Chapter 770: British Work-for-Relief

Island of Ireland, Queen Village.

Scathach Jennings has lost a lot of weight, and the food in the cellar has been distributed by each family.

She began to seriously consider going to the workhouse. Although she might be selected to be sent to Australia to marry a criminal, there was really no food to eat at home.

The two younger brothers were starving to the point of being skin and bones. Among the two younger sisters, 13-year-old Ella was fine, but 3-year-old Holica was often hungry and couldn't sleep. Her eyes were deeply sunken and looked a little scary.

The eldest brother Patrit was away from home all day, and all the farm work fell on his parents. Robbers began to appear in the countryside, and those people specialized in robbing the poor villages.

After all, the landlords had dogs, guns, and bodyguards at home, but the poor usually didn't have these. Robbing the latter was obviously much safer than robbing the former.

So there were more and more poor people. At first, their village would try to provide relief, but as the food in the church cellar became less and less, they could only choose to watch coldly, because they themselves could not survive.

Finally, the robbers came to Queen Village, but fortunately there were guns and gunpowder in the cellar of the church. The men in the village took up arms and fought desperately. After fighting for a night, no robbers dared to come to the village to make trouble.

In fact, the villagers generally don't know how to shoot, and most of them have night blindness. If the robbers don't hold torches, the villagers don't know where to shoot.

In fact, the villagers who came to rob were villagers from other villages. They just wanted to live but didn't plan to fight desperately. If they were really desperate, they wouldn't dare to rob only the poor village, after all, the farmers didn't have much money.

However, the fierce battle that night woke up the surrounding landlords, and then they began to pay to hire children and women from various families to work in their own manors.

Not only gave money, but also food, so the villagers were just hungry, not starving to death, or begging on the street.

Of course, no one would take risks, and the two sides always lived in peace.

Scathach likes to clean dishes, tables, mirrors, or other things, because there is money to be made, two pence and a quarter a day, and a bowl of rye soup.

Although the rye soup is actually made of horse feed, it can be seen that the Baron is very reluctant to leave and always shouts angrily, or wipes tears silently.

However, the Baroness is the opposite. Lady Jasmine has no children, so she likes the children in the village very much.

And Lady Jasmine always warns the Baron that these wages and rye porridge for the children are necessary if he doesn't want to be chopped up and fed to pigs one day, or buried in the ground as fertilizer.

Scathach doesn't quite understand this sentence. After all, in her heart, the Baron is the most powerful person in the ten miles and eight villages.

In fact, the Queen Village did not continue to grow potatoes, but chose to grow other high-yield crops. Although the yield is not as high as potatoes, it can barely fill the stomach, and the workers can get some money, so they can barely survive.

Franz's exhortation was successful to a certain extent. In fact, the research on Bordeaux liquid to prevent and treat potato late blight has also been proven to be feasible.

However, the industrial capacity of the Austrian Empire was limited at this time. Although there was no problem in supplying the extremely small area of ​​the disaster-stricken area in its own country, they might not be able to afford the price to sell it to other countries.

Moreover, Bordeaux liquid is not a high-end industrial product. It is very easy to imitate, and it is a piece of cake for the great powers.

So Franz is ready to enjoy the technological dividend for a while and does not intend to let it spread too early.

Franz walked all the way on the land of Ireland, and was generally disappointed. He hardly saw any shadow of resistance.

Instead, he encountered people who dared to jump out and rob the caravan. In fact, if they had a little knowledge, they would not attack a caravan of this size.

This is not because the caravan is too large or the goods sold are strange, but mainly because there are too many people. After all, merchants are profit-seeking and usually do not hire too many people.

A large number of people usually means that the things above are very important, or the people are very important, which is not something that ordinary robbers can deal with.

Generally speaking, as long as a few shots are fired, the robbers who block the road will flee.

Franz also saw some public works, which were different from the past and were very similar to those in Austria, except that they were expected to provide 10,000 jobs, but the actual number of victims was too large, so the establishment had to be expanded again and again.

In the end, the establishment was expanded to 440,000, but the budget did not increase by a penny, and the result was naturally imaginable.

What's more terrible is that due to the crazy rise in food prices, the salary that was theoretically enough to support a family has become two pence, and in some areas it is even only one pence a day. This price cannot even hire a child laborer in London.

Moreover, most of the power of the work-for-relief project is held by bureaucrats and local councils. Seeing so many laborers, they naturally expanded the scale of the project, which is the so-called intensity.

However, at this time, most of the Irish people had already been tortured by famine and were malnourished and exhausted. These people were either skinny or swollen, and they could not bear high-intensity physical labor at all.

As a result, a strange phenomenon occurred: the work-for-relief project, which had a hot application and strict review, ended up as a sit-in protest.

As a result, the British approach not only failed to solve the famine problem, but also led to a large number of bad projects in Ireland. Franz felt that these projects would be unfinished in a short time.

After all, the amount of work has far exceeded the government's budget, and the local authorities do not want to make up the difference.

Theoretically, this wrangling should have an end, but soon the whole of Britain will step into a greater crisis, a crisis they themselves planned.

"It seems that the British learn very quickly."

Franz sighed.

"But they don't seem to have learned the essence, and they don't seem to want to save the Irish.

Your Highness, look at the wheat, cattle, and sheep outside the window. The British are fully capable of solving the famine problem in Ireland, and the so-called famine should not even exist.

There is no need for you to come here. It is the British who should be condemned. If you send the grain parked at the dock to the country, the people will definitely thank you for your kindness."

Archbishop Rauscher said earnestly, and Franz just smiled and did not answer.

It is true that the ship carrying grain is parked on the shore, but how can those hungry people with only a few pennies in their hands afford it?

In the past two years, the price of grain in Britain has risen by 75%. In fact, the price of grain in Britain has been rising since 1840, and it rose by 46% in 1844 compared with 1840.

Although the price of grain in the Austrian Empire fluctuated, the trend has always been downward since 1840, and by the autumn of 1846, the price had fallen by 5%.

As a result, the price of grain in Austria is less than half of that in Britain.

Continuing to send grain from these colonies to Austria will not increase happiness, but will make the farmers of the Austrian Empire hate it.