"Isabel, apart from the grandfather clock, does the factory have any other products, such as pocket watches that are easy to carry?" Roland asked.

"You're right, come and see, these two pocket watches are our new products coming soon." Isabel pointed to Roland and Semyon Ivanovich to show the glass tray.

The glass tray is lined with red velvet padding and on top of it are two pocket watches, one of which is a regular model and the other is lighter and smaller, and the gold-plated skeleton case is more refined.

Roland and Semyon Ivanovich each picked up a pocket watch and looked at it carefully. From the layman's point of view, these two watches are no different from the popular handmade pocket watches on the market, except for the abandonment of those extravagant and flashy jewelry decoration styles.

"Isabel, pocket watches are also produced on an assembly line?" Roland asked.

"Not exactly." The factory director frankly admitted, "The balance spring system has not yet been able to achieve industrial production, which is the biggest bottleneck restricting the production capacity of pocket watches, and we are concentrating on tackling this technical problem, and other pocket watch parts have basically achieved industrial mass production." ”

"Why is it necessary to divide pocket watches into two different styles so that there is an additional production line?" Semyon Ivanovich picked up the smaller pocket watch and questioned Isabel.

"The pocket watch you're holding is designed specifically for female customers, and the style is very different from the usual men's pocket watches."

Isabel's answer did not convince Semyon Ivanovich, shrugged his shoulders and muttered in a low voice: "The same pocket watch can be used by both men and women, so why bother to design a watch specifically for women." ”

This time, there was no need for the factory director to stand up to defend the huge consumption potential of female compatriots, Roland spoke first to fight for her.

"Isabel, this watch made for women is very beautiful, and sure enough, only women know women best, so how much does it sell?"

"At the current cost, a men's watch costs 85 gold talers, and a women's watch will have to sell for about 90 gold thalers to protect the capital." Isabel replied cautiously.

"If you only look at the pricing, of course, it is much cheaper than the handmade pocket watches on the market, but compared with the price of the table clock, the cost is too high."

Semyon Ivanovich's values are still at the level of "large table clocks use more materials and should be more expensive than small pocket watches", but they don't know that the smaller the size of similar precision mechanical devices, the higher the cost, and the cost of its input is not reflected in the amount of materials, but in the research and development and application of new technologies and new materials.

However, Isabel also has to admit that Semyon Ivanovich's ideas represent the values of the general public, and for middle-class families, why not pay more for a table clock, since the price of a small pocket watch is not much different from the price of a magnificent grandfather clock. At the very least, the latter can also be used as a luxury piece of furniture, earning face for the owner in front of visitors.

"The pocket watch process is not perfect enough, and the cost is too high, but please rest assured, I will try to solve this problem as soon as possible, and reduce the ex-factory price of pocket watches to the level of 50 gold talers by the end of the year at the latest!" Isabel solemnly promised Roland, "I want to produce a pocket watch for the working people in the Far East that they can afford!" ”

Roland was deeply touched by the ambition of the factory manager, but was still moved to calculate the income level of the working class in the Far East to verify the feasibility of her idea.

The statistical department of the Kingdom of Kolas has made the following classification of the household income level of each class in the country: those with an annual income of less than 10 gold tales are poor families; Low-income families with an annual income of 10~100 gold talers; Those with an annual income of 100~1000 gold are middle-class families; Those with an annual income of 1,000~10,000 gold are wealthy families; Those with an annual income of more than 10,000 gold are the wealthy.

Among them, the total population of poor families is about 3.5 million, accounting for nearly 70% of the total population of the country, which is the undisputed majority, the sum of the population of low-income and middle-class families is about 1 million, accounting for 20% of the total population of the country, and the proportion of the population of wealthy families is about 5%, with a total of no more than 500,000, as for the wealthy families with an annual income of more than 10,000 gold talers, the proportion in society is less than 1%, and the two or three thousand wealthy families are only a small fraction in terms of national statistics. Culture, among other spheres of society, has a greater influence than the 3.5 million impoverished rural peasants combined.

Roland was also concerned about the reality of the disparity between rich and poor in the Far East, but he was relieved only after looking at historical statistics, especially comparing them with those in other countries. There is no harm in comparison, and in fact the gap between the rich and the poor in the Far East is not so great compared to the rest of Vares, especially since it is still narrowing under the leadership of the Kolas government.

The poor in the Far East are concentrated in the rural areas, where the vast majority of the 3.5 million poor households are peasants, while the urban poor make up only a small fraction. From this point of view, Roland became more and more convinced that the rural and agricultural reforms he advocated were a good way to alleviate the gap between the rich and the poor in urban and rural areas, and that only by organizing the vast number of peasants to establish communes and collective farms could it be possible to ensure that peasant families could obtain the basic guarantee of subsistence with adequate food and clothing, and strive to raise the majority of rural families from "poverty" to the level of "low-income families" within five years. As for further, it is not possible to raise rural households to the "middle class level" in a short period of time, because this is determined by the inherent limitations of agricultural production; it is relatively easy to achieve food and clothing by farming, but it is very difficult to get rich by farming.

In fact, with the exception of minorities such as Roland and Agriculture Secretary Jodl, most of the decision-makers in the Kolas government paid more attention than the peasants to low-income, middle-class, and wealthy families, which were either industrial workers or more or less neo-bourgeois. The reason is obvious: the new regime in the Far East took advantage of the revolutionary tide of rebellion against the empire by the burghers to rise up on the stage of history, and after taking power, of course, it had to vigorously give back to its own basic plate.

With the above understanding, it is not difficult for Roland to understand that the "public" in Isabel's mouth does not refer to the rural peasants who account for the majority of the country's population, but specifically to the "working class" in the cities, mainly the "middle class", but also includes some urban low-income families and wealthy families.

According to the tax statistics of the first half of the year, Roland can roughly calculate the average income level of various industries in the country, among which the average income of the citizen class in the capital Colasbourg and its surrounding urban circle is the highest in the country, and in the case of the Karon industrial area, the average worker can earn 3 silver thalers per day.