Chapter 367: A Small Step for the Forerunner
Emperors and generals have their overt and covert struggles, while ordinary people have their own lives.
In early July, while Frederick was waiting for a reply from the city of Cologne on the farm, Chestnut Village was filled with visitors.
The village built a spacious wooden house specifically for the steam tractor. Today, the large door was full of people, and a three-headed dog kept running around the 100-horsepower steam tractor.
Angela was so nervous that she almost cried, because Miss Maria von Ertal, the fiancée of Duke Wesson, was standing aside, and behind her was the Minister of Administration Frick. Behind him stood Omet, the governor of Wessen, and next to him was Walter, the president of the Wessen Daily newspaper and Frederick's teacher of grammar, rhetoric and logic.
Last month, the news that Angela signed up to learn how to use tractors took up a spot in the newspaper. Frederick saw it and prepared a front-page headline for her in the press release he left before leaving.
The articles written by Frederick himself in the newspaper were all about administrative directions and policies. Over the years, there was only one big thief who had personally written a front-page headline for a specific person.
The biggest leader attaches great importance to it, the top management pays more attention to it, the middle management pays special attention to it, and the grassroots level trembles with fear.
Angela was notified the day before. She didn’t sleep well last night. When she started working today, she found that she had forgotten her pen.
Maria saw from the side that her hand holding the writing board began to tremble, so she took out her pen and handed it over, and whispered: "Don't be nervous, since you already have a tractor driver's license, it means you don't have a tractor driver's license." The problem is, I didn’t even pass the exam.”
Angela suddenly felt as if her soul had taken a hot bath on a snowy day. It was so warm that her anxiety and uneasiness disappeared without a trace.
Omet was well-informed and sighed in his heart. Miss Eltar cast a spell to calm down Angela without saying a word. Her skills in soul magic were terrifying.
Angela nodded to Maria and clamped the pen on the writing board. The writing board had a strap that was slung across the body like a shoulder bag. It contained inspection records before and after the tractor and harvester were used. surface.
The water level in the boiler is normal;
The water level in the water tank is normal;
The amount of oil in the lubricating oil cup is normal;
The magic crystal has sufficient energy;
There is no condensed water in the steam pipe and cylinder;
The main screws are not loose;
The valve opens and closes normally;
The tightness of the chain is normal;
The flywheel and gears rotate normally;
……
Angra writes down every inspection on the record sheet, and repeatedly confirms that the tractor has not been inspected. Question, turn on the fire to boil the water, and then check the harvester.
The power wheel, transmission gear and chain of the harvester are normal, the dial wheel rotates normally, the double-layer saw teeth were removed and polished two days ago, and the conveyor belt is fine. The entire harvester is now in transportation status, and the connecting frame Already attached to the hitch on the back of the tractor.
The pointer of the boiler pressure gauge gradually rotates from the yellow area to the middle of the green area.
Angra opened the steam supply valve, and the hot steam rushed into the pipe, all the way to the cylinder, and pushed open the piston that was blocking its own expansion.
The flywheel quickly spun and the steam engine made a rhythmic sound.
Omet asked everyone in the warehouse to get out, and the people at the door also moved out of the way.
Maria came to the wheat field and waited for a while, then curiously asked Omet: "Why hasn't Angela come out yet?"
Ogilvy replied: "After the machine is started, it must run without load for a quarter of an hour. Make sure there are no problems before starting to use it. The time is almost up."
Not long after, after three whistles, An Guerra drove the tractor out, made a perfect turn on the road, and came to a stop on the side of the road in the corner of the wheat field.
Several farmers and peasant women immediately went over and loaded up the harvester being dragged behind under the command of Angela.
The village chief directed several carriages and mule carts to park nearby. Many people were ready to transport the wheat away immediately after it was cut.
Everything was ready. After a long whistle, the tractor moved forward slowly.
