The Song people have a world-famous habit, that is, they like to form associations. If there are more than three people, they will propose, "Let's form a club." "The big ones are like the Cao Gang, with hundreds of thousands of people, and the small ones are like the XX Academy Young Girls Club, with only three or five guys with twisted minds.

Seeing that there were six of them now, Guo suggested that everyone find a place to eat and hold the first global congress – isn't it, this is still a multinational organization.

For serious Song people, the most serious place to talk about business is at the dinner table. At Hua Fangfu's suggestion, everyone officially held the first plenary meeting in a teahouse next to Luoyang High School.

"Let's decide on a name first, if the name is not right, it will not be good." Huang Yang planned with great interest: "How about the name of the Mohist Reading Group?" ”

"It's too literary, we have to do practical things." Cheng Qi said: "Gentlemen, we are the dogs who scolded the Donglin Party, how can we learn from them again." I'm proposing to call it the Changing the Day Squad. ”

Hua Fangfu scoffed: "I don't know what this is for, I suggest calling the National Salvation Association." ”

"It's a little longer, so it's better to call it a self-help club. As the saying goes, it is better to save others than to save yourself, and it is better to save yourself than to save others. If we want to save the people, we have to do it, but it is more important to let the people who need to be saved come out of the quagmire on their own. Cheng Qi said this, and everyone thought it was good, so the proposal was passed.

Next is the president, everyone talks about their age, Ma Zhan is the oldest, and he became the first president of the Self-Rescue Association. Guo Shan served as secretary.

There were people who expressed their opinions on what to do, and some advocated going to the factory to investigate the actual situation of the workers in order to come up with targeted strategies; Some people advocate that the first step should be to get as many comrades as possible, and the first step should be to carry out extensive propaganda among the students.

After a meal-time discussion, everyone finally came to a conclusion: that is, to go their own way and act separately.

So, in the afternoon of the same day, this small group that was unregistered and unregistered (and the yamen of the Great Song Dynasty never registered, did not register, let alone approve these non-governmental organizations formed on a whim), hurriedly ended its first plenary meeting and began to act in accordance with the established policy.

Yuan Xue, Hua Fangfu and Cheng Qi found a engraving factory on the edge of the school, and commissioned them to print propaganda posters and leaflets, while investigating the situation of the workers.

The scale of this factory is not large, the boss and the boss lady are good at engraving, in addition to them there are three masters, ranging in age from more than 30 to 40, the boss pays them according to the number of orders, and can have an income of about 800 wen per month. In addition, there are seven or eight small workers at the bottom, they are all day workers, "when a monk hits the clock for a day", a month can generally have about 200 wen a month - of course, this is the premise that the factory has sufficient orders, if there is a school holiday, there is no time to work, maybe there is no money for porridge a month.

These workers are all teenagers from the villages around the school, and their families do not have enough land, so it is better to come out and learn to work than to be idle. In the future, if you do a good job, you can go to Luoyang City to continue living. However, before that, they had to spend a long apprenticeship, and after the apprenticeship was over, they could not immediately pick up the bunk and go to work in other factories, according to the contract, the apprentice had to work for the master for two years according to the standard of apprenticeship. The so-called labour market can only be accessed after the expiration of the biennium.

Yuan Xue felt that the rule of "three years of apprenticeship and two years of service" restricted the apprentice's freedom of choice, and that the salary of the apprentice was so low that he could barely make ends meet, which was undoubtedly cruel oppression. But Cheng Qi has a different opinion: "As we all know, craftsmanship is about experience, and it is difficult for a young person who has just completed a teacher to gain the trust of customers, and the two-year service period can not only exercise their experience, but also accumulate a certain degree of popularity for them, so as not to starve to death because they can't find a job after they finish their studies." From this point of view, there is also a certain basis for the validity period. ”

Yuan Xue said: "In a total of five years of apprenticeship, the wealth they have created for the master and the shopkeeper is not known to be many times the salary they get. Under this system, there is simply no fairness at all. ”

After paying the deposit, the three of them walked back to school from the roadway.

Guo Shan and Huang Yang came back later, although it was already the late autumn season, they were all sweating profusely, and it seemed that they were not idle in the afternoon.

"I really don't know if I don't go, I'm scared when I go."

Guo Shan wiped his sweat and sat on the chair very tiredly, Huang Yang poured a pot of tea with a grunt, and he couldn't see his demeanor at all.

They went to a factory in the west of Luoyang — a student who attended Cheng Qi's lecture on law and whose family was the owner — a very large bearing factory capable of making the propulsion shafts used in large ships with millions of materials (a unit of marine weight, 10 materials is about 1 ton).

Because they got a letter of introduction, they visited a production workshop accompanied by the factory, but this was enough to shock the two young masters who were not deeply involved in the world.

In their original steam romance, those majestic steam engines, boilers and huge pipes are all existences with unique beauty. But today they see much more.

These great machines need people, a lot of people to operate, they are well-trained, they have a clear division of labor, they crawl on the high pipes to repair the valves with almost no protection, they operate extremely powerful machines, and the slightest carelessness will turn themselves into a mass of flesh and blood. These workers worked from dawn to dark, and from darkness to dawn, and all they could get was a dozen Song dollars. The most skilled maintenance workers (and the most skilled) earn up to fifty Song Wen a day.

In order to earn a little more money, the families of the workers, both women and children, were involved in the work in the factory, and they saw with their own eyes that the little children who did not have their own waists were carrying heavy hemp ropes and helping the women workers push the two-wheeled carts that carried raw materials back and forth. And the slightest carelessness can cause these children to bruise their arms or legs.

For manual workers who rely on their strength to eat, once injured, it means facing a desperate situation. If a child has the misfortune to have his leg broken by a billet or some kind of mold, then his best outcome is to become a beggar. In this environment, if a girl does not want to be like her mother who pushes a cart back and forth in the factory all day long, her only future is to go to the street to work in another less glamorous profession.

"In their eyes, they don't see a little bit of the future." Guo Shan finally concluded: "There is no sparkle in their eyes, they have been completely overwhelmed by the weight of life, they are like walking dead, constantly reincarnating, and there seems to be no way to change their fate." ”

Yuan Xue was silent for a while, and said, "It must be changed, what we have to do is to change all this." ”