The author says:
Author's note: A little accident. After posting the update at noon, I went to sleep. When I opened my eyes again, it was already dark outside. My brain was groggy due to a cold, so it was difficult to write, but since I said there was another chapter at noon, I had to finish it...even though it's a little short.
053. Commercial means
As the saying goes, money is hard to earn, but sex is hard to eat!
If it weren't for excess profits, most businessmen would not be willing to risk their lives and travel all the way to the bitter and cold north to do business.
Therefore, when Dick used official means to squeeze their profit margins, the first reaction of these businessmen was not that it was reasonable, but that their interests were violated.
They complained bitterly about this and even wanted to unite to fight against the Governor's Office.
Of course! The merchants were not fools, and their way of confrontation was definitely not to confront the Governor's Office representing Duke Best head-on, which was a standard act of courting death. But the merchants were not without ways to deal with those nobles who were greedy in their eyes.
This poor place of Laguge has never been able to achieve self-sufficiency in food. It depends on the merchants who work tirelessly to transport food from Shannan so that your Governor's Office can feed the local population.
This is "common sense" that has long been widely recognized.
So some businessmen suggested that as long as we can unite, hold on to the food we have and not sell a single grain, when a food crisis occurs locally, the Governor's Office will have to compromise with them.
As for whether the new governor would become angry and allow his soldiers to rob their food, the merchants thought they were not afraid.
These merchants traveled far and wide and accumulated deep connections. They all had some well-known backers behind them. Even if they couldn't secure food, they should be able to save their own lives.
Moreover, if the governor made such a stupid move, it would be exactly what they wanted. They would then run back and publicize Governor Laguge's atrocities in the imperial capital, calling on other merchants not to do business here. When the news became a hot topic in the imperial capital, Duke Best would definitely replace this incompetent and unpopular youngest son.
The businessman who made this suggestion was very excited, as if he could easily control the governor. However, as soon as he finished speaking, someone at the scene immediately made a sarcastic remark.
"What a great idea! Your Treasure Chamber of Commerce is a big business with the support of the Prime Minister of the Empire. You are indeed not afraid of a small territory governor. Even if two hundred carts of grain are burned to ashes, it will not be a big deal for you. But what about us small merchants with little power? What the hell can we use to challenge the governor? The grain we have transported is in our hands. Doesn't it cost money to rent a warehouse and hire someone to look after it?"
The businessman who stood up and sang a different tune was the head of the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce. The caravan he led was composed of eleven small and medium-sized chambers of commerce. Each of them was not as strong as the big chambers of commerce. Although they were also dissatisfied with the decline in profits, they were not willing to confront the Governor's Office.
They were afraid that the situation would become tense and the governor would be unable to deal with the big chambers of commerce and would take it out on the small households like them.
This is the problem with the businessmen. They are not united.
At this time the old businessman spoke again.
"How about this! We, the big Chamber of Commerce, will buy the grain from you small merchants, and the price will be 65% of the previous year. What do you think?"
"Only 65%?"
"Don't be ungrateful. If you sell it to the Governor's Office, the price will be less than 60% of last year's! Could it be that the connections behind our big chambers of commerce are worthless?"
The old businessman's words made some of the small merchants present feel tempted. They couldn't afford to offend both sides, and right now they could make as much money as possible. The sooner they got rid of the grain, the sooner they could get away.
As a result, the small merchant alliance of the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce collapsed in an instant. Several small merchants immediately expressed their willingness to sell and hurriedly sold all the grain in their hands to the big chamber of commerce. In the end, only the person in charge of the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce was still hesitant.
The guy who had been refuted by him before couldn't help but sneer when he saw that he was frowning.
"Have you thought it through? Make a decision quickly, we can't wait any longer!"
Looking up at the other party's arrogant expression, the head of the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce said nothing, but silently took out a silver coin and paid for the drink in front of him. Then, ignoring the continued sarcasm, he stood up and said goodbye to everyone and left.
After leaving the tavern where they met, the head of the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce did not return to his base immediately. Instead, he took a walk along the street, looking around and comparing the familiar streets with the scene when he came here last year.
