IBTCPOTME Novel - Chapter 111
Chapter 111
Key Cities and Capitalists (5)
The Basic Labor Law was passed.
From my perspective as someone from the modern era, it’s a law with many shortcomings, but I need to apply standards that are appropriate for the time.
‘A minimum wage would be too much, but should I have included a requirement to write employment contracts…’
No. It’s still 1843.
Even the law that was just passed is quite progressive for this era.
If I added more, it would be difficult to handle the backlash, and it could actually have a negative impact on industrialization.
The things I’m thinking about aren’t that great by modern standards, but our competitors in Mexico are the United States, where labor laws don’t exist, and England, where there are very limited labor laws.
In this world, where the law of the jungle prevails, falling behind in industrialization could have terrible consequences.
I always prefer to start small and develop steadily, rather than using radical methods, so this is a satisfactory bill for me.
“Has the number of capitalists buying peons decreased?”
It’s been a month since the bill was passed. I instructed the intelligence corps to investigate the trend of peon trading right after the bill was passed.
They say that they’re trading ‘bonds’ and it’s different from trading people, but in the end, it’s the same thing, people are being transferred.
“It hasn’t decreased much.”
The agent answered, taking a document from his pocket and politely handing it to me.
It was a report.
“It hasn’t decreased much? …Really. This bill must have been quite a loss for factory owners who use peons?”
Factory owners and landowners who hire ordinary workers wouldn’t be hit hard, but the incentive for factory owners to buy peons would definitely have decreased.
“It seems that many factory owners have learned a new method of buying peons’ bonds from landowners and making them work, as a result of this incident. In fact, what used to happen secretly only in factories near Mexico City is happening nationwide.”
Ugh.
They’re saying they’ve learned a good method.
“···Even so, the limitation on working hours and the additional pay for night work. Those two are fatal, aren’t they?”
“There’s a reaction that the limitation on working hours is definitely a big hit, but even so, they say there’s still an incentive because they can force them to work for wages that are overwhelmingly lower than ordinary workers. The original wages were just pocket change, so the additional pay for night work naturally becomes pocket change too.”
The amount of additional pay wasn’t fixed. It was decided to give them an amount that corresponds to a certain percentage of their original wages.
But since there’s no minimum wage system, the peons’ wages are ridiculously low, so they’re useless, because they have to accept the employer’s conditions to survive.
Then, isn’t this a failure?
We even went as far as to incite a large-scale protest to get this Basic Labor Law passed.
“···”
“W..Well, there’s a safety measure provision, so if someone dies from overwork at the workplace, the employer will have to pay a huge fine or even be imprisoned, so the working environment itself will be much better than before. Isn’t that right?”
Diego, who had been quietly listening to me and the agent, stepped forward when I looked serious.
It’s definitely a valid point. The peons’ wages might remain the same, but the working environment could improve.
“Yes, that’s right. The Basic Labor Law also has a punishment provision, so it’s impossible to ignore it. In fact, it seems that each factory is devising its own measures.”
“Okay. Then that’s fortunate. Diego, that was a good point.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
Workers’ rights are important and should be protected, but it’s not a simple concept where higher is always better.
Workers’ rights are problematic if they’re too weak or too strong. Right now, they don’t even exist, so creating them is a good thing in itself, but if we raise workers’ rights too much to solve the suffering that peons are experiencing, it could have major side effects.
It’s difficult to raise them in the current situation, but lowering them after raising them would be tens or hundreds of times more difficult.
“In the end, we need to come up with a strategy to solve the peon problem itself.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“I agree.”
The intelligence corps agent and Diego agreed when I said that, after pondering in silence for a moment.
As a result of this incident, capitalists, whose size had been rapidly increasing since a few years ago, but whose political influence was weak compared to that, began to gain political influence.
There are quite a few cases where landowners transformed into capitalists or received investments from landowners, but they don’t make up the majority.
In other words, for me, it’s like capitalists have been added to the landowners and the church, as a force that’s likely to oppose the policies I’m planning.
‘I need to respond to them… But there are quite a few capitalists who are royalist.’
Many of the royalists are investing in or running businesses with me, and even if they’re not, they’re either related to my businesses or have received investments from my investment company.
It’s more likely that they’ll be divided like landowners, into royalists, landowners, and republicans, rather than a single unified force that we can just consider as enemies.
If that’s the case, the merits of being a royalist are not insignificant. First, there’s no one in this Mexican Empire who runs a bigger business than me, I’m leading various land development projects, and I own a huge investment company.
‘If I play my cards right, it could even be an opportunity.’
***
The construction of Chihuahua City is progressing smoothly. The construction of the sewer system, which can be considered the most difficult part because it’s the first time, is progressing slowly but steadily, and the chemical factory to produce disinfectants is also being built well.
“···So, city planning needs to consider systematic city expansion from the beginning,”
“I see.”
So I’m teaching the Ministry of Land officials, just like I taught the architects on site. This includes the Minister of Land, who is the head of the Ministry of Land.
