Chapter 239: The Age of Steam (7)
The nineteenth century.
The brightest-burning age in human history.
Once the Industrial Revolution, represented by the steam locomotive, had truly entered full stride, so many inventions and great discoveries followed that they were nearly beyond counting, advancing society in the blink of an eye.
The demons called famine and epidemic disease, which had tormented humanity for such a long time, were crushed not by the miracle called faith, to which humanity had clung all that while, but by a new weapon so magical it seemed like sorcery: sufficiently advanced science.
The boy who had climbed into a carriage holding his father’s hand in childhood became a young man and boarded a locomotive holding his fiancée’s hand, then in middle age boarded a steel passenger ship holding his child’s hand, and in old age closed his eyes holding the hand of a grandchild who had made a career as an airplane pilot.
Beyond the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, beyond the Amazon in South America, all the way to the Arctic.
Humanity prospered, spread outward, and prospered again.
It would not be an exaggeration to say it was the time when the campfire called civilization, around which humanity warmed itself, burned brightest.
Yet what burned as fuel for that brilliant flame humanity basked in was humanity itself.
The nineteenth century.
The darkest and bleakest age in human history.
A child discarded beneath a bridge by a couple too poor to survive began cleaning chimneys with a brush and a bucket as soon as he learned to walk.
His pay for breathing in choking chimney smoke all day and smearing soot across his face was three coins. Enough to vanish after breakfast and supper.
But as time passed and the child became a boy, and could no longer fit inside chimneys, he could no longer earn even those three coins.
The boy now began crawling beneath textile machinery to gather scraps of thread that had fallen under the machines.
Beneath machines where terrifying saw blades and cutting blades constantly sliced through fabric, unfortunate victims would occasionally appear right beside him.
But by good fortune, unlike the other boys, he reached manhood without losing a finger or a wrist.
Now the young man no longer lay beneath machines to work. Instead, he spent twelve hours standing before them, then spent the night in a one-coin lodging where people slept hanging from ropes.
Until when?
Until he died.
Until he entered the rough, cheap wooden coffin given to him after a life spent working without a moment’s rest from the day he was born.
He was fuel.
An age when it was taken for granted that people oppressed other people at gunpoint and swordpoint.
An age when hierarchies existed, broadly between race and race, narrowly between person and person.
An age when people no longer saw other people as human, but as expendable goods or things barely adjacent to humanity.
That age had shone brilliantly by burning him as fuel.
And now.
All of that was about to begin before my eyes.
If I merely observed, the world would probably change more or less the way I had crammed into my head while studying for the CSAT.
If I intervened, well. Honestly, I didn’t know.
Normally, Napoleon Bonaparte should have become Emperor by now and been out waging wars, but the fact that he was still getting his joints kicked by his superiors made it obvious that the axis of history had already twisted enormously. If I interfered even more here, how could I possibly know what would happen?
Who knew? Maybe later those North Korean bastards would hang my portrait alongside Marx, Kim Il Sung, and Lenin in front of the Juche Palace and the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery.
…Come to think of it, Marx was also born in the nineteenth century, wasn’t he?
Might some suspiciously German-fluent bearded man submit a résumé to our company?
This really was making my heart doki-doki.
Anyway, that introduction ran long, but in the end the question that landed before me was just one.
Would I discard my humanity, or remain human?
Well, honestly, the answer was obvious.
“You people are completely insane.”
At the very least, I couldn’t stand the sight of people sleeping hanging from ropes.
Something felt off.
According to what the secretaries, newspapers, and people kept saying, wasn’t Guillaume de Toulon supposed to be a man who loved making money and had a very progressive streak?
“A place where we share good information too precious to keep to ourselves.”
“Ah. I see.”
If it was true that he loved making money, then why did he look so uncomfortable, as though he had been dragged away in the middle of relieving himself, instead of enjoying this kind of “valuable gathering” they had invited him to?
And hadn’t they said he was progressive?
“You people are completely insane. Don’t you have any idea what commercial ethics are?”
If that was true, then why was he grumbling like some old relic in the back room muttering about guilds and craftsmanship just because they suggested that businesses should help one another and improve efficiency together?
Why, exactly why?
Perhaps because things were not proceeding the way he wanted, the middle-aged gentleman who had brought Guillaume here wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and said,
“Y-Your Excellency, your words go too far. We are, after all, merely people who build camaraderie, help one another… and uphold commercial ethics!”
“You just said you uphold commercial ethics?”
“That is correct.”
“Ha. I’m speechless.”
Guillaume twisted his face strangely, then at some point had stuck a cigarette into his mouth and lit it as he spoke.
“Let me ask just one thing. What exactly is the definition of commercial ethics?”
“It is the courtesy merchants should observe between merchant and merchant, and between merchant and consumer.”
“…And employees?”
“Pardon? Ah, y-you mean laborers?”
“Is there no courtesy that must be observed toward employees?”
