On April 30, 1649, in the Free City of Araucan, a large group of immigrants in light blue jeans were walking out of the quarantine area with lingering fear. When the ship they were carrying were passing through the waters of Cape Horn, the crew reported that an infectious disease had occurred in the immigration in the cabin. The captain made a quick decision to isolate the sick person until everyone was parked by the port in Araucan.

After arriving at the port, the only doctor in the Port of Arakan immediately accompanied by a deputy section chief of the Health Department of the Civil Affairs Department of the Southern Railway Company, boarded the ship to inspect all immigrants. It turned out that many people on the ship had measles, and some children suffered from diphtheria, which was already on the verge of death.

According to the investigation, the ship was from Lübeck and was loaded with 213 Livornian immigrants when they set out. The destination was the Free City of Araucan on the Pacific Ocean. Since 1946, the East Coast government has begun to introduce various policies to attract active immigrants. After all, the East Coast Republic is very short of people now, and it is possible to save the tonnage of East Coast transport ships and come from their own expenses. The more people are, the better for the Executive Committee.

Those who immigrate to the East Coast at their own expense generally come from Livornia. At present, the number of Livornians in the East Coast is increasing. Many people have settled up to get their relatives and friends from their hometowns after they settled down. After all, this place has been repeatedly war-torn, and now it is under the heavy levy of Swedish foreigners. Everyone has lived a difficult life. Therefore, since many years ago, people in the East Coast have sent money to Riga through their own networks on the East Coast. Sometimes some representatives elected by everyone will personally return to Livornia to organize immigration.

This time, the immigration ship from Lubeck specializes in immigration business (on the return trip, he brought a ship of East Coast specialties). More than 300 Livornians crowded the ship, but only more than 200 people were alive when they arrived at East Coast Port. The ship had an infectious disease on the way. At that time, the sailors threw forty or fifty immigrants into the sea. After arriving at East Coast Port, the people from the East Coast Port Administration routinely disinfected it. Then they stuffed more than 100 newly arrived Ming immigrants on the ship, allowing them to continue to sail south to Arakan Free City on the Pacific side. In order to compensate for this freight, the East Coast Immigration Department gave the immigrant ship an additional fee of 20,000 yuan.

Unexpectedly, measles and diphtheria broke out again on the way, causing a group of children with weak resistance to die. I don’t know if it was not thoroughly disinfected at Oriental Port or if there were still patients lurking in the crowd. In short, when the ship was disembarked in the Free City of Araucan, the crew successfully lost one quarter of the crew again. The number of people was less than three hundred.

After everyone was stuck on the boat and spent fifteen days of quarantine, all sailors and immigrants who did not show symptoms were allowed to go to the shore. They would take a short break in the Free City of Araukan for a whole month, doing some light physical labor, such as helping the Nantie Company to comb wool, plant vegetables and mow grass. After the rest, those Ming people immigrants will go to the designated villages nearby under the leadership of the clerk of the Civil Affairs Department of the Nantie Company to settle down.

As for those new immigrants who came to the country (only refer to Livonians), they may not live in villages planned by the government. According to the encouragement policy for self-paid immigration issued by the East Coast government, these people can freely choose among the idle commons, of course, the number must not exceed 30 acres. These lands do not have to pay any taxes to the Nantec Corporation within 20 years, but if they have no money to buy out the land they have chosen forever (5 yuan per acre). They can temporarily choose to rent, and they are exempt from rent in the first three years. Three years later, the Nantec Corporation asked them to charge cheap land rent, which can be said to be very generous.

For immigrants who are forced to settle in designated locations, new immigrants who choose settlements according to their own wishes and habits can tolerate possible setbacks—which is important in the poor land and poor environment of Southern Patagonia—and they can also treat some of the shortcomings in their land more calmly.

On the contrary, for immigrants who forced to settle in designated locations, even if they fail to get a bad harvest due to their own fault, they will blame their superiors and apply for endless relief or simply ask for work outside, which often makes local township government officials worry.

The government will never understand everyone's actual needs. Even if the settlements selected by the government are very good, but are not favored by immigrants, in order to develop their careers, they should better recognize the settlement locations selected by immigrants, because perhaps the immigrants are more familiar with these locations and more in line with their working habits, and their output will be higher. Therefore, in the view of Kangcaien, a company like Nantie Company, which pays more attention to output efficiency, it is no big deal to let immigrants choose suitable settlements by themselves. Except for some companies that consider the strategic perspective that settlements should be set, other places have been basically relaxed, allowing these self-funded immigrants to freely choose (public immigrants are placed in strategic key points to settle in concentrated settlement).

