Easily shaking off the dumb detective who was following them, Dena and Alice changed into a pair of overalls that were common to female workers in the store's changing room, and then came out of the store and turned in the other direction. After walking for a while, they left the old neighborhood and boarded a tram in the direction of the factory district.

With the advancement of the electric revolution, in some cities in Europe and North America, the tram-based public transportation mode has developed rapidly, especially in some cities in Germany, because their chemical plants have the intention of switching to chemical weapons during the war from the beginning, and even in peacetime, many things produced there are highly toxic, so the German government forced chemical plants to be placed downwind of the city, and even preferably to keep a certain distance from the city. So to get from the center of the city to where the chemical plant is located, you need to use public transportation. At this time, the German company Mercedes-Benz was already producing a large number of cars, but in terms of buses, the running cost of cars was higher than that of electric cars. Therefore, the road between these cities and the factory area is mainly by trams.

It's no longer rush hour, but the train is still crowded. In order to accommodate more people, these trams leading to the factory area are specially designed. For example, in these trams, you won't find as many seats in a normal bus as there are only a simple row of seats on the trams that run on this route, and the rest are all space for people to stand. Even so, the car was still packed.

But in general, the demeanor of the Germans is passable, although no one took the initiative to stand up and give up their seats to the two girls or anything, but at least everyone is interested in making way for them to make way so that they will not be squeezed in. Of course, like the popular later generations to a certain island country as the back. In Jing's story, taking advantage of the crowd, the story of stretching out the salty pig's hand is naturally even less. However, this is not because the Germans are so high, but because the people of the trade unions are very good at maintaining order on the trams where the workers often travel, and cracking down on thieves who take advantage of the crowding of cars to steal. By the way, it will also teach a lesson to those tram idiots who stretch out their groping pig hands. As a result, although the tram on this line is the most crowded, the order on the train is very good.

The tram staggered out of the city center, leaving the pretty Gothic buildings behind. Dena looked out the window, and what appeared to her was a large expanse of abandoned land. As can be seen from the remaining fields, this was also once a field where wheat waves rolled. But today, it's no longer farmland. A stinking black stream flows through it, and the side of the stream is littered with all kinds of garbage. A little farther away are a mess of low-rise houses. This is the slum that followed with the establishment of factories. A lot of workers have lived here. And the dismissed workers that Dena was interviewing lived in this slum.

The tram stopped at a nearby platform, and Dena and Alice got out of the car, where union members were already waiting for them.

"Hello Dena, hello Alice!" A man in a cap greeted him and said this to Dena and Alice.

"Hello Elber, I didn't expect it to be you." Dena said.

The man named Elber, who came to greet Dena and Alice, was a member of the German Social Democratic Party, and he had met Dena several times, and everyone knew each other.

"What? Surprised to see me? Elber said.

"yes, I thought you went to Berlin." Dena said.

"It was Hassel who went to Berlin for the conference. I'm staying here. "We're going to have to wait here because there's another colleague of yours who's going to cover the accident." ”

"Who is it?" Alice asked.

"Siegfeldt, he's a reporter for The Forward." Elber replied.

Advance is the organ of the SPD and the most important and longest-lived newspaper of the German left. It is a small miracle that it has been closed several times since its inception in 1876 and has been reopened several times. It was also a benchmark for left-wing newspapers in Germany, and even the Forward newspaper took note of it, and it seems that they did want to use the coverage of the Guò incident and the subsequent strike action to achieve the goal of introducing new legislation to protect the personal safety and economic interests of workers.

"You smell terrible here." Alice chimed in. He covered his nose as he spoke.

"There are chemical factories nearby, so that's the case." Elber replied, "Actually, it's nothing, just a little leaking ammonia." The concentration in the workshop was so much higher that we even needed to prepare goggles for ourselves. ”

"Was it ammonia that injured the workers in this leak?" Dena asked. She knew that there had also been cases of poisoning workers in the MacDonald family's chemical plant.

"No, although ammonia leaks can also cause poisoning, it is far less severe. We don't know exactly what was leaked in this accident, only that it was an intermediate product used to make pesticides. All I know is that it's far more toxic than ammonia, and you can ask the survivors. In just an instant, after inhaling one or two puffs, their eyes were completely blind, and the ammonia was not so powerful. And although this poisonous gas is very smelly, it is still different from the smell of ammonia. At least that's what Hausen said. Elber replied.

