Chapter 92 Immigration
The recruitment of immigrant workers that day went extremely smoothly. After lunch, the working group went to the servant market. The reserved quota of 100 people was already filled, and many people were surrounding the dental dealer to ask if they would still accept more people. The dental dealer, in accordance with what the working group had previously explained, only said that today's quota is full, and anyone who wants to ask for a meal should come early tomorrow. As for those who have received the bamboo chips, they have been notified to bring their luggage and wait for the owner tomorrow afternoon. Then they will make arrangements to take a boat to the destination.
Although the tooth merchant's voice was hoarse from exhaustion, he was still quite excited to receive seven taels of silver in the most part of the day: "Today's recruitment of workers went so smoothly. Can you continue tomorrow?"
"Of course we have to continue. We need people for a long time. Just do your best." Maliko thought about it and added: "In the future, you don't have to emphasize that when you recruit people, they will farm and reclaim wasteland. We will also hire people who don't know how to farm. Yes. In addition, if you can recruit various craftsmen or people with special skills, the cost can be calculated separately.”
"The age of workers can also be lowered, and we also need children." Qiu Yuan also added helpfully.
In the executive committee's population introduction plan, in addition to the labor force, children are also a very important category. The Executive Committee believes that if we want to cultivate a group of absolutely loyal naturalized citizens within ten years, then children whose views have not yet been finalized are undoubtedly the best targets, so we also specifically requested the working group to train a large number of them if conditions permit. Bring in school-age children.
In view of the current mixed situation of multi-ethnic students in the schools run by the public, the teaching content is still mainly Chinese literacy and conversation, followed by teaching some basic mathematical operations, and the remaining courses are basically brainwashing content. The high-level image of the Executive Committee is constantly promoted from different angles and in different ways, so that these students subconsciously develop the consciousness that "the decisions of the Executive Committee must be correct and the orders of the Executive Committee must be obeyed." The Military and Police Department, which has always been eyeing the importation of people, is said to have included the Boy Scouts program in its agenda. Of course, the Military and Police Department’s plan to train Boy Scouts is not to push child soldiers to the battlefield in a short period of time, but to establish a military school-style management organization to partially replace ordinary schools that currently have a serious shortage of teachers.
That night, the Cliff Office contacted the base camp and reported in detail the progress of the labor immigration work, and requested the Executive Committee to send a ship to the designated location to accept immigrants the next day. The Executive Committee is also very satisfied with the progress of the work of the Cliff Office. It has provided timely information on the market trends of glass products to the base camp. Currently, the Ministry of Industry is working overtime to build a glass kiln, which will be put into small-scale production in about a week. Now that the population issue that the Executive Committee is most concerned about has also achieved a breakthrough, it naturally agreed to their request and said that the hot water boiler mentioned by the Cliff Office was already under construction and could be shipped next week at the latest. In Yazhou, samples of newly baked glassware will also be sent there.
The next day Maliko and Qiu Yuan went to the servant market again. As expected, there were much fewer people than the previous day. They only recruited more than ten people in the morning. In the afternoon, the people who had come to apply for the army the day before appeared outside the market one after another with their luggage. The dental merchants counted heads, which was not much different from the day before. Seeing that the appointed time had arrived, they and Ma Qiu took this group with them. The immigrants headed for the southern coast.
This time the Executive Committee sent the "Lightning" and the Guangzhou ship where the pirates were captured last time to load people. It was the first time for the Naga merchants and these immigrants to see such a strange-looking sailing ship as the "Lightning". Amazed. Most of the immigrants were loaded onto the Guangzhou ship, filling the cabin to the brim. Only a few women and children boarded the "Lightning" and were lucky enough to enjoy this yacht trip.
After Malico had a simple handover with Wang Tom, who was leading the team, he watched the two ships unload their anchors and raise their sails, then slowly sail away from the coast and sail eastward. This fleet will also stop at Tianya and Fenghuang on the way back to bring some migrant workers recruited locally back to the Sanya base camp.
The workers who came to apply were originally a little uneasy about the prospect. After all, everything they knew came from the mouth of the dental dealer, and it was difficult to say how credible it was. But after coming to the beach and seeing these two large ships, the workers' originally uneasy hearts gradually calmed down. Several relatively articulate Hainanese natives were also arranged on the ship. Throughout the voyage, they continued to preach to the newcomers the various immigration policies of the "Haihan Executive Committee". The content was basically the same as the commune system and labor hierarchy. To encourage these newcomers to join the commune and exchange long-term service for various preferential treatment from the executive committee.