He didn't know much about Laguge, the new governor who took office just before the beginning of winter last year. He only heard that he was an unpopular bastard of the Duke's family. The heads of the major chambers of commerce who had been active in the imperial capital for many years had just talked about the laughing stock left by "Dick Best" in the imperial capital at the gathering, with their tone full of disdain and mockery.
A bastard of impure descent, the son of a singing girl, a dull nerd, and a man who frequents brothels.
It seemed that in their eyes, Dick was just a useless waste, but they didn't notice the changes taking place in the local area at all.
How could a good-for-nothing like him solve the bandit problem that many previous governors had failed to solve in just half a year?
While stabilizing grain prices is easy to say, how can it be accomplished by force with just a word from the governor?
After walking for a while, the person in charge arrived at a slope on the edge of the town. From afar, he saw a lot of people gathered here, as if they were watching some rare sight.
So he also squeezed over to join in the fun, and saw that on the other side of the hillside, on the wasteland separated from the town by a river, there were hundreds of people working to reclaim the land, and there were also many soldiers standing guard and cavalry patrolling back and forth on the periphery to keep watch.
The person in charge knew that those were "re-education through labor prisoners" captured by the Governor-General's private army. They were mainly bandits and some villagers who colluded with the bandits, as well as a small number of prisoners who had committed other crimes.
In previous years, these free slaves would definitely be sent to work in the mines, but after Dick, the new governor, took office, the first major thing he did was to lay off a large number of miners. The mining area is no longer as crowded as it used to be.
When the person in charge saw these prisoners, he suddenly remembered that the head of the Treasure Chamber of Commerce who had been talking nonstop at the party was involved in the slave trade. It seemed that he wanted to sell these prisoners but was rejected by the Governor's Office, so he held a grudge against him.
After standing on the slope and watching for a while, the person in charge returned to the Chamber of Commerce. As soon as he arrived at the door, his subordinates hurriedly reported to him that the Governor's Office had just sent someone over, saying that the Governor wanted to meet him tomorrow.
When the person in charge heard that it was the Governor who invited him, he hesitated for a moment and then said.
"Let's prepare well."
The next morning, the head of the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce came to the gate of the castle in the center of the town with gifts that were originally intended to bribe the governor. With the governor's letter, he was invited in by the soldiers.
When entering the door, the person in charge habitually took out a small stack of silver coins and wanted to give it to the centurion in front of him to make friends with him with some wine money. Unexpectedly, the other party waved his hand with an embarrassed expression and refused.
The person in charge found out later that the castle's garrison private army was personally selected by the governor, and their pay and treatment were the best among all the private armies. Although Dick was strict with his subordinates as the governor, he never withheld pay. Whether out of loyalty to the governor or simply not wanting to lose this well-paid job, the centurion did not dare to accept the bribes handed over by the merchants.
After entering the castle, the person in charge was led to the office area in the lower city and then taken to the reception room by a civil servant, who asked him to wait there for a moment as the Governor would be here soon.
After the person in charge sat down, he couldn't help feeling a little nervous.
Although he believed, based on his own judgment, that the new governor was definitely not the ridiculous and incompetent bastard as described by the Chamber of Commerce, he could not guarantee that this man would be a kind and easy-going person.
After all, there is no conflict between outstanding ability and killing without blinking an eye.
After waiting for about ten minutes, the door of the reception room opened again, and a handsome half-elf boy walked up to him and said with a smile.
"Are you Mr. Stu Punk from the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce? Hello, I am Governor Dick Best, and it is an honor to meet you, Your Excellency."
As Dick spoke, he smiled and stretched out his hand. Steve hurriedly shook hands and bowed, not daring to be negligent in the slightest.
"Please sit down! I am a person who values efficiency and does not like to beat around the bush. I asked you to come here today because I want to talk to you about some business cooperation."
"Business cooperation?"
"Yes, I have some local specialties here, and I would like to ask the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce to sell them."
After hearing the governor's words, Steve seemed to suddenly understand that when it comes to the "local specialties" of Laguge, apart from the cold iron that cannot be sold casually, there are actually quite a few popular good products.
For example, furs, medicinal herbs, and various alchemical materials are not valuable locally, but if they are transported to Shannan and sent to the prosperous imperial capital, their prices can increase several times or even dozens of times!