"Did they describe what the smell of this poison gas looks like?" Dena continued.

Elber was about to answer when he saw another tram coming with a tinkling bell.

"Ah, maybe Siegfelt is in this car." Elber said.

The tram stopped, some people got out of the car, one of them was a tall man, about two meters long, bent down from the car, and as soon as he got out of the car, he waved to Elber: "Hello, Elber! ”

"Oh my God, this guy isn't a breed bred by Emperor Frederick I, right?" Somehow, Alice came up with such a sentence.

"Not Frederick I, but Frederick Wilhelm I." Dena habitually began to correct Alice's historical mistakes, "He was the son of Frederick I and the father of Frederick II. And neither he nor Frederick I was a king, not an emperor. The meaning of these two words is not the same. ”

"Oh my God, this messy history of Europeans is really confusing. If I could figure out this mess, I'd meet a hundred big-headed ghosts. Alice shook her head.

"Alice, are you cursing me for meeting a hundred big-headed ghosts?" Dena asked with a deliberately eerie look.

"Ah, my dear sister Dena, I will express my sympathy and condolences to those hundred big-headed ghosts." Alice replied.

By this time, the giant grenadier had already approached. He bent down to shake Elber's hand and talk, and then Elber introduced him to Dena.

"This is Miss Dena, who is now in ...... Ah, what's the name of that newspaper of yours now? ”

"I copied your name and called the Bavarian Forward, so you won't go to court to sue us for infringement, right?" Dena said jokingly to the giant.

"Ah, it won't. Because we know that before the bureaucrats in the court have gone through the process and sent out the summons, you're going to have a new name. The giant smiled and replied, "Say hello to Mr. Heisenberg instead of me." You're Miss Dena, aren't you? Carl has talked to us about you more than once. ”

Siegfeldt's reference to Carl is referring to Carl Lee Poker Nesi. The son of the famous international workers' activist Wilhelm Lee Pokernessy, he now serves in the Berlin City Council and is also in charge of the newspaper Forward, and has a considerable influence on the SPD and the German left as a whole. Dena had also interviewed him.

"Please also say hello to Mr. Lee Poker Necy on my behalf." Dena replied, "I benefited greatly from his analysis of militarism. ”

"Siegfeldt, this is not the place to speak. And you're so conspicuous that any spy can see you at a glance from twenty kilometers away. Elber said, "I'd better take you to see the survivors first." ”

"Okay." Siegfelt replied. So Elber led the way, followed by Dena, Alice, and Siegfeldt, and walked into the slums.

When Dena was in the United States, she noticed that her uncle, Scrooge, had ties to some leftists in Europe, and even provided funding to left-wing activists. Dena had asked Scrooge why he was doing this. Here's how Scrooge replied:

"Dena, if you have the opportunity to go to Europe in the future, you will find that the wages and living standards of European workers are significantly lower than those in the United States. As a result, the cost of wages in their goods will be less than in our Americas. In the market competition, this will become an advantage for Europeans over us. Of course, the important companies under our MacDonald consortium can rely on technological advantages to save some situations, but other people's technology will also improve. Our technological leadership can't last forever. Once they technically catch up with us, then our trouble comes.

You know, the U.S. has a vast west, which makes it impossible for us to keep workers' wages as low as we do in Europe, so we have to rely on high tariffs to protect ourselves. But our products can't be sold in the U.S. forever. In overseas markets, once the cost-effective advantage we have gained due to technological superiority disappears, it will be difficult for us to compete with European goods with lower wage costs. So, I'm going to fund the leftists and even the Marxists in Europe. Because they carry the resistance of the European workers, whether they succeed or not, they will certainly increase the cost of European goods - and if they succeed, the cost of wages in every European commodity will increase. If they fail, then the cost of maintaining social order in every European commodity rises. This is certainly good for us in the long run. Why not do something like this that has little investment, but once it is successful, but has a big effect? ”

Now walking in the workers' quarters of Germany, Dena truly understands what Scrooge said that "the living standards of European workers are very low".