George Julian Harney, the left-wing leader of the Chartist movement more than a decade ago, one of the founders of the London Workers' Association, and now the president of the British and London Workers' Association, was faced with a very difficult problem.

Former Chartist comrades-in-arms, Mark Sr. on Baker Street, approached him and asked him to come forward as president of the London Workers' Association and lead the textile workers of Baker Street in West London to demonstrate to Parliament for their interests.

Old Mark cried with tears and snot: "Mr. Haney, you are the chairman of our workers' association, and you can't ignore the textile workers who live in Baker Street!" Brothers and sisters can't survive! ”

George Julian Harney had recently heard about the plight of the textile workers on Baker Street, and had always wanted to visit them, but he had been visiting Berlin and Paris twice in the past six months to investigate the workers' associations there, and had not spent much time in London, so he did not care. At this moment, when he saw old Mark coming to cry about the textile workers on Baker Street, he immediately paid attention to it. He was the president of the London Workers' Association, and among the workers in London, the textile workers were the largest group, and the textile workers of Baker Street were the concentration of textile workers in London, where one-fifth of the textile workers were located.

"Old Mark, what the hell is going on? I've also heard that your brothers on Baker Street have had a hard time in recent months, but you can't live what you say...... Well, is it that serious? Hani said: "Are those textile factory owners lowering their wages again?" ”

Old Mark said indignantly: "Mr. Hani, if you just keep your salary down, it will be okay, buy cheap brown bread, and the family will always be able to barely survive." But now, those textile factory owners have directly fired us and won't let us live! ”

When Hani heard this, he didn't care, and said with a smile: "Which textile factories mainly fire their brothers?" Tell me that our workers' association blacklisted these black-hearted capitalists and boycotted them together, and everyone didn't go to his factory to do things, and let him close down! ”

Old Mark cried and said, "Mr. Hani, this time it's not those textile capitalists who are black-hearted, and they are forced to dismiss us. In the past year, I have heard from the stewards of those textile factories who are in charge of selling cloth that the world's cloth business seems to be much worse, saying that the demand in the Eastern world, especially in India, the East Indies, and the Far East, has become very small, and the cloth of those textile factories cannot be sold, and the price has plummeted. In the past two months, India has started a large-scale rebellion, the place called Mumbai in India has been captured by the rebels, and cotton cannot be supplied to London, resulting in a sharp rise in cotton prices in London, many small textile factories in the western suburbs of London have closed their doors, and some of the remaining large textile factories have begun to lay off workers on a large scale although they are still struggling to support. Our brothers in the Baker Street area are the first to bear the brunt, and we can't afford bread. ”

Listening to the cry of Wan Lao Mark, Hani was shocked!

It was only then that he remembered that when he had just returned to London from Paris, he had heard the news of the sharp rise in the price of cotton. Immediately, he summoned the children in the neighborhood, pulled out a few pennies and asked him to find a few penny newspapers from the previous period, and finally found some information in the two cheap newspapers of the previous day, the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times.

A week ago, the second page of the Daily Mail and Telegraph devoted an entire page to the events of the cold winter in London's textile market. According to the report, the textile industry, the fundamental industry of the Kingdom of Great Britain, has suffered an unprecedented fundamental impact, that is, the competitive impact of the rapid development of cotton cloth in the far east.

Just as the impact of the rich color and quality Indian cotton fabrics on the woolen textile industry of Great Britain two or three hundred years ago, when the woolen and woollen products of Great Britain were overwhelmed by the competition of cheap Indian cotton cloth, the kingdom was forced to issue a policy of prohibiting the sale of Indian cotton cloth in the country, and at the same time sent troops to conquer India, forcibly looted Indian cotton cloth technicians, and encouraged and supported domestic merchants to develop cotton weaving and printing and dyeing industries, learn from Indian cotton cloth to improve quality, and then use advanced textile machines, Coupled with the rapid use of the steam engine, it finally became the world's number one cotton power. Exports of spinning and cotton cloth accounted for nearly one-third of the total value of the Kingdom of Great Britain's exports, and it is cotton that makes Britain the center of the world and the most powerful country.

