After the industry began, Suzhou City's population increased compared to a few years ago. The farm system implemented by the Jiuzhou Army has turned many farmers into handicraftsmen, and the use of agricultural machinery has prevented the land from requiring so many farmers.

Although the business in Suzhou City is becoming more and more developed, miscellaneous courtyards where poor workers gather have begun to appear in the city. These brick and tile houses are next to each other, and often only have one roof, and several families are crowded together. The Mingdao with sewage discharge flows through one side, and no one deals with the accumulated debris.

"Wu San and his brothers were arrested for setting fire to burn the textile factory of their shopkeeper. The government has not dealt with them yet, and I don't know if they will be beheaded." A dozen rough cloth workers gathered in a yard. They were talking about the sensational fire textile factory incident that happened a few days ago.

"Wu San and his shopkeepers have always been badly praised. They are famous iron roosters, and they try to squeeze them together. According to Wu San, they work for more than seven hours a day and have to arrive at the textile factory on time every day. And if they are found to be lazy, they will be deducted from their wages. However, their approach to setting fires is too extreme, and they also burned several houses near the textile factory week, which may not be able to escape the punishment of the government." A worker said.

"I don't think they need to do this. After being fired, they can do other jobs. We men are good at having hands and feet and will not starve to death, right?" said another worker.

"What you think is really simple! The docks, construction sites, and mining farms do have to work only by effort, but most of the jobs are full, and some of the work is more tiring than in textile factories! The best place for us is the official textile factory. The treatment of the official textile factory is better than that of private textile factories, but the number of official textile factories is less than that of private textile factories, and we have no way to go in. If it weren't for no choice, how could they have worked in the iron rooster for so many years?"

"Do we want to support Wu San and his brothers? We textile workers are a group. If our shopkeepers dismiss us in the future, someone will support our negotiations with the shopkeepers. If we don't protest, those shopkeepers will think we are easy to bully and will try every means to increase our working hours. I think it's better to take advantage of this incident to fight for the necessary benefits for our workers. Anyway, the law will not blame the public." More than a dozen workers were thinking about wanting to fight for the rights of the group they represented by supporting Wu San and others.

"But what should we do? Will we set fire like them? Our shopkeeper is okay to us on weekdays. Doing so will not only make us lose our jobs, but also make the shopkeeper's family bankrupt." One of the workers hesitated a little.

"The boss is usually good to us just to make us work harder. The young boss's attitude towards us is not very good. Who knows if we will be fired from the young boss's boss in the future? Now the six hours of work are already very long. Every day we get up early and go to bed late to make a little money. See where we live now, the dilapidated slum. The house prices in Suzhou City suddenly rise wildly, and we will never be able to buy a house here in our lifetime. The boss can obtain a net profit of thousands of taels of silver from his industry every year."

"It's more than a thousand taels. The owner was originally a big businessman. Even though the government took over the land, the government did not take over his property. He later purchased several textile factories and a dye factory. There were hundreds of employees, and each person helped him earn ten taels of silver every year, and he would earn several thousand taels of silver."

"If I have money, I also want to set up a textile factory, and I can earn thousands of taels of silver without having to work at home."

"You are daydreaming. Do you have the capital to buy textile mills? You and I can't buy half of the textile mills even if I work hard for the rest of my life!"

"We are just a bunch of hardships. We can have a job and have a few extra wages."

"But I heard that our boss also wants to buy a steam engine from the government to increase production. I wonder if we will be fired like Wu San and the others. The boss is good to us, but the steam engine does not have to be eaten, does not have to receive wages, and will not complain. How can we and our group need such a machine?"

"Isn't the steam engine sold by the government very expensive? It also requires filing with the government to buy the steam engine. The procedures are very complicated. Our shopkeeper really wants to buy the steam engine?"

"It's very likely that it's true. A steam engine is valuable, but it's enough to keep the wages of many people, and it won't take long to recover the cost of buying a steam engine."

"What should we do? We are still talking about Wu San's affairs. If we tomorrow we will fall to Wu San's level..."

When the workers in the slums talked about their boss buying a steam engine, they were afraid that they would be fired, and people were suddenly panicked. Many textile workers like them saw their own shadows from Wu San and the others, worried about their future.

When they had their own fields, they were worried about the daily harvest, but after becoming handicraftsmen, they were worried about whether they would be fired. They had become proletarians who rely solely on wages for their lives.

"I decided that we must make sure that we will not be replaced by machines, and that we need to reduce our workload and increase our wages!"

"We need to find more handicraftsmen who are the same as us, and protest to the government. The government should not sell steam engines to textile factories. We can do what steam engines can do!"

Textile workers in Suzhou City are generally facing the threat of being replaced by machines. The workers who are only able to survive in the miscellaneous hospital area spread to the concept of making demands of rights. Soon a new round of actions were launched in Suzhou City to support textile factory workers.

Thousands of workers who have been replaced by machines or are about to be replaced by machines gathered in front of Suzhou Government Office and loudly protested to the Suzhou Government Office, demanding that the government improve their situation and properly handle the incident of burning textile factories.

"The workers in the textile factory went on strike!" Some owners of Suzhou City Textile Factory found that their workers did not come to the textile factory as usual, but ran to the government office to participate in the protest.

"This situation is getting worse and worse." Chen Hongmi and Wu Zhicai, two senior officials in Suzhou City, saw that the workers blocked the Suzhou government office and were at a loss.

The conflicts that originally involved several machines destroyed have now become workers' rights protection movements across the city. If they are not handled well, they will easily evolve into larger-scale public security incidents.

"I have only heard of peasant uprisings before. What should this worker do if he revolts?" Chen Hongmi said to himself.
Chapter completed!