Chapter 347 — The Behemoth

"More will come later," Gawaine stated the fact in a flat tone. "People like apothecaries belong to the relatively well-off stratum among commoners, so their tolerance for 'unemployment' is stronger. They won't, like the mine laborers of Tamsen Town, go bankrupt en masse the moment mining machinery is in place. The apothecaries and alchemists arriving in the territory now should be only those who were poor to begin with and had little saved; once they failed to get orders at the start of spring, they went bankrupt quickly. Those who still have savings or a steady clientele... will be driven here one after another as alchemical potions become more widespread."

Tyr was poking at the food before her with the tip of her tail. It seemed she had finally given up the notion of eating and was instead preparing to absorb the food with her tail. Having listened in on Gawaine's and Heidi's conversation, she now remarked pensively: "Actually, the earlier you go bankrupt at a time like this, the luckier you are. They still have time to get into the factories and secure a post. Given factory production efficiency, those later apothecaries probably won't even qualify to enter the factories, will they? After all, I hear a reaction line that big needs only seven people to run, and its output is about equal to eight thousand apothecaries put together..."

As an outsider from a more advanced civilization, Tyr saw many things in Cecil Territory very clearly. Though siren society differed greatly from human society, she had, after all, witnessed the rise and fall of many a civilization on land, and from experience she could make out a thing or two.

"Industrialization is a behemoth, with an appetite more ravenous than that behemoth Typhoon," Gawaine said unhurriedly. "Typhoon gained progress through its transformation, but it also needs to devour more resources and population to complete its final transition. The progress brought by Cecil Territory's arcane industry is even more rapid than Typhoon's, and what it must devour... will of course be more as well. Traditional handicrafts, small economies, traditional agriculture... all are its nourishment."

"Factories eat people," Heidi said softly all at once. "You told me that saying long ago, but at the time I didn't understand it at all... Now I'm beginning to. Those factories... so they produce such great chain reactions."

"Yes, factories do eat people, especially when uncontrolled; they will burn human flesh and blood as fuel, almost," Gawaine said as he bent his head to cut the food on his plate, while in his mind rose all the phenomena of a society's transformation from agrarian to industrial, and how dreadful the consequences of uncontrolled "factories eating people" would be. "That is why we must set the chains and fences to control this behemoth from the very start. Whether it is establishing a sound system of worker protections, or making early provision for displaced populations, or preparing, alongside industrial development, sufficient surrounding jobs able to absorb the landless and unemployed—all are necessary measures for controlling this behemoth."

Amber stared blankly at Gawaine for a moment, then blinked. "No wonder you laid down all those strange rules when you were building those factories... So you'd already thought through everything that was going to happen back then?"

"I had to think it through, or the factories would turn around and devour all the gains we've striven for to this day," Gawaine said, glancing at her. "When people have only two choices—to work themselves to death inside a factory or starve to death outside one—then everything we've done is meaningless, and this world is as wretched as it ever was."

Gawaine's words set the hearts of those present at ease, but he himself knew there were still some things he had left unsaid.

The "control measures" he had laid down could indeed ease the various contradictions that arose after industry destroyed the traditional handicraft and agrarian order, but their effect was only to ease them. Especially in this world, where the existence of magical power made any technological breakthrough liable to produce exceptionally powerful, exceptionally direct effects; the time from blueprint to finished product for great quantities of machinery was very short, and the pace from concept to mass production of industrial goods was extremely fast as well. So the power of industrialization was magnified accordingly, and the pressure brought by the great mass of handicraft workers bankrupted by the collapse of the old social order would probably not be so easily relieved.

So how should this surplus pressure be eased and redirected?

In Gawaine's heart, a series of names quietly surfaced...