"Of course you can."

Yang Qing looked at the worker and said with a smile.

"Since our Ming Dynasty is now respected by the Four People's Assembly, and even Her Majesty the Empress was elected by the Four People's Assembly to succeed to the throne, why can't the Four People's Assembly directly elect a local government when needed? This is not a big deal, I think that the Canton you run by yourself is in good order, and the Dutch have long been running their own city in this way.

You don't trust the officials.

You are afraid that you will be retaliated against by the collusion of the gentry after handing over Guangzhou.

Then Her Majesty and I must solve this problem for you, after all, this Guangzhou belongs to the people of Guangzhou, and you are the masters of this place, so is there a better way than this? If you don't want the officials sent by the court, then the court won't send them, and if you are afraid that the village sages will retaliate in the future, then you will take care of them. You elect the administrators, the security keepers, the judicial officials, and they want the gentry to collude with you to frame you, because you choose the judge to hear the case. It is useless for them to hire traitors to assassinate you, because you have chosen the police to keep the city safe, and they will not be able to oppress you as much as they used to do, because you can make all kinds of systems for them.

You can set working hours.

Eighteen hours a day is outrageous, but ten hours a day is always okay, right?

You can set a minimum wage.

The salary that can't even eat sweet potatoes is indeed too low, so with the current price of rice, it should be possible to feed a family of four, right?

You can stipulate that workers cannot be whipped, workers cannot be dismissed at will, child labor cannot be used, workers must be compensated for injuries caused by work, and even you can stipulate that workers must pay pensions when they are old and can no longer work, and so on. In short, you can make all kinds of systems for them, just like putting a barricade on a cow and making them listen to you, the factory owners are indeed the first to make money, and they will do anything to squeeze the workers in order to make money.

Then you will use the system to restrain them! ”

Yang Qing continued.

"But, but then the factory owner can't make money, and if the factory closes, won't we also lose our jobs?"

The older worker said.

"Then it's up to you and the factory owner to compromise with each other, the factory owner makes money, you want to live as well as possible, but your demands can only cost them more. When the cost exceeds their profit line, the factory owner will not do it, they will open the factory but not the good church, and if he does not do it, you will lose your job. So you and them are grasshoppers on a rope, and they want to continue to make money, and you want to get as much pay as possible without losing your job, so you have to sit down and talk. Talking about the results of being acceptable to both sides, talking about the fact that a factory owner can make money and you can live a good life, and finally turn it into something in writing, signed by each other, and then both parties will abide by this agreement.

To ensure this, you can also form a union in each factory.

Workers elect the president of the union.

In the future, he will supervise the factory owner on your behalf and maintain communication with him, so as to avoid a recurrence of the previous tragedy, and if the factory owner insists on going his own way, then the union can sue him for not complying with the previous agreement.

It was up to the Commune to punish him.

On the other hand, if the workers break the agreement, then the commune will have to side with the factory owners, after all, the agreement is binding on both sides, and it is not right for you to make unreasonable demands. ”

Yang Qing said.

Actually, he wasn't worried about it.

First of all, the profits of the factory owners are extremely high, and there is still a great room for concessions, after all, they are mainly exported, and there are almost no foreign competitors' exports, they will definitely introduce steam engines in the future, and the cost of shipping is also declining, so that the export costs have fallen, so that the factory owners in Guangzhou have enough room for concession. Secondly, the workers are actually very easy to satisfy, after all, in the days before them, the situation of the factories in Jiangsu and Zhejiang was compared, as long as almost the vast majority of workers would accept it, and a few workers who wanted more could not change the result. So it will not be difficult for the two sides to negotiate a compromise agreement, but the factory owners will definitely want to move the factory outside of Guangzhou in the future.

But that's none of Yang Qing's business.

Moreover, it was not in the interests of the imperial court that the development of Guangdong was all crowded into Guangzhou, and it would be advantageous for the imperial court if those factory owners moved factories outside of Guangzhou.

However, the transfer is also limited.

After all, Guangzhou's special conditions determine that it must be the industrial and commercial center of Guangdong.

Yang Qing was worried about the transfer of the capitalists in Guangdong to the colonies, and even to the Dutch territory on the island of Java, especially to engage in the sugar industry on the island of Java, which was welcomed by the Dutch. They can definitely do this kind of thing, originally Southeast Asia, including the sugar industry on the island of Java, was all Chinese immigrants in history. Siam Sugar is Zheng Xin's group of Teochew people, Vietnam and Cambodia sugar production is Chen Shangchuan, Mo Jiu is a Ming orphan who failed to resist the Qing Dynasty, and the sugar industry on Java Island is also developed by the Chinese. Before the Hongxi massacre, ninety percent of the sugarcane plantations on the island of Java were Chinese, and after the Hongxi massacre, the Dutch couldn't play or invited the Chinese back, until modern times the development of sugar giants such as the Huang family, the 14th richest person in the world by American newspapers.

