5 years after the liberation. Coupled with the rise of industry and commerce in the southeast, the machine industry is like a monster out of the cage, screaming and screaming together with Zhu Tianzi of the Ming Dynasty, constantly colliding with the crumbling old order. A new era is coming.

This new era is like a promising baby, whose birth will bring hope and vitality, but it will also be accompanied by the pains of childbirth.

No change comes without costs, and those who bear the costs are often the most vulnerable in a country. In the current Ming Dynasty, the first to bear this suffering is not the landlords who are about to lose their gentry status, but the peasants at the bottom.

The transformation of some of the gentry into agricultural capitalists also meant that a large number of tenants lost their share of land and were forced to join the ranks of immigrants and the unemployed. The former were transported by shipload to the Northeast, the South Seas, and even the Americas and Australia, where a different world awaited them. The other part of the landless peasants, who did not want to go far from the world, entered the cities and became the gravediggers of the Chinese bourgeoisie, a member of the proletariat!

Needless to say, since Emperor Zhu was not a good man, the life of the Chinese proletariat in this era was of course bitter......

Foshan County, Guangzhou Prefecture, which was once the first town in the world, has now been upgraded to a county. The county seat is in the town of Foshan, and there is no city wall, but there is a new urban area next to the old city of Foshan, which is isolated from the old city by a railway extending from the city of Guangzhou.

Like the old city, Foshan New Town is an industrial area, but the old city is mostly a collection of historic workshops, while the new town is a series of chimneys. Black smoke is emitted day and night. While polluting the environment. It is also showing the magic of industrialization.

Machines powered by steam engines and water conservancy have raised labor productivity to previously unimaginable heights, and the existence of appropriate tariff protection policies has led to the rapid rise of all merchants who dare to put their capital into industrial production, and thousands of beautiful villas have been built in recent years on the banks of the Pearl River outside the city of Guangzhou, all of which are the comfort havens of merchants and senior managers, and the main roads along the Pearl River are full of gilded and silver-lined carriages all day long.

On the other hand, the first generation of Chinese industrial workers who came out of these factories are living in dire straits.

The textile mill that Jardine Hong invested in five years ago is located close to the Foshan railway station. Across the street from the Ya in Foshan County, Wu Shaorong, who had quit his opium addiction at the moment, was wearing a green cloth robe and carrying a civilized stick in his hand, and was leading a distinguished guest from the West to visit his factory.

"Mr. Marx," Wu Shaorong said, pointing to the working-class people who were queuing up at the gate of the factory to be searched, and said in English to a short, bearded foreigner, "these are the workers on the morning shift, and they have already left work......

Yes, it was Carl. Marx, after writing the book "The Class Struggle in France from 1848 to 1850", was invited by Engels to set off for China to investigate. On his way to China, he wrote "Louis? Bonaparte's Eighteenth Day of the Foggy Month. The lessons of the 1848 revolution in Europe, especially France, are summarized. And the purpose of his coming to China. It was to examine the initial stage of capitalism – Engels told him that China was now in the transition from a feudal economy to a capitalist economy, somewhat similar to Britain in 1700 or earlier. From the perspective of social development, it is of great research value.

"Are they being searched?" Marx did see a scene that could not be seen in European factories - the lackeys of the capitalists were searching the bodies of the workers, although the European working class was also oppressed at this time, but he had not heard of any factory that had to search his body when he was off duty.

"Yes, the textile factories in Foshan are like this." Wu Shaorong looked taken for granted, "Some of the workers have unclean hands and feet, stealing cotton yarn from the factory to sell, and they can't do it if they don't copy themselves." ”

For the Chinese working people of this era, being searched by their employers is not a personal insult, but if a male foreman searches a female worker, he is afraid that he will cause death.

The workers' clothes were torn, most of them were barefoot, their faces were also bad, their faces were yellow and thin, and they were obviously not getting enough food. Mixed between male and female workers are child labor! As in Europe at this time, the Ming Dynasty under the rule of Emperor Zhu also had child labor!

Of course, there is no compulsory education, although the Ming Imperial Education Group and the Ministry of Education of the imperial court are already formulating plans to expand the number of new schools, preparing to increase the number of universities to 8 in the next five years, increase the number of seowon (middle schools) to 80, and open 800 new primary schools. But these schools are far too few for the more than 100 million school-age children and adolescents.

Therefore, after the new education was gradually accepted by the people, free education became a thing of the past, and all schools were fee-based, and the tuition fees were not expensive, but they were not affordable for ordinary working-class children......

"Is the pay low?" After entering the factory, Marx asked questions casually, but his eyes kept looking around. He found the factory to be cleaner than similar textile mills in Europe. Marx thought to himself that it may be because the competition in China's textile industry was not fierce at this time, and the profits of the factories were generally high, so the factory owners would be willing to spend money to clean the factories - in fact, it was because the director of the factory, Zhilu Daowu, the big boss, wanted to bring distinguished guests over, so he temporarily carried out cleaning and hygiene, purely to cope with the inspection.

"It's not low, it's not low, an ordinary male worker can earn 1,800 copper a month, and he can buy 100 catties of rice! At the end of the year, a double salary will be paid. ”

In the four years of liberation, the capitalists of Wuda, who had made a total of 3 million silver dollars in profits through trade, shipping, banking, and textile mills, showed a painful expression. An ordinary male worker works 12 hours a day in his factory, from the beginning of the month to the end of the month, and the labor income without a day off is a mere 1.8 silver dollars! This is equivalent to about 0.6 pounds, or 12 shillings, 144 pence, an average of 4.8 pence per day. The wages of the British working class were higher than they were before the revolution of 1848. However, after the revolution of 1848, the wages of British workers increased considerably, and ordinary workers were paid 5 pence and 6 pence a day.

However, the wages of skilled workers here in Foshan are much higher than those of their British counterparts, and a mechanic with very sloppy skills can easily earn 20 silver dollars, and the factory has to worry about him changing jobs all the time. Lan Fangxing's furnace workers' wages are linked to steel production, and it is not uncommon to earn 30 silver dollars. So on the whole, Daming's factories spend more in the wage expenditure column than British factories!

"What about child and female workers? How much do they earn? Marx asked again.

"The wages of female workers are two-thirds of that of male workers, and the wages of child workers are one-third of that of male workers, which is a common market in Guangdong." Wu Shaorong introduced with a smile. Obviously, he prefers to use female and child labor compared to the "high" wages of male workers.

In his own words: "Where child labor can be used, women will never be used, and where women can be used, no men will be used." ”

"Was there a strike?" Walking into the workshop with the deafening sound of machines, Marx suddenly asked about the latest developments in the Chinese workers' movement.

"Strike?" Wu Shaorong didn't seem to have heard of this word, but the factory director next to him knew about it, and muttered a few words in his ear to explain.

Wu Shaorong laughed: "No, no, if you don't want to do it, get out, don't have too many people who want to come in." A family of five in the countryside rents 10 acres of land and earns less than a few stones of rice a year. If they all enter the factory, two adults will have 3 yuan a month, 39 yuan a year (take 13 months' salary), almost 20 stone rice, if 3 children are over 10 years old and also enter the factory to work, they can earn more than 60 yuan a year! If you are frugal, you can save 20 yuan a year, and you can also protect the harvest in drought and flood, what's so bad? (To be continued......)