Job Creation

About ten farmers had come to see Hui-yeom for the following reason.

In the course of their clash with Hwang Jinsa, they had lost family members or been badly injured, and as compensation they had been granted the rice paddies and fields Hwang had held.

The problem was that they had no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠capacity to farm that land.

In an age without tractors or combine harvesters, a single farmer working with nothing but human labor and draft animals could only cultivate so much ground. That was simply a fact of life. Landlords had always managed their vast holdings by mobilizing household servants or conscripting the peasantry of the district. But the farmers who had just received parcels of that land had no such power to call men to their service. Mutual labor exchanges only went so far. They simply could not maintain fields that had suddenly grown so large.

I was still thinking in twenty-first-century terms.

Hui-yeom smacked his own forehead. His prediction that the only workable reparation for the casualties would be a grant of land had proved more or less correct—but it had produced this side effect.

"I understand the situation. Do you want to sell these fields to me? Or would you rather keep them, if you could acquire the means to work them?"

"Well, if we could manage holdings this size, of course we'd want to keep them…"

"Then I'll help you do exactly that."

"Pardon?"

"In short, it's a labor-supply problem, isn't it?"

"That… is true, but…"

The farmers exchanged looks that said, People don't just fall out of the sky, do they? Hui-yeom smiled at them.

"I have a solution. For the time being, I'll dispatch men from our Tang family. Use them as hard as you like."

"What? M-martial artists, sir?"

"Yes. And by autumn, a more permanent answer will come walking in on its own two feet."

"…?"

The farmers stared at Hui-yeom's unreadable smile, thoroughly baffled.

Summer passed, and the season tipped into autumn.

In the end, the incident that had erupted in Guizhou and the long cleanup that followed kept Hui-yeom and the Tang people pinned in the province all summer. In that time Hui-yeom dug wells for the farmers, installed water purifiers in every town, forced the landlords into submission, and secured their cooperation. He also borrowed Dokwadae operatives, government slaves from the Guizhou Provincial Administration Commissioner's office, and soldiers from the Regional Military Commissioner's headquarters to help the farmers with their fields.

Both the Provincial Administration Commissioner and the Regional Military Commissioner threw themselves into the work with enthusiasm. When someone was stripping off his shoes to raise the tax yield of their own province, there was no reason in the world to stand in his way.

At last the harvest season drew near.

Around that time, the landlords' houses rang with unbroken sighs. A few landlords who had cooperated from the start managed to keep both popular goodwill and their property intact. But the great majority, who had chosen as Hwang Jinsa had chosen, lost their wealth, watched their prestige wither, and were reduced to living under the wary eyes of villagers they had once ordered about like servants. How could they not sigh?

Some took to their beds with rage-induced illness. A few had already departed this world. Those who remained healthy did little more than puff long, heavy breaths of pipe smoke into the air.

If the landlords' situation was bad, the lot of the servants who lived under them was worse still.

"…Haa… Maybe we should just slip away in the night."

There was an old saying that a servant in a high minister's house had nothing to envy a free commoner for. The landlords' men had long relied on their masters' prestige to work no small amount of petty tyranny—beating or cursing farmers who drew irrigation water without leave, swaggering about like neighborhood toughs. Now those masters had become broken gourds, and simply stepping outside the compound walls made every glance cut like a knife. Even when no one said a word, the mockery and anger in those eyes made a man shrink until he could hardly bear it.

Worse still was the gnawing doubt: with the master's fields so drastically reduced, would there even be proper monthly wages once the harvest was in?

Not every rich household kept true chattel slaves; most of the men were hired retainers paid a monthly wage. And that wage rose or fell with each year's crop. In modern terms, the company's annual profit was tallied every autumn, and next year's salary was set by the result. With so much land gone… they would be lucky not to be dismissed for surplus labor, never mind drawing a wage.

"People already look at us like dirt these days… Maybe I should just finish out the year and quit…"

"Where the hell are you going to go? Think another landlord's hiring?"

"That's the problem, damn it."

The servants of this age were in a very different position from twenty-first-century office workers. They had no academic credentials and no specialized trade. A man who had spent his life attached to one house and then left it—what then? Every landlord in the district was in the same boat, so local jobs were nonexistent. Crossing provincial borders in search of some other rich household was no better: those places already had their own servants. Labor was saturated; there was nowhere for them to go. That much was as plain as day.

"…"

No one said it aloud, but everyone knew a great culling would follow this harvest. Once the landlords no longer had the means or the reason to keep so many men, they would cast them out in a single stroke. Then the servants would have no choice but to take to the hills as half-baked bandits, or wander the realm hunting for some other master willing to take them in.

The good news reached them on an ordinary afternoon.

"Hey, Jang! Jang Pal! You can read a bit, right? Huh?"

Eom Gu, a fellow servant, came looking for Jang Pal, who was sunk in bleak forecasts of the future.

"What? Why all of a sudden?"

"There's a notice pasted outside the main gate. Looks like it's about new jobs. Everyone's waiting on you. Come read it for us."

"…What's the steward doing? If it's reading, he's better at it than I am."

"You didn't know? That bastard packed up the valuables and bolted in the night a while back."

"Smart ones move fast, damn them."

"Quit the nonsense and get over here."

"All right, all right. Don't rush me."

Jang Pal heaved himself up with a sigh. Whatever it was, it had to be better than lying flat on his back.

