Beginning in late June 1648, the entire eastern republic of China began to be immersed in excitement, ecstasy, and pride. Even the Jingjiang Fort, which is far away on the other side of the prairie on the east coast, was also tainted by this feeling, and the young cadres of the Corps Fort who commanded the new immigrants to come here to build castles and open up wasteland, after informing each other with red faces, loudly announced to all the new immigrants: Lunch will be added to celebrate the return of the navy in victory! It also celebrates the imminent end of the war, and the East Bank Republic is likely to permanently occupy the area east of the Uruguay River, including the fort Jingjiang (later the new Carmilla), which they are now building.

Some of the old citizens from Dongfang County, Meilin County, and Zhenhai County brought a sumptuous lunch. Due to the continuous reduction of the scale of the war in La Plata, as well as the gradual increase in the level of productivity, in recent months, some commodities on the east coast market have gradually bid farewell to the state of shortage, and many previously high prices have gradually fallen into the dust, the most typical of which is beef.

To tell the truth, beef has almost become an iconic commodity in today's East Coast Republic of China, and the price trend of this highly consumed commodity almost represents the shortage of domestic materials on the East Coast. In the second half of '46, just after the outbreak of war, the Colonia trade market was forced to close, and the import of foreign vegetable cattle was cut off on the east coast, and the price of domestic beef immediately began to soar.

The economic liberals within the government are usually more or less implicated in various import and export trading companies, and they are the ones who strongly demanded that the government deregulate the beef market and call for a market economy to regulate it. When the war broke out and the foreign beef cattle were cut off, they immediately hoarded the beef cattle they had. At the same time, prices are vigorously raised. As a result, the price of meat in the market has soared across the board. And with the government massively overstocking money in response to the war. The price index is also skyrocketing day by day, and the prestige of the Executive Committee's rule has been shaken.

Fortunately, the government's promotion of whale meat and the increase of fishery production eased the dissatisfaction a little, and the price gradually dropped as a large number of beef cows from La Plata were put on the market. After the Navy convoy returned victoriously again, stimulated by the good news, the price of beef fell further and completely returned to its actual value.

And when the price of everyday consumer goods, represented by the price of beef, plummeted. The price of another commodity on the East Coast, however, has been rising and falling, and has risen even more recently, and this "commodity" is the female slave. Especially in the newly built towns around the Wujiang River, the price of female slaves has risen to an outrageous level.

Of course, the female slaves here were not Ottoman slaves collected by the government, and the price of those Slavic or Greek women remained unchanged for 10,000 years, and was unified at 80 yuan - 80 yuan when the government bought it, and it was still 80 yuan when it was sold, which was equivalent to subsidizing the Ming singles from the Far East from the state finance.

It's just that the number of female slaves is still too small, initially less than 3,000 per year, and in the last two years it has risen to 5,000. But there are still more monks and less porridge, and the supply exceeds the demand. As boatloads of Far Eastern Ming people continue to be transported back to China (mostly men), as the total population of the country exceeds the 150,000 mark. Today, the number of singles in the country is close to 20,000 according to the latest statistics. This is a dangerous number, one that is enough to give the Ministry of Internal Affairs a headache.

Although the East Coast has always enforced strict criminal laws, although the Ministry of the Interior's eyes are all over the country, and although the prestige of the Syphilis Patient Statistical Survey Bureau (Syphilis Statistical Survey Bureau) is terrifying, it is still impossible to ensure that some old singles will take risks and handle some cases that are offensive to morals. This is not without precedent, for almost every ship bound for New China in the past six months has a dozen rapists on board, who will spend at least twenty years with slaves on the plantations of New China.

However, relying on severe punishment and strict laws can only be suppressed for a while, and to fundamentally solve the problem, it is still necessary to increase the number of domestic women supplied. Of course, you can also choose to reduce the amount of male input, which seems to have an effect. However, the proposal proposed by Bai Siwen was rejected by the Executive Committee at that time, and after careful consideration, the Executive Committee decided to maintain the number of Ming men imported from the Far East and increase the number of women imported from Europe.