This is something that Yang Qing must try to avoid at present.

And it's not just sucrose.

Even tea, textile technology, and ceramic technology are possible, and the discipline of those capitalists cannot be overestimated, and they do not rule out the transfer of positions when there are no industrial slaves in the country to exploit.

The Dutch would have welcomed them anyway.

But this is in the future, at least it won't appear in the short term, and even if it does, it's nothing more than going to bombard it with cannons, and it's not that the Ming Dynasty doesn't have this system, and even the control of colonial industry has it! In fact, not only the Ming Dynasty, but also the Europeans understood this at this time, and the navigation regulations that Britain should have promulgated even stipulated that it was not allowed to engage in industry in the colonies, and the colonies were not allowed to produce textiles themselves. This was one of the main reasons why the rebels betrayed the British Empire, and the British were very aware that the colonies were all about producing raw materials and dumping goods.

To let the colonies engage in industry is to dig their own graves.

They proved to be wise, and although they were able to fail to live up to this principle, it did not mean that they were wrong about this principle.

The workers were talking.

But it can be seen that they are obviously much happier.

For these ordinary workers, they actually can't think about the longer term, they only know that the protector has indeed solved their biggest fears, and what they are worried about is nothing more than that the court officials will come to collude with the village sages and gentry in the future, and then the village sages will retaliate against them afterwards. And they can really avoid it completely by electing officials to run Guangzhou themselves, and they no longer have to worry about retaliation in the future.

"Do you have any other requirements?"

Yang Qing asked.

"Huguo Gong, will other places in Guangdong still be able to build Huangzhuang in the future?"

A worker asked.

That's what they care about, too.

There is actually a huge surplus of one million workers in Guangzhou, especially the dock coolies, most of whom would prefer to return to their hometowns, to the land where they have worked for generations.

"Of course, for the time being, there will be no comprehensive land reform like in the south, but an inventory of the population and fields will be carried out in Guangdong first, and after the inventory is completed, the official land will first be changed to Huangzhuang. I know you all want to go back to farming, but you also have to give me a little time to get these things done, and if you really don't have a job in Guangzhou, I suggest you go to Taiwan and bring your family with you. The imperial court has all kinds of support for Taiwan's settlers, not only providing you with seeds and farm tools, one year's rations, and ten years of rent-free rights, but also giving you an extra Jiannu to work, and you are also included in the Huangzhuang in Taiwan. ”

Yang Qing said.

He won't let these people go back to the countryside.

Instead of letting them go back to the mountainous areas of Guangdong to continue growing sweet potatoes, it is better to let them go to Taiwan to grow rice! What's more, Guangdong's cash crops are profitable, and they are also raw materials for factories in Guangzhou, and they can only grow grain when they go back, and they are originally a redundant population squeezed out by industrial development, and going back can only cause industrial regression.

Besides, there is not much land in Guangdong.

It must be understood that although Guangdong is synonymous with affluence, in fact it is limited to the Pearl River Delta.

Out of the Pearl River Delta, there are poor mountains and bad waters!

Going to Taiwan is different.

There are still enough plains and wasteland to be cultivated into fertile land.

Instead of letting them go back to the mountainous areas where they have already planted cash crops such as sugarcane and tea, replant a small amount of rice and then gnaw sweet potatoes, and at the same time compete for limited land with the farmers who are currently staying there, mainly cash crops, and reduce the area of cash crops, which will lead to a decrease in Guangzhou's exports, how can they be happy to go to Taiwan to reclaim the wasteland! In the western plains of Taiwan, there is no pressure to feed a population of 5 million under the current circumstances, and now the total number of immigrants in the whole of Taiwan is less than 300,000, and these desperate coolies in Guangzhou can at least add another 200,000 immigrants there.

As for giveaways......

Well, the Protector has solved the problem of surgery.

In fact, this is a minor operation, originally done by the Americans in 1894 in history, for the purpose of treating prostate diseases, but it was done for animals in 1823, this is nothing more than finding the right position to cut a small incision and then take a silk thread, the process is very simple, it is a problem of disinfection. After all these years of research, the first professionals have gone to work and have performed large-scale surgeries on those Jiannu who had previously surrendered. Practice has proved that the mortality rate is extremely low, and does not affect their ability to work at all, those Jiannu have said that the benevolent surgery of the protector of the country has saved them from some diseases, and can better contribute to the construction of the Ming Dynasty......