Shadow Empire

Chapter 362 Light [666+14]
The car slowly stopped. After Alvin got out of the car, he looked around. Only after Madore confirmed that there was no danger did Lance get out of the car.

The children who had been waiting impatiently ran over. They were some distance away from Lance and looked at him eagerly.

Ever since Lance gave them some change for the first time, more and more children started running after his car every day, especially near the company.

Many children would run after his car as soon as they saw it. In order to prevent them from running out of breath, Lance would sometimes ask the driver to slow down.

He gave Erwin a look, and he returned to the passenger seat, opened the tool box, pulled out a handful of change, and tossed it to the kids.

The children's laughter and the childish voices of "Thank you Mr. Lance, thank you Mr. Irwin" combined together, making people feel a lot happier.

After the children had picked all the coins out of the uneven ground, they said goodbye to Lance one by one.

There are also some homeless people around who look at those children with envy, because they don’t have this benefit.

Once someone tried to walk up and beg Lance. He wanted some money to buy some food and a pack of cigarettes, and then Lance sent the guy to the dock to work.

Lance gave the children money because by giving them money they could avoid going to work, or reduce the hours they spent working.

The federal government allows child labor, and it is legal to employ child labor. If you see some short children working, don't be surprised.

As one of the representatives of civilized society, the federal government has shown its gentlemanliness by raising the common minimum age limit from eight to ten!

Yes, children over the age of ten can work, and according to federal government regulations, as long as they do not work more than six hours a day, it is not illegal for either their parents or the company that employs them.

Hiring child labor is something that capitalists prefer because they can pay them less money and get more value from their labor.

Especially in some labor-intensive light industries, the factories are almost all filled with children aged twelve or thirteen. They wear work clothes like adults and sit in front of the assembly line for several hours at a time.

In order to save a meal, capitalists often arrange staggered lunch and dinner working hours for them, so that they can only bring some food from home.

Some whole wheat, brown bread with wood fiber added, or something.

Their income was low, but if Lance gave the kids a little money here and there from time to time, maybe their parents would let them go.

Lance's mood also became cheerful as the children politely thanked him.

Some homeless people in the distance were watching everything that was happening here with envy and jealousy. Although Lance would not give the homeless people money, he might even send them to the dock to work.

But sometimes Lance would still give them some free food so that they wouldn't go hungry.

But the food has to be eaten here, otherwise there will be no next time.

Some people didn't understand Lance's approach. Why did he give them food and force them to finish it here?

That's because some of the homeless people who come to receive food are women or younger children.

If they don't finish their food here and are asked to take it away, there is a high probability that they will not be able to eat most of the food themselves.

Even among homeless people, there are classes, exploitation and oppression.

Letting them finish their meal here will at least fill their stomachs.

"Mr. Lance is a good man!", a homeless man commented, his clothes looked slightly cleaner than others.

He washes his clothes every once in a while, and this set of clothes has special meaning.

He was thinking about going to work, he was coming out of a failed life, and someone came into his life like sunshine and illuminated his gloomy life!
He decided to make some changes this summer.

Now he still has some things that he hasn't thought about well. Once he has, he will say goodbye to everything that happened in the past!

The homeless people around also expressed their agreement, saying that Mr. Lance was indeed a good man.

One homeless man laughed and said, "If he could give me a drink he would be God!"

The others all laughed. The wine was so expensive, even the cheapest wine was very expensive for them.

Some people licked their lips; it had indeed been a long time since they had had a drink.

Because Prohibition meant that stores were no longer open to sell alcoholic beverages, and the skyrocketing prices left them with no recourse.

In the past, they could pool fifty cents to buy a bottle of low-quality wine and enjoy it together, but now the worst wine costs three or four yuan, and the seven or eight-fold increase makes it difficult for them to make up their minds.

The neatly dressed homeless man was talking to the homeless man next to him with a smile on his face. Sometimes when a person's mind is opened up, the whole person seems like a different person.

He was no longer sad or desperate. He was a little excited and looked forward to the arrival of a new life.

Inadvertently, he glanced at a homeless man in the corner. This homeless man had just arrived recently. He was a lame man and had difficulty walking.