The Ministry of Land, a new ministry in the executive branch, is a department that handles land development-related tasks, such as railroads, dams and irrigation systems, and planned city construction. It should have existed long ago, considering that all of this was previously handled by the Ministry of Finance.
When I pushed for the establishment of the Ministry of Land, I strongly argued that we should have officials who know the practicalities, so many people from construction companies were assigned to the Ministry of Land.
Of those, many were from Ortega Construction, and I sent those who wanted to go. The Minister’s position was also taken by someone from Ortega Construction, instead of the Prime Minister’s candidate.
‘To think that someone who used to bang a wooden hammer with me in Sacramento would become the Minister.’
The Minister of Land was one of the 30 carpenters who were there when we first built the settlement in Sacramento, but he worked at Ortega Construction for a long time and rose to the position of Minister of Land.
He asked me questions without hesitation, as he had already learned from me many times.
“But Your Highness, if we take Chihuahua City as an example, the area under construction is already more than five times the size of the old city, and we don’t know if that space will be filled as planned. In this situation, wouldn’t it be wasteful to plan for further expansion in advance?”
“It could be wasteful. As you pointed out, we might not need the expansion plan, and the plan we’ve made in advance could become useless due to technological advancements or changes in various natural, social, and economic conditions, and we might have to make a new one. But even so, it’s better to accept the possibility of waste than to have ‘urban sprawl’ (Dispersión urbana), where the city expands disorderly without any planning.”
“You mean ‘urban sprawl’ (Dispersión urbana)?”
“Yeah. Think about the outskirts of Mexico City and Veracruz harbor.”
“Oh… I see.”
Rodrigo, the Minister of Land, understood immediately.
When you say urban sprawl, it’s easy to imagine the image of huge detached housing developments in the United States, ‘spreading out’ around the city center, but it’s a term that refers to all unplanned urban expansion, including that.
“Urban sprawl is a phenomenon that we need to be wary of, even more than the waste you’re worried about. It’s developed without planning, so many problems are not considered, such as the environment, transportation, land use efficiency, and economic imbalances. And the biggest problem is that it’s really difficult to redevelop land that’s been developed that way, so that it can be used efficiently again.”
“Hmm… I see. There are people living there.”
“That’s right. The reason why you have to get permission to build buildings in Mexico City and Veracruz now is for that reason.”
Industrialization is now underway, so you might say it’s too early to be worried about this. In fact, urban sprawl occurs after the widespread adoption of cars in the mid-20th century.
The problem is that it’s very difficult to redevelop areas that have been developed without planning. Not only in Korea, but also in developed countries, there are many areas that have been developed unplanned and inefficiently in important locations, and it’s not easy to redevelop those areas. Even though they are important locations, many problems are intertwined, and even the government has given up on some areas.
It’s not a serious phenomenon, but it’s true that urban sprawl is happening now, and there’s no reason for me, as someone from the modern era who knows the side effects, not to be wary of it.
It’s a matter of creating a city expansion plan and guiding it to expand accordingly, so we just need more manpower in the Ministry of Land, but our government isn’t short of money, so that’s something we can easily accept.
‘Just because the country is huge doesn’t mean we can develop it haphazardly.’
As the crown prince and a civil engineer from my previous life, the country I want to create isn’t just a hegemon where Mexico takes the place of the United States.
It’s meaningful to create a country that’s safer, healthier, more efficient, and more beautiful than the United States.
I was a civil engineer, and the only thing I know about city planning is the theory I learned when all the architecture-related departments were merged in my previous life, but that’s something.
It’s knowledge you can’t buy for a fortune in this era. I need to teach them as much as I can before I forget more.
***
“Your Highness, I have a report that preparations will be completed soon.”
Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo reported. He came in person because it was an important matter.
It’s something we’ve been preparing for over the past few years, investing a lot of budget and manpower.
The second revolution, after France, will take place in Haiti.
“Can we guide them towards joining our Mexico?”
“Yes, Your Highness. We’ve been working steadily in Haiti, and especially in the former Spanish colonial areas, where people have a lot of resentment towards Haitian rule, they’re so dissatisfied that they’ll explode if we just light a match.”
It was about the residents of the eastern part of Hispaniola, or the Dominican Republic in my previous life. For a long time, the western part of the island was a French colony, and the eastern part was a Spanish colony, but in 1795, Spain ceded the eastern part of Hispaniola to France in the Treaty of Basel.
Haiti’s independence was centered in the western part of Hispaniola. The eastern region was politically unstable for several years after independence, and the Haitian independent government didn’t actually control the eastern region.
The actual change happened in 1821. The eastern part of the island declared independence and formed an autonomous government, but this government ended in 1822 when Jean-Pierre Boyer, president of Haiti, occupied the eastern region with the goal of unifying the entire island.
Since then, for over 20 years, they’ve been under Haitian rule, accumulating dissatisfaction, and that dissatisfaction is about to explode in a very favorable direction for our Mexican Empire.
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