The effectiveness of this propaganda plan has been verified many times in the Sanya area. Although the people on board the ship were people who had never been to Sanya, the tempting propaganda they heard had already convinced them I have a longing for the destination - the executive committee is in charge of the sky, the land, food, housing, birth, old age, sickness and death, and the children's education. After a few years of hard labor, they can be assigned a piece of land of their own. What else can be demanding?
Of course, there are also many people who have doubts. Before they saw it with their own eyes, it was hard to believe that there was such a place in Ming Dynasty. The social system it followed seemed completely different from the environment they lived in in the past. It is still difficult for them to judge whether it is good or bad to live in such a place, whether it is a life-saving straw or the beginning of another nightmare. Since the Guangzhou ship itself was not very fast, and it was full of people, the "Lightning" had to slow down and wait for the Guangzhou ship to follow. If the "Lightning" were to perform the mission alone, then half a day would be enough for it to run back and forth between Victory Port and Yazhou. But with the speed of the ship now, I'm afraid it would have to wait until dark before it could arrive.
Slowly and hurriedly along the way, the fleet finally rounded Yulinjiao before sunset and sailed into Victory Harbor. The sleepy immigrants in the cabin were woken up and told that they had arrived. They packed their belongings and lined up on the deck to get off the ship.
When these immigrants got on the deck, the first thing they noticed was without exception the "New World" docked in the port. The side of this huge ship was slightly higher than the top of the mast of the Guangzhou ship. The mountain-like hull made all the immigrants who saw this scene stunned and opened their mouths in surprise. Although many of them had lived on the seaside for a long time, no one had ever imagined that they could build such a huge ship. Next to this huge ship, there was also a row of strange ships without masts and sails docked, each of which was larger than the Guangzhou ship he was riding on.
Next to these strange ships, hundreds of people are working on the coast, carrying baskets of sand and gravel to a construction site that extends into the sea, filling the originally winding coast with a straight line, and this construction site runs east and west along the coast. Stretching out, the range is as long as a hundred feet. Those with sharp eyes have already figured out the clue. This is clearly a large dock being built. It seems that the boasts about the "Haihan Executive Committee" that I just heard on the ship were not made up casually.
At present, the main work of the hydropower station in the upper reaches of the Tiandu River is nearly completed. The remaining work is mainly to hoist the generator and conduct power generation debugging. The labor required is not too much, so the construction of the Victory Port Pier was finally put on the agenda by the Executive Committee. Priority location. In terms of project volume, this wharf is larger than the hydropower station due to part of the reclamation process. However, the terrain here is open, making it easy to use various construction machinery, and the technical content is relatively low, so the construction is actually smaller than that of smaller projects. Hydropower plants are faster. The Ministry of Construction estimates that one-third of the terminal will be put into use by the end of this month and will be basically completed next month.
Of course, due to current conditions, although the new wharf's sturdiness and docking tonnage greatly exceed that of the previous temporary floating wharf, piling and rock filling are still the main construction methods and require constant repairs. The Ministry of Construction plans to wait until the cement production can be guaranteed in the future, but still have to carry out cement solidification and renovation of the entire terminal again to reduce the workload of daily maintenance.
When the ship finally docked, the immigrants found a group of people running over in neat lines. With a whistle, these people stopped in unison, and then quickly formed a formation on the pier. , forming a rectangular encirclement, and the opening of the encirclement is facing the trestle where the immigrants will land. These people wore colorful short-breasted jackets, leggings trousers, and green short-brimmed hats. They held a round shield with a diameter of about one foot and two inches in their left hands, and a short black stick about a foot and a half long in their right hand. Although this group of people did not hold swords and guns in their hands, there was an invisible pressure emanating from their movements, which made the immigrants on the ship remain silent for a while.
This team that was transferred to maintain order on the dock were naturally naturalized soldiers who had been in the new barracks for some time. Of course, it is still too early to call this group of people "soldiers". The military training they have received is far from meeting the military standards set by the Military and Police Department. At most, they can only perform the tasks at hand and serve as riot control teams to maintain law and order. or patrol constables, upon whom the Executive Committee would form the basis of the indigenous policing apparatus. Another group of personnel with higher overall quality continued to stay in the recruit camp to receive firearms training and some basic tactical training. Those were the real first batch of naturalized soldiers.
"Everyone lines up to disembark and sit down in our designated area to wait for arrangements. No loud noises are allowed, and no walking around! Violators will be punished with more than three days of hard labor for disturbing public order..." The big horn on the dock suddenly rang. It frightened the immigrants who were disembarking from the boat. Some people looked around, wondering who could have such a loud voice that could make people's ears buzz from a distance.
(End of chapter)