Every day he disappears for a while, probably to find something to eat. This person does not communicate with others, but sits with everyone.

There are many weird people, and even more weird homeless people. He used to be a weird person too.

He walked over to the cold, tangled-haired homeless man and sat down. "Hey, man, would you like to share your story with me?"

The homeless man glanced at him and said, "Get lost."

The neatly dressed homeless man was stunned for a moment, cursed "Fuck", and then stood up. "He is not in the right mind, don't talk to him." Someone reminded him, it seems that someone tried to talk to him and failed.

The neatly dressed homeless man nodded, and a group of people sat on the roadside, begging.

They smoke a very special kind of local cigarettes, which are cigarette butts found in trash cans with a little bit of tobacco in them (no filters). They roll the collected tobacco together again to make their local cigarettes.

It tasted weird, but at least it provided them with nicotine.

If brewing wasn't so complicated, they might have brewed their own wine a long time ago.

The neatly dressed homeless man smoked a cigarette and occasionally paid attention to the lame homeless man. He always felt that this was a bit strange.

But he wouldn't just stare at the guy all the time, he would also think and read the newspaper.

There are a lot of newspapers in the trash can, and he can sometimes get some inspiration from these newspapers.

The running newsboy is waving the newspaper in his hand, which contains his future and dreams!
The next morning, Owen brought a freshly-published newspaper under his armpit and brought it to the hospital ward. The mayor leaned back on the bed. In just a few days, he seemed to have lost a lot of weight.

The contours of his cheeks became more pronounced, and his face lost much color.

"Here are today's newspapers," the secretary handed over a pile of newspapers.

The one at the top is "Jingang Today".

The heat of his shooting was decreasing, but the heat of the dock strike began to rise. The front-page headline used the title "Docks Stopped, Trade Losses Huge".

The editor-in-chief of the newspaper was a man who understood images, and the image on the front page headline was very impactful. On the left, a group of people in blue work clothes gathered together, while on the right, a few managers in red clothes gathered together with sad faces.

The sharp contrast between red and blue makes this picture more impactful!

One side is full of strength, passion, and surging vitality!

One side looks embarrassed, sad, and has no motivation.

The mayor picked up his glasses and put them on. He looked at them for a while before he said uncertainly, "The man inside... is Lance?"

Due to the limitations of printing technology, it is impossible to print Lance very clearly. You can still roughly see the appearance of Lance in the dot matrix image, but it is not so real.

Or, in other words, preconceptions can make the guy in the photo look like anyone.

The secretary glanced at it and nodded. "Yes, he distributed blue uniforms to the workers at the dock yesterday. Now they have become more united and more motivated!"

The mayor covered his mouth, his saliva was a little bitter, he took a sip of the milk mixed with coffee, "He is very smart, I always wanted him to come over, but he rejected me."

The secretary smiled and tried to defuse the mayor's "failure", which might or might not have been embarrassing. "This proves that he is not a smart person, because a smart person would definitely choose you."

This sentence made the mayor burst into laughter, but after laughing twice, he squinted his eyes and covered his body. The vibration of the laughter and the change in abdominal pressure made him feel pain.

It took him a while to calm down. “It was really painful, but it was worth it.”

He commented, "Lance is very smart. He is uniting these striking groups and getting them around him."

"And the pier is very important..."

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. The secretary got up and opened the door. It was his own person.

The two talked for a while at the door, and then the secretary returned to the room. The mayor looked at him and asked, "What happened?"

"The governor wants to speak to you in five minutes."

There is a separate telephone in the ward, or patient suite. The mayor's eyes fell on the newspaper again after hearing this. "It should be for this."

"strike?"

"Ah."

The mayor closed his eyes and leaned back. "Go and lock the door."

In less than five minutes, or at most three minutes, the phone started ringing. On the third ring, he pressed the speaker button.

"it's me."

"Sidney, I want to know what the strike is all about!"

The secretary didn't dare to speak, even his breathing slowed down, and he didn't move.

The mayor smacked his lips. "What else could it be?"

"They are not happy with the salary and now they are quitting."

"Governor, I am a patient now and still lying in the hospital. You have to take care of my condition!"

(End of this chapter)