ruthless but logical sentence: "The income of workers is also determined by the relationship between supply and demand. The demand for labor, like any other commodity, regulates the production of labor, regulating the number of people produced. If production is too slow, demand will speed it up; if production is too fast, demand will slow it down. This situation is exactly the same as that of any other commodity. If there are not enough workers, their price rises, they live a little better, more people get married, birth rates gradually increase, and more children are raised until there are enough workers; if there are too many workers, prices fall, unemployment, poverty, hunger, and disease caused by it all appear, and the disease will eliminate the excess population!"