Chapter 83 (1/2)

Chapter 83: The Great Depression (Part Two)

Rolin wasn't a government official, so he was easily bought over. The n.o.ble guardian's reason for existing was to make profits, and his principles were adaptable because he was corrupted. Any amount of profit was valuable in the glorified plane age. They would have destroyed another plane for it.

If Rolin were human, he'd be a Jew.

He caved in before Huang Xuan even began to weigh the pros and cons. Without a doubt, he had weighed them himself.

From this, Huang Xuan estimated that this artificial intelligence, which came from 100,000 years in the future, had the imagination and the intellect of a dog. Mr. Rolin wanted profits, yet he did not know how to earn it. Huang Xuan smirked. The low-intellect guardian was certainly his perfect match. Of course, all of this was a figment of Huang Xuan's imagination.

Ford's A-type cars were selling well at that time. However, they suffered huge losses when they stopped production during their transition period, which lasted half a year in 1927. During that period, Henry Ford and his son, Edsel Ford, began to invent the A-type car. While they took a short time, the mandatory transformation caused Ford to fall to the second place among the world's car manufacturers.

Despite this, Ford kept the Rouge workshop. It was self-sufficient, as Ford had imagined it to be. Everything, from the raw materials to the finished cars, was stored in one location. Rouge continued to be the world's biggest workshop owned by a single car manufacturer for the next 100 years. Furthermore, the popular circulating pipeline technology had also started here.

Since food was worth nothing, Huang Xuan lost interest in selling his food products. Detroit was a messy and rugged city. Huang Xuan felt influenced by its character. He stole an entire outfit and USD$1 from three individual gangsters.

This was enough for him to get to Rouge.

It was said that Ford used to live there when he was growing up. At that time, nature was still thriving. However, by the 1930s, the industrial revolutionaries revamped the place, leaving thick clouds of smoke in their wake.

Under normal circ.u.mstances, Rouge had a total of 100,000 workers working at the same time, which could be seen as a small, self-sufficient city.

Rouge was recruiting people every day. It was one of the few companies who raised its workers' salaries during the Great Depression. The $5-a-day scheme itself, which was invented by Henry Ford, was said to have increased their salaries by 100%. The way Huang Xuan saw it, however, these schemes were not aimed at improving the economy. Instead, they were aimed to secure stable, skilled workers for the company.

The fact that the workers never rested spoke for itself. In an age where contractual terms were unclear, to keep the manpower numbers in the tens of thousands, the turnover rate was expected to be high.

Mr. Ford had to recruit hundreds of people each day, and on some days, he even had to recruit thousands of people. Increasing the workers' salaries was an appropriate solution. Otherwise, the company would waste even more money and suffer lower productivity.

Those were the facts.

Most of the workers surrounding Huang Xuan had thick arms and bored expressions. Ford only had to ensure these workers were well-trained. They would only be concerned with nurturing talents in the 90's, or even in 2000. They didn't dream of doing so during the Great Depression.

While countless companies went bankrupt, men who only possessed physical strength stood no chance of earning USD$5 a day. However, most people wanted to try their luck anyway.

A middle-aged man in a purple sweater walked out. He stood outside and read from the perennial recruitment notice. He shouted, ”All those who know how to operate a milling machine may enter!” After he was done, he raised his head and left.

About ten white young men skipped in happily. Not long after, half of them walked out, dejected. Huang Xuan attempted to find out more about Ford's technical department. However, to his disappointment, most people thought that the factory was the technical department.

Huang Xuan was not fl.u.s.tered. On the one hand, he could stay for about ten days this time. On the other hand, he could not yet predict what he would be bringing home with him. He had to keep his eyes peeled. While the Great Depression was triggered by overproduction, there wasn’t always an excess of products. According to Rolin's findings, agricultural products were the cheapest products in the market; however, they were also the most difficult to obtain. When the farmers realized that the cost of bringing a goat to the market was more than the revenue they earned from its sale, they killed their goats. They did the same for their wheat and corn.

Strangely, people questioned why the farmers didn't just store them and wait for the prices to rise before they sold them. However, n.o.body could foresee when the Great Depression was going to end. The farmers could not tell if it was worth it to store their goats and harvest — they could have been wasting more money attempting to store them. In actual fact, the goats and harvest were going to be worthless for a long time.

These problems affected Huang Xuan in that while he had a huge sum of money in his hands, there was no supply to meet his demand. This was the core of the problem — everything was going against the laws of economics.

Yet again, there was shouting. Yet again, the people who met the requirements had opportunities to be interviewed. Huang Xuan remained outside the factory with the majority.

”Kid, what do you know?” a Hispanic asked Huang Xuan. He was a talkative old man who was growing a beard.

”Maybe...” Huang Xuan flipped his hand and continued, ”Driving.” He was driving his kart well.