Nowadays, most of these good things have been pocketed by the farmers' association under the Governor's Office. If I can use the grain on hand to exchange for some of them first, and then transport them to the mainland for sale as soon as possible, the profit I earn will be no less than in previous years, but it will still be substantial.
In the final analysis, Dick did not leave these businessmen no way to survive. They could still make a lot of money, and the profit margin in previous years was actually unreasonable. It was just that everyone was used to making money, so gradually they didn't think there was anything wrong with it.
Seeing that Steve sitting opposite him suddenly had golden eyes, Dick smiled. He didn't think it was a bad thing for businessmen to love making money, as long as you abide by the rules.
The local merchants in Laguge have now been integrated under Dick's command, but most of these merchants have small capital and thin profits, and their business is generally limited to the local area or the northern part of the empire. They are not as powerful as those merchants who really travel all over the country. Therefore, Dick needs to attract some more "foreign capital" like the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce.
Dick actually knew very well what the chambers of commerce currently staying in the local area were thinking. He even knew that they had gathered together for a secret meeting yesterday and knew exactly what they talked about.
These large chambers of commerce with strong backgrounds thought that Dick would be unable to do anything to them out of fear.
This is indeed the case. Dick cannot simply send troops to use force directly as he did against bandits, but this does not mean that he has no way to deal with these businessmen.
054. Business
Dick's original idea was to have Rita or Tia be the person in charge and directly set up a new chamber of commerce of his own to be responsible for business and trade matters, that is, to make money for himself.
But unfortunately, Laguge was in a state of disrepair and there were no decent talents locally. Most of the top thinkers among his confidants were in other more important positions. Therefore, the establishment of the Chamber of Commerce had to be postponed, and a transitional compromise plan was chosen instead.
That is to first cooperate with the existing old chambers of commerce. It would be best to find a small and controllable medium-sized chamber of commerce as an agent, and then establish a direct chamber of commerce when conditions are ripe in the future.
So when the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce refused to compromise with the big chamber of commerce, it came into Dick's sight, and he invited the head of the Chamber of Commerce, Steve, to the castle for an interview.
Upon learning that the Governor was interested in cooperating with their Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce, Steve was somewhat flattered.
The Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce is actually a logistics company, with 60 to 70 associates specializing in caravans, traveling all over the country to earn mainly hard-earned money. It is neither like those large chambers of commerce with deep backgrounds, which have abundant funds and can provide a one-stop service of production, supply and marketing, nor like those small chambers of commerce, which are small in scale and can survive in a corner, but this just meets the current needs of Laguge.
Dick took out two lists and an employment contract and placed them in front of Steve. The contract was for three years. Dick hired the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce to serve him as the Governor of Laguge. He would provide the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce with a free base in Laguge as a cargo station, and all kinds of locally produced goods would be supplied to it first.
At the same time, the Governor's Office will also provide low-interest loans, but the use of this loan will be restricted and it can only be used to employ local people in Lagug and purchase goods from the local area.
To put it bluntly, he was not allowed to spend the money Dick lent him anywhere other than Lagug.
As Dick's "official merchant", the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce needs to fulfill its obligations not only to sell local products, but also to purchase the equipment and various materials needed by the Governor's Office.
Those two lists are the catalogues of “what can be sold” and “what one wants to buy” locally.
The sales list contains the prices and inventories of various local commodities for sale, while the purchase list prioritizes the types of goods according to the urgency of demand and gives expected prices and demand estimates.
The two manifests were like treasures to Steve. For a traveling merchant like him, he was more afraid of his caravan arriving at a certain place exhausted, but because of intelligence errors, the goods they had transported with great difficulty could not be sold, or the goods they wanted to purchase could not be purchased or could not be priced.
However, what surprised Steve was that food was not the top priority in this shopping list.
Thinking of the "labor camps" he had seen before, Steve couldn't help but wonder, could it be that the governor in front of him was so confident that he could make this bitter and cold land of Laguge self-sufficient in food?
Indeed! There is no shortage of land in the area, and the soil is very fertile, but the real problem is the climate. The winter is too long and too cold. The land is frozen for more than half of the year. Ordinary people can only knock out a shallow white spot with a pickaxe.