This almost set the tone for immigration policy on the East Coast, i.e., the men were predominantly Ming, and the women were predominantly Eastern Europeans, and it was clear that this was the most compromise that anyone could think of. Because this not only makes the men who control the country predominantly of the same race as the people who cross the country, but also makes the country's population always grow at a high speed. Of course, there are not any women in the Far East, and the ratio of men to women among the Ming immigrants who are sent from Heishui to the mainland has remained between 2:1 and 3:1. What needs to be adjusted now is really only the ratio of men and women in European immigrants.

All of these are government-organized European immigrants, but on the East Coast, there are also a number of privately organized immigrants. This was initially done by Italian labor brokers, who began to organize a large number of women from places such as Naples (population 300,000) in Italy to come to the East Coast for prostitution last year (1647) - in this era, prostitutes were almost the label of lower-class Italian women, but after a long time, they found that many of the prostitutes who were originally under their control had gotten rid of their control by marrying locals, which made them quickly change their business strategy. That is, instead of trying to control the women they had collected from the Old World for a long time, they would sell them to the people of the East Coast with a hammer, so that everyone would have peace of mind - just as the Dutch sold European women to the Virginia colonies for profit. Of course, there were some Italian prostitutes who were Catholics who refused to marry pagans and continued to work as prostitutes, but that's another story.

After discovering that the business was extremely lucrative – there were always many men who could not bear it and were willing to pay for a wife to return home, the merchants of the East Coast quickly intervened and reached a cooperation agreement with these Italian labor brokers. These East Coast merchants were financially powerful, and they were said to have some cross-border people standing behind them, so they had no trouble doing business. The Executive Committee has long been silent about this kind of business that can fill the gap of women in the country, and even connived at it in some ways, so that after this year, this kind of business has flourished in the East Coast.

Nowadays, a considerable number of female slave traders are active in the newly built towns around the Wujiang River, such as Jingjiang Fort (New Palmyra), Tuanjie Fort (Carmelo), and New Bunker (Agraciada). The three settlements together have four or five thousand inhabitants, but more than eighty percent of the population is new, so there are only a handful of women, many of whom are family members of the immigrants themselves. In addition, there are no plans to import Ottoman female slaves here in the short term (at least not in two years), so the local residents can either endure or find their own way, which is a huge potential market.

However, most of the new immigrants were poor, and the slave traders were limited to those who came from the Far East with large amounts of cash. But for most of the Dick Si immigrants, buying a daughter-in-law to go home is still a distant thing. However, at this time, the emergence of the church gave a little gospel to the vast number of singles.

The church here naturally refers to the Taoist church. In order to attract believers and expand its influence, several real people decided to extract a large part of the donations and income from religious property from believers, and then look for young women through the commercial offices opened by the government in Danzig and Riga, and then find a way to get them to the east coast.

Unlike the female slave merchants, who were abducted and deceived and did everything they could, the Taoist church was very formal, and they usually made it clear to the people they were dealing with in advance what they were going to the east coast for, and then they would take them back to the east coast by boat after obtaining the consent of the other party. In this process, the cost is naturally expensive, such as placement fees, nutrition costs, medical expenses, transportation costs, etc., and in many cases, it is even necessary to settle some debts for these objects. However, for the people of the East Coast, the problems that can be solved with money are not a problem, and now everyone doesn't want money, just women!

Last year, the church recruited more than 150 women of working age in Livonia and Poland. According to the latest constitution of the church, these women are called "daughters of the church", and there is no fee to marry them, the only requirement is that the wedding must be held in a local Taoist temple, and the entire wedding ceremony must be presided over by an officially registered Taoist priest of the local Taoist temple. The wife who marries home enjoys complete freedom, and the man is not allowed to beat, scold or humiliate her, and if there is a family dispute between the two parties, she can also find a local Taoist priest for mediation.

The Executive Committee also gave some support to the Church's attempt to expand its influence, after all, it was of great benefit to maintaining political stability and assimilating new immigrants. To this end, they even promised to increase the allocation of funds to the Religious Affairs Office in the 49-year budget, and at the same time called on believers to donate enthusiastically to further develop this cause, which is nicknamed "transnational marriage agency", which is beneficial to the country and the people.

On June 20, 1648, a group wedding was held in the newly built Taoist temple of Jingjiang Fort, and more than 15 couples were blessed by the local Taoist priests. The influence of Taoism on the east coast has been further enhanced! (To be continued......)