The wheels of the harvester started to rotate and began to provide power. The three-meter-long wheat dialing wheel moved the wheat in front. The sawtooth blade moving left and right below cut off the wheat straw. The cut wheat was poured on the canvas conveyor belt and passed to the left where it fell. In the compartment behind the carriage. Someone on the carriage caught the fallen wheat and placed them in the same direction as the stalks and ears. The driver on the carriage adjusted their relative positions so that they could be placed more conveniently.
When the car is full, the people on the car put up the fence at one end of the conveyor belt to block the wheat and then asked the driver to go quickly. When the next car came, the people on the car opened the fence. .
Angra carefully maintained the speed of the tractor. Except for a slightly slower speed when changing carriages, it was basically fixed. If it was slower, it would affect efficiency, and if it was faster, the carriage would not be able to keep up.
A decadent-looking man stood next to a vegetable field more than a hundred meters away, looking at his daughter who was concentrating on work on the tractor from a distance, with a rare smile on his face.
Frick walked over at some point and gave the man a kick on the butt like two farmers joking with each other. He whispered: "Your family is lucky. Since your father is the soldier led by me, I’m going to take the village chief certificate this year and arrange for him to become a village chief in a new territory before I retire.” , but now Frederick requires that to be the village chief, he must pass the exam, at least he cannot be a horse manure bag who does not understand farming.
Although this man was punished by Frederick, it has been so long that he probably can’t remember it, and the Executive Yuan has no relevant files. Moreover, the story of “knowing shame and then being brave” is in line with the current publicity. As long as you get the certificate There is room for maneuver.
Flick will retire in a few years, and this kindness may still be passed on to his descendants in the future.
In the wheat field, the tractor quickly finished harvesting all the way. Angela breathed a sigh of relief and began to turn clockwise to harvest the other side.
People in the surrounding villages also breathed a sigh of relief. Because of the conscription, no one drove a tractor. Now that someone is there, they can ask her to help during the harvest at the end of the month.
Someone found Angela’s mother, and she talked with them about wages with a smile on her face.
“[Wesson collar swears]!” She had a bad temper, “Why is my daughter’s salary less than other men who drive tractors?”
“Is it because she drives slowly? Ditching? "
"Since the work is the same, if you want to treat my daughter, you have to pay the same price as those men, and you will get a pig knuckle for lunch!"
She looked at Walter, who was watching the excitement, and asked: "Master newspaper, do you think this is true?"
Walter had dealt with a lot of news about hiring people to do farm work during busy farming periods, and he was very concerned about market prices. Some people know that men have always been paid more than women.
At first he felt that it was normal for Angela's wages to be lower than those of other male tractor drivers, but he immediately thought that the difference in wages between men and women was caused by the difference in the amount of labor results caused by the difference in physical strength. If the difference in physical strength If the results of labor are no longer affected, there should be no difference in wages paid based on results.
As a famous rhetorician and logician, Walter used beautiful words and impeccable logic to explain to Angela’s mother and others that Angela’s wages should be the same as those of other male tractor drivers.
Then those farmers didn’t understand.
When Walter explained clearly, Angela had already harvested half of the wheat field.
Angela's mother said: "Oh, we understand if you say you charge piecework like cross stitch."
"In other words, the same so many fields, whether it is a man or a woman , it’s the same price after cutting, right?”
Walter was a little hurt, thinking that what he just said was enough to be included in the textbooks of rhetoric and logic, but they didn’t understand.
The news outline left by Frederick included other people's opinions of Angela. Walter needed to collect it on the spot and fill it in, so he wrote it on the front page.
Then Wesson exploded.
In mid-July, when Frederick returned to Weissenburg after completing the negotiations, he found that newspapers and magazines were mired in controversy.
There are three battlefields: whether women can work outside the home like men, whether men and women should receive the same pay for doing the same work, and whether "farmers can understand" is a new direction in the development of rhetoric.
The debate was so fierce that Frederick saw many familiar names, even foreign emperors and princesses.
(End of this chapter)