Steve thought about it and felt that since the governor was sincere about cooperating with their Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce, it would be better to ask about this matter clearly first.
"Mr. Governor, may I ask you some questions?"
"Of course, if you have any questions, just ask."
"It's about food. I see that you issued an order to open up wasteland this year and demoted all the captured bandits into serfs. This can indeed effectively increase the food production in Laguge, but the climate here..."
"Don't worry about the climate. There won't be any more abnormally cold winters."
"?"
Seeing Steve's surprised expression, Dick smiled mysteriously and did not tell anyone about the God of Winter. Anyway, when winter comes again this year, people will naturally notice the changes in Laguge.
Seeing Dick so confident, Steve didn't say anything more. He just signed the contract and pressed his fingerprints, formally establishing an employment relationship with Dick.
Afterwards, Dick personally took Steve to the official warehouse under the name of the Governor's Office. In addition to the furs and mountain products that the Governor's Office had purchased in advance, there were also many spoils seized from bandit dens during the suppression of bandits. These things were also on the sales list.
Seeing the various goods stored in the warehouse in good condition, Steve became more and more convinced that cooperation with the Governor was definitely a good move.
Two days later, the news of the cooperation between the Golden Cat Chamber of Commerce and the Governor's Office spread like wildfire, and after learning about this, the big chambers of commerce that were secretly making small moves cursed Steve for being shameless, even though they couldn't actually say what the other party was shameless about. In short, the defense was broken.
After that, some wavering small merchants took the initiative to approach the Governor's Office, wanting to seek cooperation, among them was the guy who had previously sold all the grain to the big chamber of commerce.
The group took the money and went around the area. First, they found that the public security had indeed improved, and second, they found that they could not buy anything. The farmers' association set up by the Governor's Office had taken the lead and bought the popular goods they wanted from various villages at a price 20% higher than in previous years. Some local big households still had inventory, but they were unwilling to sell to them at previous years' prices.
So after going around in circles, they finally returned to this side of the town.
For these small merchants who were wavering and had no power, the Governor's Office only allowed them to purchase from the farmers' association at official prices, but did not agree to cooperate with them.
One is lack of strength.
Second, the stance is not firm.
The reason why those big chambers of commerce dared to challenge the Governor's Office was simply because they knew that the Gulag was short of food and the Governor wanted to lower the price of food. So they hoarded the thousands of tons of food that were transported to them, as if they knew that Dick would not dare to use force against them, and they appeared to be fearless.
In fact, Dick really had no intention of doing anything to them. He just simply ignored them because Laguge was not short of food now and would not be short of food in the future.
With the fall of sleep of Ajax, the god of winter, the climate of Lagog has returned to normal. Although it is still a subarctic climate, the length of winter has been shortened by nearly one-third, and the temperature throughout the year has increased significantly.
If they could make use of the plains in the eastern part of the territory and introduce improved varieties of crops and advanced agricultural machinery, then they would not only be self-sufficient in grain production, but they could even become a major grain producer in the northern region, with so much grain that they could sell it outside.
However, the prospects are good, and problems also exist.
As mentioned before, the Empire has technology plagiarized from Earth, but the nobles have never thought of promoting it for their own benefit.
This led to extremely unbalanced regional development. Corners of the empire like Lagog were still in the dark Middle Ages, while the capital region seemed to have one foot in the prosperous twentieth century.
In Dick's opinion, the agricultural level in Laguge is still in a primitive state of slash-and-burn farming. Many farmers may have worked in the fields for most of their lives, but you can still say that they don't actually know how to farm.
Dig a hole, plant seeds, fill with soil, then water and weed every day, and you're done.
So Dick realized that he needed an expert in agriculture, preferably one who could be summoned!
The author says:
Author's words: I'm still recovering, feeling groggy and weak. The ibuprofen I bought at the beginning of the year is coming in handy now.
055. A small fishing rod hooked a dragon
Rather than spending time and effort to discover and cultivate the indigenous talents of this world, Dick actually prefers to employ summoners.
After all, he can lock in the type of talent he needs, who is not only available but also loyal and reliable, and has the added bonus of "two-dimensional beauties" which cannot be ignored.
However, the cost of using summoning once is not as simple as drawing cards in mobile games.