Courtesy toward employees? Good Lord. Was he serious?
Wasn’t this already a world where the estate system had been abolished?
If they were truly capable, they would have started a business, taken to sea, or found some way to become rich.
If instead they kept working for wages as wage laborers, didn’t that just mean they lacked ability?
Shouldn’t those without ability be grateful to people like us for taking them in and paying them proper wages every month?
“We believe that by paying wages on time, we have already done everything required of us.”
“Quite so. Rather than duty, I would call it benevolence that we take in useless people who can do nothing but simple labor and provide them a means to live.”
“Yes, I see.”
Guillaume said that, took several drags from his cigarette, then slowly rose from his seat.
Then he lifted the chair he had been sitting on high into the air.
“W-w-what are you doing?!”
“Y-Your Excellency!”
The chair flew.
The middle-aged gentleman who had brought Guillaume stared with trembling pupils at the bizarre scene unfolding before his eyes.
“You sons of bitches who don’t even know what commercial ethics are!! And you have the nerve to collude? To collude?!”
“Y-Your Excellency! C-calm yourself!”
“Who do you think buys the goods you people are so eager to sell? It’s the workers, you idiots! If workers can’t earn money, you’re the ones who’ll go bankrupt later!”
“What absurd nonsense is that—”
“How dare you people, who don’t even understand the first letter of economics, try to stab the healthy belly of the France I built?!”
At some point, Guillaume’s eyes had gone white, with no pupils visible.
“The wage issue is merely part of efficient management!”
“What? Efficient maaanagemeent? That’s management?! If that’s management, then I guess it would be perfectly fine if I hostilely acquired all your companies and smashed them to pieces, wouldn’t it?
You said you’re in textiles, right? Want to try buying raw materials at five times the price?”
“W-what kind of—”
“Why? When you do it, it’s romance, but when I do it, it’s adultery? Want to wage a proper filthy corporate war? How dare you try to treat people like machine parts.”
Guillaume took one deep breath in and let it out before continuing.
“Hoo. Do you know what is most efficient for me?”
“……”
“For me to do everything myself. I mine the raw materials, I process them, and I sell them too.”
“…Is that even possible?”
“Why wouldn’t it be? I have mines, I have factories, and I have more than enough agencies to sell through. To be blunt, among the businesses represented here, is there anywhere I couldn’t enter if I decided to pour capital into it?
Sure, I’d take losses at first. It’s competition, after all. But do you really think I’d fail to win in the end?”
If I made this much of a scene, they should have gotten the point.
For now, just the fact that I took collusion this badly would be enough to keep them from playing games with wages for the time being.
But this was only a temporary measure.
Given human—no, given mankind’s species traits, unless a righteous anti-monopoly law came along and shouted, We will not forgive companies that threaten a healthy market economy, and smashed their skulls in, this would inevitably surface sooner or later.
Once the floodgates burst open, it was never easy to stuff everything back in before the whole thing got swept away.
The problem was that the point where everything got swept away began with people whose eyes had half gone mad, wearing red armbands and waving red flags.
Once it reached that stage, even if they came weeping and clinging to my trouser leg, there would be no going back.
Ha, what was I supposed to do about this?
“Do you perhaps have any clever idea?”
“Guillaume, why are you asking me that?”
“Well, you are the leader of the ruling party. Don’t you have anything in mind?”
Sieyès narrowed his eyes for a moment, then smacked me over the head with his pipe.
“Aagh! Have you gone mad, old man?! Why are you hitting people all of a sudden?!”
“Why? Because I find it absurd that the man who best understands the world of money in all France is asking a mere priest for an opinion.”
Priest, my ass. You left the clergy already, so why keep calling yourself one?
“Judging by that look, you seem very displeased.”
“My head already hurt, and now it hurts physically too, so yes, I’m verrry displeased.”
“Hah. Ridiculous.”
“What now?”
“That ‘anti-monopoly law’ you mentioned. I don’t really understand it even after hearing it. Do you know what that means?”
“No idea.”
Sieyès swung his pipe at my head again, but this time my head was faster at dodging.
“In this country, there are only a handful of people who can properly understand what you’re saying.”
“So?”
“Hah. Good grief. Go back into politics. Back when you were Controller-General of Finance, you understood things immediately, but now you can’t understand a word.”
Ah… politics? That was a bit much.
“In all France, aside from you, there is no one with the insight to judge whether that is right or wrong. So if you think it is necessary, just push it through.”
Or go talk to Robespierre.
Sieyès added that.
“No. Why him again?”
“Do you truly have no interest in politics? Do you live without even hearing rumors?”
“What rumor?”
“That fellow is teaching economics at the Sorbonne as a side job these days.”
“Haha, that’s a lie.”
Just because I’d been absorbed in automobiles lately didn’t mean he should tease me this much.
“What use would I have for telling you such a lie?”
Sieyès said that as he packed tobacco into his pipe.
….
…Really?
“Haha… a lie…”