"Open the sickle!" At the command of a middle-aged veteran who was missing an arm, hundreds of men in blue jeans immediately galloped into the field at a speed of 100 meters, then bent down and harvested the wheat in the field with a sharpened sickle. Not far from them, more than a dozen horse-drawn wheat harvesters are slowly moving through the wheat fields, cutting the bales of wheat with brushes, threshing and bagging them, and then the conveyor belt "spits" out the messy wheat stalks, which the farmers behind the machines happily bundle up the wheat stalks, which are indispensable fuel for earthen stoves.

"How many laborers do you use here?" Wei Jianzhang, head of the fourth unit of the Statistics Department of the Syphilis Patient Statistics Survey Bureau, was wearing a black uniform and holding a small notebook in his hand.

The township chief is also a veteran, from Livonia, at this moment heard the famous Mei organ Wei unit chief speak, suddenly felt chrysanthemum tight, blurted out: "There are a total of 654 people here, all of them are men, aged between 15 and 43, and they are all from the emirate of Ukraine. They were sent by the immigration department, and Minister Zhao of the Township Armed Forces Department gave them a one-month training, and all those who did not meet the requirements were discharged. At present, they have basically mastered more than ten sentences of daily Chinese conversation, and with the help of some Cossack-born cadres, they are also very easy to use......

Wei Jianzhang nodded when he heard this. He still knows the roots of these laborers from Ukraine, because his colleagues also screened these people to ensure that no anti-East Coast elements and spies were involved. In fact, they were a little too worried, these people were basically poor people abandoned and betrayed by Khmelnitsky, there were no spies at all, and most of them didn't even know where the East Coast was before they came. Therefore, it is not even anti-East Coast.

Last year, as Khmelnytsky sought a rapprochement with Poland, opposition grew in Ukraine. Because the basis of Khmelnitsky's rapprochement with the Poles was not to continue to deprive the Polish landlords (including Polonized Ukrainians) of their property. and restore social order. As for the property of the Polish landlords, the question is complicated, but the serfs are undoubtedly a very important part of it, and this means that a large number of serfs who once followed the Khmelnitsky uprising and fought and died with the Polish army have lost their freedom again, and they will be forced to continue to return to the Polish lord's estate as serfs, and the fate is self-evident.

The Cossacks did not understand that they had sacrificed their lives and fought valiantly, defeating the well-armed Polish royal army several times in Korsun, on the banks of the Yellow River, and at Piriavci. Countless serfs paid with their lives for this, and what ended up was such a fate? Enraged, they refused to disarm, and they began to question the upstarts led by Khmelnitsky, which naturally caused unrest in the nascent Ukrainian hemirate, which gradually began to expand with the help of some foreign powers, and finally made Khmelnitsky determined to start suppressing it.

However, Khmelnitsky's repression was unsuccessful from the beginning, because the so-called "Ukrainian army" in his hands and these angry serfs were originally comrades-in-arms, and it was difficult to deal with them. Even. Some of the troops who came in a hurry to suppress them turned around and left when they were questioned and insulted by the serfs. This made Khmelnitsky feel the problem of the problem, and he made a bold decision to sell these "rebels" whom he had decided to hang to the East coasters with whom he had business contacts.

He had always heard that the East Coast, a country in the New World, was carrying out various pioneering and construction activities all year round, and there was a great demand for slaves. What's more, selling these people to the East Bank would also give the nascent Cossack Hetmanate a batch of urgently needed supplies. This is especially important for them to cope with threats from Poland, Moscow, Ottomans and several other directions.

The envoy of the East Bankers, Made, of course, would not refuse this offer from the Ukrainians, so they quickly signed an agreement. That is, the Ukrainians sold thousands of Cossacks and rebel serfs who were supposed to be executed - and this was perhaps only the first batch - to the East Coast at an ultra-low price of 40 yuan per person (worth only a dozen cotton cloths) in exchange. The people of the East Coast will open a trading post in Kaffa and sell them a large amount of guns, ammunition, textiles, spirits, tools, and other supplies at a discount. The two sides bartered, exchanged equally, and each took what he needed.

At this time, the hundreds of indentured slave laborers who were busy working in front of Wei Jianzhang were bought Cossacks, and all of them signed a five-year labor employment contract, during which each person could also receive a monthly allowance of one yuan and five dimes, in addition to food and accommodation, and the treatment was already quite good. These Cossacks did not know that they were supposed to be executed in history, but they knew in their hearts that the fate of staying in Ukraine would not be too good, so their psychological resistance to coming to work on the East Bank was not very strong, except for the occasional homesickness.

