Chapter 1044 - The Prosperous Northwest 2.0 (1/2)

While Li Shentan was trying his best to figure out a way to enfold the Lian tribe into the Prosperous Northwest, hundreds of red banners suddenly started appearing in Stronghold 144 in the Northwest.

”Hand over enough to the stronghold, and the rest is yours to keep!”

”An entire family can be well-fed as a result of one person's farming!”

Such conspicuous banners appeared on the streets and in the alleys of the stronghold, the town outside the stronghold no exception.

Not only were banners flown everywhere, but Wang Yuexi also organized several hundred employees from the administrative center to go out onto the streets to set up small tables at dozens of locations across the stronghold where human traffic was greater. The tables were all stacked with promotional pamphlets.

With such a big to-do, it attracted the attention of countless residents and refugees. They came to have a look and asked how they could tender a plot of land for farming.

The staff answered all their questions fluently and in detail to address their doubts.

Before this, Wang Yuexi had put the administrative center's employees through a dozen days of training and requested they serve the residents with the sincerest attitude possible. Furthermore, no situations could arise where they might stumble over the people's queries.

In truth, everyone was more enthusiastic than Ren Xiaosu and company had expected.

However, the problem was that the stronghold residents were used to living comfortably in the city. Who would be willing to abandon their homes and go out to work a farm?

Although everyone was very enthusiastic in their inquiries, they just waved it off with a smile when they were told that they should farm. These people were purely busybodies who delayed the progress of the push into farming.

Although some refugees also expressed interest, their numbers were far from being enough to reclaim all the wastelands in the Northwest.

At this moment, Ren Xiaosu understood why the Wang Consortium would suddenly plot against the Kong Consortium and the Zhou Consortium to entice their refugees into joining them. It turned out that population was very important to the development of a power.

The contract responsibility policy was extremely attractive to the refugees. In the first week of the announcement, almost half of the refugees signed up for contracts to farm land. However, these people were still not enough to reclaim the wastelands.

Moreover, Wang Fugui came to complain to Ren Xiaosu for the first time. As the president of the Northwest Chamber of Commerce, it was only natural that he would speak out on behalf of the entire business sector.

Wang Fugui sat in Ren Xiaosu's yard and said, ”Future Commander, first off, I understand that issues regarding farming in the Northwest is a red line no one should cross. After all, this is a matter that concerns the economic lifeline of the Northwest. But now that a large number of refugees have taken up agriculture, basic jobs such as loading and unloading of goods, packing, transportation logistics, etc., that our Northwest Chamber of Commerce depends on to operate have all started showing signs of manpower shortage. If this matter weren't serious, I would definitely not have come to you to discuss it. It's just that the lack of manpower has seriously affected the normal functioning of trade operations. Some of the workers know we lack manpower now, so they raised their asking rates by three times on the spot…. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that, but I hope Future Commander can think of a solution.”

Ren Xiaosu fell into deep thought. Managing a stronghold was definitely not a matter that could easily be solved by getting into brawls like he did in the past. Previously, he just had to kill his enemies and that was it. It was a very simple solution.

But now all of his decisions would affect the big picture.

Commerce was also a very important industry in the Northwest now. Without the Northwest Chamber of Commerce, Stronghold 144 would not be as prosperous as it was, and neither would Stronghold 144 have such a large monetary surplus.

Therefore, the population problem would definitely have to be resolved.

Wang Yuexi's considerations were for the long term. When Ren Xiaosu first proposed the contract responsibility system, Wang Yuexi mentioned the population problem and suggested that the stronghold roll out childbirth subsidies to the residents and reduce the cost of children's education.