But now, the world's cotton trade was dominated by the Kingdom of Great Britain, broken by a new empire in the East. The Daily Post and Telegraph reported on the whole process of the impact: in 1854, the Qing Empire in the Far East was defeated by the rebels, and the rebel leader named Feng Yunshan ascended the throne as emperor, and the Chinese Empire was founded. As early as before or during the establishment of the Chinese Empire, there were many textile factories in important port cities such as Guangzhou and Shanghai, and the authorities of the Chinese Empire and its domestic merchants used the original textile factories as the basis to introduce a large number of textile machines and skilled workers from Great Britain, Europe, North America and other places to expand the scale of textile production and produce huge quantities of cotton cloth. By the beginning of 1856, the Chinese Empire successively annexed Korea, Indochina, the Philippine Islands, the East Indies and other countries and regions, and not long ago, it further turned Japan, Siam, Burma, and other countries into vassal states, controlling a large number of markets and raw material production areas, and controlling all the cotton cloth markets that originally belonged to the Kingdom of Great Britain. According to statistics, in 1854, the Chinese Empire, with a total population of more than 400 million, imported cotton yarn and cotton cloth from Europe, North America, India and other three regions, with a total value of 7.5 million pounds and 1.1 million pounds respectively, of which the European part accounted for 70 percent, and the Kingdom of Great Britain accounted for 60 percent of Europe. However, with the gradual development of the domestic textile mills of the Chinese Empire, since then, its imported cotton textiles have declined year by year, until 1857, the import of cotton yarn and cotton cloth is only 1.2 million pounds, and the import of cotton cloth has stopped, and after 1858, the Chinese Empire not only does not import cotton textiles, but also in turn like the Kingdom of Great Britain, it imports a large number of raw materials such as cotton, and begins to export cotton cloth and other commodities after processing. Not only that, but the textile factories in its territory have blossomed everywhere, all over the north and south, and the huge cotton textile industry has begun to flourish, which has seriously impacted the world cotton textile market, and the Kingdom of Great Britain has suffered greatly. According to Chinese businessmen, last year alone, the Chinese empire exported at least 2 million pounds of cotton yarn and at least 12 million pounds worth of cotton cloth. This means that not only is we losing China, the world's largest market, but we are also having another such super-rival, which Great Britain will lose forever because it controls the entire Far East and the East Indies.

Another Sunday Times report provides a detailed analysis of the impact from the perspective of the Kingdom of Great Britain's own cotton exports. Haney read in the newspaper that the report may have gotten data directly from Parliament, listing the main export data of the Kingdom of Great Britain's textile industry.

Seven years earlier, in 1853, the Kingdom of Great Britain had exported 131 million pounds of cotton yarn worth £6,896,000, and by 1859 the previous year, the kingdom had exported £165 million worth £7,200,000. It is not obvious that the export volume of cotton yarn of the kingdom is increasing, but if you look closely, this increase is almost all the growth of Europe, the Ottoman Empire and other places, and the East Indies, which was still in third place in terms of exports in 1853, has shrunk to about one-fifth of what it had been seven years earlier by 1859. The newspaper speculated that the East Indies, which originally accounted for one-tenth of the total exports of the Kingdom of Great Britain, now accounts for only one-fiftieth of the total export volume of cotton yarn, because the fast cotton yarn market has been completely controlled by the Chinese Empire in the East and the countries that are friendly with it, such as France and the United States.

Although the value of Great Britain's cotton exports also increased from 23.9 million pounds in 1853 to 26.12 million pounds last year (1859), the price fell from the original 4.2 pence per yard to 3.4 pence per yard. This is not the most critical, the most critical thing is that the Far East and the East Indies, which originally accounted for 8% of Great Britain's total cotton exports, that is, China, Japan, Java, etc., now account for less than 1% of exports. Even India, starting in 1856, fell from 24 percent of its total exports to 16 percent in the following years.