"Last year, I bought a total of more than 3,000 Cossacks, and one-fifth of them were distributed to you, which fully shows the trust of the superiors in your Mucaoling Township." Wei Jianzhang casually talked to the village chief, but his mind was thinking about a problem that seemed to him to be stricter, that is, the trade between the East Coast government and Europe had become more and more imbalanced over the years: in the early years, the ships that went to Europe to trade brought back a lot of livestock, ore, and handicrafts, but with the prevalence of the border trade in the Gérard Mountains and the smuggling trade in Peru, the trade ships on the East Coast now brought back more slaves and livestock from Europe, which accounted for at least two-thirds of them.

Think about it, last year the South China Sea Transport Company returned from Europe about 40 ships, the total tonnage is about 27,000 tons, except for a few metals, livestock, handicrafts, most of them are livestock and slaves, of which the number of female slaves is not very stable, but the average annual 8,000 to 10,000 is still there, male slaves (generally prisoners of war) are in the number of four or five thousand, it can be said that half of the tonnage of the return is used to pull people, it is really strange.

Most of the male slaves were sent to the New China Island to pioneer, and the mortality rate of the pioneers in the tropical wilderness was undoubtedly extremely high, even if the people on the east coast introduced various protective measures and the level of disease treatment was higher than that of Europe at this time, the average annual mortality rate of more than 15% of the pioneers was still unacceptable. Since the number of Ming immigrants is precious, then these white slaves can only be used to fill the hole, as long as these white people have not died after the work period on the labor employment contract, then the East Coast people will not treat them badly, and giving nationality, land and housing are all due meaning, and they will be their own people in the future.

However, Wei Jianzhang, who was born in the intelligence agency, also faintly felt a trace of worry at this time, that is, whether the influx of a large number of Europeans would have a certain impact on domestic security and counter-espionage? This is not alarmist, Wei Jianzhang once looked through the information, when his father (Wei Boqiu) was in charge of the Mei Agency, the East Coast Republic imported thousands of people from France every year, and the immigration operation was once huge. But when it was later discovered that there were a large number of French and even Dutch spies among them, the East Coast government decisively stopped this dangerous move, and the immigration of whites was stopped for a time. Later, although it was forced to reopen again, in principle, immigrants from England, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and other regions were no longer allowed to enter the country, but mainly Livonians without religious beliefs, and the number was only two or three thousand a year.

However, after the second executive committee came to power, these big men who had forgotten their scars and forgot the pain immediately threw their predecessors' policies out of the clouds, and Valentino, Mendes and other powerful labor brokers brought a large number of poor workers from Italy and Scotland to the East Coast to help the East Coast's increasingly large infrastructure construction. It is difficult to say what the proportion of spies among these people is, anyway, over the years, the Mei organ has arrested more than a dozen spies, and there are as many as 70 or 80 laborers who are suspected of being spies and have been transferred to work in the colonies, which can be described as shocking.

Now that these Ukrainians are coming, are there also spies hidden in them? Wei Jianzhang has no way of knowing, but he feels that he can't take it lightly, everyone must be strictly investigated, and everyone must pass the test, otherwise they will all be assigned to work in the colony, where they will not have access to anything valuable, I believe the spies will be very disappointed.

"These laborers are now organized separately, we must pay close attention to their contacts with the outside world, and if they find out, they will immediately report secretly to the offices of the Mei organs in various places, and we will send personnel to investigate." Wei Jianzhang finally said to the head of Mucaoling Township beside him, "Although these people are from Ukraine, it is extremely unlikely that they are spies, but they must not be guarded against." Also, are the gauchos who are recruited to guard them reliable? ”

"It's pretty reliable, we've all examined it, and you don't want gauchos with unclean hands and feet, innocent wealth, and bad habits." The township chief immediately said, "These gauchos are willing to accept employment from our country, I heard that only one out of three or five people who sign up will be admitted now, haha, the Su zhì who can be admitted is not bad." In general, it is relatively reassuring for them to guard these migrant laborers, but I have heard that the superiors prefer to use blacks as foremen to guard them, because those blacks are relatively more reliable, in fact, I think this is also the case, and it is estimated that the labor foremen all over the country will gradually be replaced by Xhosa blacks......" (to be continued)