Silesia, the richest province of Prussia at the time, claimed to be the most loyal place in all of Prussia, but its commoners lived a life inferior to that of pigs and dogs.

Unlike the merchants and Junker landlords who lived in the cities of Posen and Breslau, the lower classes of Silesia still lived in the dilapidated houses with mud walls and grass roofs of a hundred years ago, and their meager income made potatoes the only food on the table of many families.

The weavers who sat in front of the looms all day did not even have a decent set of clothes, and the life of extreme poverty made people abandon the bottom line of morality, many children were forced to go out and beg on the streets every day, and theft became an encouraged behavior.

With the development of the cotton textile industry, a large number of cheap and high-quality cotton cloth seized the linen market, causing the price of linen to plummet.

As industrialization progressed, the situation worsened, and the income of linen weavers fell dramatically.

At the same time, the Prussian government, due to financial constraints, failed to introduce effective policies to protect the local flax textile industry and weavers, and instead demanded that merchants and capitalists pay the same taxes as in previous years.

As a result, the working hours of the linen weavers continued to rise, their wages were often deducted, and they had to go into debt to live and work.

With the continuous development of science and technology, looms have become more and more advanced, and this small family unit workshop will inevitably be eliminated after all, and a large number of weavers continue to go bankrupt due to the inability to repay their debts.

These homeless people enter the urban factories and become so-called cheap labor. Unfortunately, Prussia's textile industry was born lame, and it suffered greatly from fluctuations in the price of cotton and fluctuations in the market.

In order to pass on this risk, businessmen and capitalists naturally racked their brains and tried all kinds of ways to exploit and squeeze the workers.

To make matters worse, the local administration, police, courts, and remedies were completely controlled by the Junker aristocratic landowners.

Wealthy textile merchants only had to pay a certain percentage of taxes, and decent nobles did not even pay taxes (nominally, but they could be passed on to others through a series of operations), while weavers had to pay a much higher proportion of taxes than those merchants, and had to bear all kinds of feudal obligations, military services, and special taxes.

This tax inequality has only exacerbated the local revolt.

In fact, in terms of income alone, the average salary of textile workers in Silesia was 150 florins/year, which was higher than the social average of Prussia at that time.

However, Silesia has the highest prices in Prussia, especially food, salt, coal and other necessities with an average premium of 30%, and more taxes than the rest of the country.

Alcohol is the only affordable commodity here, but instead of beer or wine, the locals drink spirits. At that time, spirits were synonymous with cheap liquor, also known as bad liquor, and the health condition of the locals who drank this liquor for a long time can be imagined.

The Prussian government was concerned about the decline of the Silesian economy, but several high-ranking officials in the past and behind it simply attributed it to the laziness, short-sightedness and lack of foresight of the lower classes.

But they overlooked an important factor, which was that the Prussian government did not create protective tariffs to protect its textile industry, but persuaded the German Customs Union to open the market to accept textiles from the British in exchange for the right to export timber and agricultural products to Britain.

Trade with Russia has long been the key to Prussia's wealth.

However, after 1833, the textile industry began to rise in the Russian-ruled region of "Greater Poland", and the Russians erected trade barriers for their own interests, cutting off the possibility of Prussian dumping to the east.

To add insult to injury, the Austrian Empire's recapture of Belgrade was a wake-up call to the Prussian leadership.

They believed that under the double blow of the local economic downturn and the decay of the leading industries, the Silesians were also likely to throw themselves into the arms of Austria without firing a shot, like the Serbs in Belgrade.

In reality, however, at first, the Silesians did not have much hope for a return to Austria due to religious concerns. However, as the economic and political environment deteriorated, and the influence of the Austrian Empire grew, some people had to reconsider the issue.

During the food crisis, due to the poor relief efforts of Prussian governments at all levels, many people had to choose to leave their homes.

On the contrary, Austria has initiated a large number of cash-for-work programs, and these projects do not mean that foreigners cannot participate, especially since it is not difficult for Germans to disguise themselves as Austrians.

In fact, the overseers had already been instructed to ignore the Germans from North Germany, and even Franz sent people to spread the news within the German Confederation.

Many of the younger friends may not know what a beggar is, nor do they know why there are beggars. It is a group of people who make a living by begging, living on people's handouts, usually begging for change and food, and were later eliminated by QR codes.

There are many reasons for beggars, mainly because of the loss of basic living conditions caused by some force majeure (natural disasters, epidemics, wars, etc.) and the road of begging.

According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, this type of beggar is mainly to meet their basic survival needs, that is, to be fed and clothed, so as not to starve to death and freeze to death. Once their basic survival needs can be satisfied, they generally give up begging for a new way of subsistence.

There are also professional beggars, but there are not many such beggars in Europe at this time. Of course, it was not that the Europeans were noble at that time, but that each country had introduced corresponding methods to deal with this group of people.

The British were whipped, fined, imprisoned, and sent to the colonies.

In Prussia, prison sentences began at six weeks and were punishable by up to five years in prison.

France: Forced labor, or direct dispatch to a psychiatric hospital.

On the one hand, the police and gendarmes rarely be cruel to children, and on the other hand, even if children are caught, they will only be sent to welfare homes or orphanages, not directly to prisons or colonies, except in the United Kingdom.

As a result, cash-for-work programs were a huge attraction for refugees in the German Confederation. At the same time, Franz is also promoting his own immigration plan, coming to Austria to plant land, willing to go overseas to develop colonies and additional subsidies.

Although the vast majority of refugees did not end up in Austria because they were disgusted with the loss, they brought back to their countries a great deal of information about the Austrian Empire, including the German version of "Against the Waves".

When they listened to it on the construction site, they didn't feel anything, and even when they learned to sing, they didn't feel anything, but when they returned to the "motherland", they found that they didn't know the meaning of the song when they first heard it, and they were already the people in the song when they listened to it again.

After a trip to the Austrian Empire, they returned to their hometown to find out what kind of life they were doing!

When a disaster strikes, the Imperial Government pays for the construction of the project for the affected civilians, which not only allows the victims to live with dignity, but also prevents the next disaster from coming.

On the one hand, they are left to fend for themselves, and on the other hand, they are doing everything they can to keep them alive.

(End of chapter)