As for India, Hani knew it was because of the Indian insurgency that led to a decrease in trade. But the massive decline in China, Japan, and Java, needless to say, must have been caused by the establishment of the Chinese Empire.

Eventually, in a corner of the newspaper, Harney found an interview with the owner of a textile mill that shed light on the plight of cotton spinners like Mark Sr. in the Baker Street area.

The boss revealed in the newspaper that he had opened a weaving mill employing 120 workers, and that everything was booming, but since the previous year, the situation has taken a turn for the worse. His weaving mill itself had several spinning machines, but there was not enough yarn, and the rest was purchased directly from another spinning mill, and since the previous year, the spinning mill that supplied him with yarn suddenly began to increase the price of yarn because of the rebellion in India, which caused the price of cotton to rise, and he bought yarn for weaving cloth without any profit. As a result, he had to raise the price of cotton cloth and dismiss 40 workers to keep the weaving mill afloat. But unexpectedly, some time ago, India's large-scale rebellion, the entire Indian cotton trading center of Mumbai City was occupied by rebels, and more than seventy percent of the cotton purchased by Britain from India in previous years was directly shipped back to Europe, and for a time, the price of cotton in London soared. The high price of cotton will inevitably lead to the high price of yarn. In desperation, the boss laid off his weaving mill again, but even so, he was able to hold on. But another piece of bad news came. The cotton cloth produced by his textile mill was purchased by a trading company in London and shipped to the Straits Settlements and Java Islands for sale; from a few months ago, the cotton cloth in the Straits Settlements and Java Islands suddenly increased, and all the cloth shipped by the trading company to the Straits Settlements and Java Islands was unsalable and had to be sold at a reduced price. By last month, the news came that the cotton cloth market in the East Indies had been occupied by the sacred cloth of the Chinese Empire in the East, because of the proximity and low freight, the price was half a percent cheaper than the cloth they produced, and now their British cloth was completely cut off. The trading company cancelled his orders for cloth completely, and he begged for someone to sell it, but there was no way to do it, and the whole London cloth market began to slump, and prices hit new lows, so he had to shut down the weaving mill altogether.

Seeing this, Haney sighed and said to Old Mark: "Old Mark, this really can't be blamed on those textile factory owners, it's to blame, it can only be blamed on the damned Indian rebellion, and the damned Orientals, who even started to produce cotton cloth and robbed the cotton cloth business of the Kingdom of Great Britain. After saying that, he began to worry in his heart, and he felt that he was a little powerless about the plight of old Mark and them. If the factory owners were black-hearted bosses, they could negotiate with them through their capacity as the chairman of the workers' association, but now it is clearly not a question of whether the bosses are black-hearted or not. For the first time, Hani felt how important the factory owners were to the workers.

At this time, a letter boy walked up to Hani, saluted, and said carefully: "Mr. Hani, I have finally found you, and I can complete the task." By the way, this is a letter from Mr. McCas. ”

Harney found that it was indeed the handwriting of his old friend Maccas, and invited him to lead the main representatives of the Paris Workers' Association to a tavern tonight to discuss the affairs of the Workers' Association. In the letter, Mackas revealed that the workers of the whole of Britain, including London, were on the verge of being laid off and unemployed, and that their lives were very difficult, so he decided to gather the leaders of the workers' associations in London and the surrounding cities to launch a huge demonstration to demand that the parliament and the cabinet government introduce a bailout policy to help the poor workers.

"Ha, I had a headache just now, and now I'm here to solve it." Hani said happily, "Old Mark, there's a way." As you know, Mr. McCas, he has invited us to consult tonight, in the hope of resolving the plight of your weavers on Baker Street. ”

Old Mark was also glad when he heard this: "How could I not know, Mr. McCas, that almost half of our weavers, who live in Baker Street, know him. His "Capital" is an exhaustion of the suffering of our workers. If the associationalist society he spoke of could be realized, then we, the textile workers, would no longer have to endure cold and starvation. ”

After the two finished speaking, they hurried out and went separately to inform the representatives of the various associations and prepare for the evening.