Of course, for security reasons, the Nantie Railway Company still requires the self-paid immigrants to try their best to live in the land they choose. In principle, each village must not be less than fifteen households (one hundred households in each local village). For these residents, in addition to granting them arable land, the Nantie Railway Company also allows them to grazing in state-owned pastures designated by the government (usually where the water and grass are abundant), and at the same time reduces the time for corvee service - just as local farmers must participate in the construction of roads and serve as military servants for the army, farmers under the Nantie Railway Company will also participate in the construction of roads, railways and ports.

As for immigrants who did not form villages with people and settled alone, they could not send their flocks to state-owned ranches to grazing, and their corvee time could not be reduced. In fact, as the residents reduced their corvee work hours, the actual workload of these individual settlers increased. Therefore, in reality, there are very few people who choose to settle alone at present, and basically everyone chose to choose a place that everyone thinks is suitable for settlement.

Nan Railway Company is persistent in promoting the construction of the Liangyang Railway and two modern ports at both ends, because if this railway is not completed in one day, Nan Railway Company will not make a profit in one day. If it is not profitable, how can it attract subsequent funds to enter the Southern Patagonia region for development and construction? To promote railway construction, the first thing is to obtain enough labor - not only slave labor, but also a large number of free people who have officially settled. After all, they are the foundation for the local society in the East Coast.

New immigrants generally live in their own simple shacks or adobe houses in the first year. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that some immigrants with good economic conditions have money to buy some wood to build houses. All of these woods are produced in the state-owned forest farm of Beech Castle in Tierra del Fuego. Of course, it is not beech. This wood is too precious and can only be used for shipbuilding. Half of the houses used to build houses is just second- and third-rate wood such as fir. However, for most immigrants who come here for long trips and are extremely poor, this is still something they cannot afford.

After these two or three hundred new immigrants settled down, they had to start preparing for their future lives. Cattle, sheep and other livestock could only be purchased from a few local residents, or from the Araucan natives who were driving the flock, or from the South Railway Corporation to the South Railway Corporation (the East Coast Pacific Task Force, which was just preparing to withdraw troops from Chile, handed over a large number of cattle, sheep, horses and other livestock to the South Railway Corporation); and after having livestock, they had to prepare hay, and then they would open small vegetable gardens around their chosen residences to plant some vegetable seeds they brought from the Old Continent.

In today's Araucan Free City, growing vegetables is almost the most profitable way, because the degree of commercialization is quite high. In addition to vegetable gardens, wealthy new immigrants who have the money to buy farm tools or cattle and horses also have time to clean up the land, ditches, and prepare to plant cold-resistant grains such as buckwheat, rye or oats as soon as possible after spring begins. They can help their neighbors reclaim some land for a fee, as long as they tell them the share ratio of the grain harvest. This kind of mutually beneficial thing will generally not be rejected.

According to the estimates of the Civil Affairs Department of Nantie Company, if not in the first year, the immigrants basically belong to the extremely poor class; from the second and third years, with the continuous development of land, they will have the spare effort to buy wood or bricks and tiles to renovate their houses; and in four years, due to the stability of land production and the advantage of exempting taxes, they will start to sell some of the remaining agricultural products, and then buy cattle, sheep, farm tools or daily necessities that they could not afford before, and they officially settled down and became people who could create their own wealth instead of needing relief.

There are all talents, and what Nan Railway Company lacks now is people! Especially at the moment when the construction of the Liangyang Simple Highway has been fully started, the desire for manpower has almost been magnified to an infinite extent. The captains and foremen of the Engineering Department have been calling for people from their superiors at the top of their voices, and in order to achieve their own goals, they even threaten the construction period may be delayed. But what's the use? Nowadays, 90% of immigrants are assigned to the east coast. It is quite good to have some leaks in the fingers of the immigration department. It's still quite good to distribute Mo Ming's face. If you don't want to see someone else's hair.

But maybe the situation will be much better next year, because Australia will open some experimental immigration ships, and sail eastward along the edge of the westerly wind belt. These immigration ships will obviously bring a lot of fresh blood to the Southern Railway Company, making the construction of the two-yang railway and ports a substantial acceleration channel. (To be continued, please search for Astronomy, the novel is better, updated and faster!
Chapter completed!