Hwang Jinsa's house was large. At its height more than three hundred dependents, servants, and hangers-on had lived under that roof. The long compound wall, like a government office's, sometimes carried proclamations from the county yamen. Jang Pal ambled over to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stretch of wall where the other servants waited, met their expectant eyes, and began to read slowly.

"Let's see…"

"What is this?"

Jang Pal's eyes went wide as he continued.

"Age fifteen and up, under fifty, sound of body, healthy work ethic… Gender no restriction… Over fifty needs a separate interview… Specialized skills and literacy preferred… Former servants familiar with local conditions… preferred?"

"I-is that true? They're giving preference to servants?"

Someone lost patience and cut in; the others immediately shushed him.

"Quiet! Jang, keep reading—go on!"

"…Wages settled daily. Base rate for unskilled workers fifty iron coins, skilled one silver fen. Hours sunrise to sunset. Meals and snacks provided."

"?!"

"Duties… consult at the manpower office. Except for skilled workers, the work may change each time. Forming teams and contracting by the team preferred. Full details at the Hwieon Comprehensive Labor Agency office next to the Geumsa County yamen. Inquire in person."

What spilled from Jang Pal's mouth was more than enough to throw the crowd into confusion.

"S-so they're going to hire us, right? Right? A silver fen a day!"

"Only the skilled ones, it said! What's a skilled worker, anyway?"

"There's an office next to the yamen? Can we go right now?"

"Hey! Jang Pal! Jang! Where are you going, you bastard!"

Jang Pal broke into a silent run, and the others scrambled after him.

The reason he had suddenly bolted for the county yamen was written at the very bottom of the notice.

First come, first served.

"…That, in outline, is the business plan for Hwieon Comprehensive Labor Agency."

Baek Beon, having received Hui-yeom's report, parted his lips in open admiration.

"Listening to it, anyone might think of something so simple… and yet no one has ever actually done it. An outsourced labor office. Why has no one tried so straightforward a venture?"

Hire a man for the day and pay him a day's wage. It was not as if people of premodern China were incapable of inventing the idea. Yet as far as Baek Beon knew, not a single place operated on that model.

Hui-yeom gave a small smile.

"Because day labor can't be trusted. People believe only in 'my people'—the servants I myself employ, the retainers on my own payroll."

That was true enough. Even in the modern world, workers vanishing from a construction site was hardly rare. Diligent laborers existed, but so did plenty who loafed and did half a job. In premodern China, where education was scarce and universal moral instruction almost nonexistent, putting men to work this way would rarely produce good results.

"Well, if one were going to do it at all, better to hire them properly, train them as staff, and be done with it. Why build a business on so unstable an employment structure?"

"Because of the advantage of flexible labor."

Hui-yeom grinned.

"In the busy farming seasons we can send them to farmers short of hands. Later, when large-scale waterworks begin all over Guizhou, we can put them on those crews as well."

"Why not simply hire them permanently, the way Hwieon Comprehensive Construction does?"

"Then an invisible wall would rise between Guizhou's former servants and its farmers."

"Ah. Of course. The Tang family would become the servants' new landlord."

Baek Beon finally grasped Hui-yeom's design.

"Employment is unstable—and the people creating those jobs are the very farmers they used to look down on. To survive, the servants will have no choice but to bow their heads and go to the farmers."

"And the farmers, desperate for labor, will have to swallow old grudges and hire them anyway. Force them to work side by side long enough, and even a hated face starts to grow on you, doesn't it?"

"Besides, the farmers don't need permanent hands—only borrowed labor at transplanting and harvest—so the burden is light. The farmers need the servants; the servants had nowhere else to go. Perfect mutual survival. Improved relations are a bonus. My, Scholar Tang, your schemes run deep in every direction. Yohohohoho!!"

"You flatter me."

Hui-yeom had no intention, for the moment, of permanently employing and feeding the people of Guizhou. Dragging every Sichuan laborer over for the big projects was impractical as well, so creating a local procurement channel of this kind had been part of his plan from the start.

Of course, the landlords' former servants alone could not supply all the manpower Guizhou would need. A considerable portion came from Noksan staff who had come down out of Guizhou's mountains. The timing was fortunate. In ordinary times a sudden flood of unfamiliar faces would have drawn hard questions about their origins. But in the present turmoil, when the Noksan men claimed they had fled after clashing with landlords in villages over the mountains, people stopped pressing and even took them under their wing. Before long the farmers who had stood against the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠landlords and the Noksan staff were bound by something very like comradeship.

"Until Noksan's outposts and road construction begin, work through the labor agency. Win Guizhou's goodwill and blend in. Later we can hire the best of the common folk into Noksan itself."

"We will follow the Chairman's policy."

The Green Forest bands present in Guizhou, under orders from Im Deok-sul, King of the Green Forest, had already sworn obedience to Hui-yeom.

And so, with every quarrel seeming to mend itself in a favorable direction, the Guizhou Provincial Administration Commissioner summoned Hui-yeom and heaped praise upon him.

"Scholar Tang, you are nothing less than Guizhou's benefactor! To resolve the matter so cleanly!"

"You are too kind."

Having neatly settled Guizhou's farming and drinking-water problems, the conflict with the landlord class, and the shortage of labor, they finally returned to Sichuan in late autumn.

And then—

Sama Yun began to suffer from morning sickness.