I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution Chapter 67

Mitia reluctantly swallowed and put down the silver fork in her hand, no longer eating: “The taste was indeed bad, but its yield proved its strategic value. We need to find a way to cultivate it properly.”

“This… should we hand it over to the grain-breeding team?”

“No need. It’s enough for them to handle their own duties. This potato requires the establishment of a brand-new team to study it.”

“If there’s no other way, then use the clumsy way. Plant more test fields, screen and select the better-quality ones, expand its lineage, and proceed step by step!”

Mitia could not help but rub her temples.

Research teams, intellectual talents, education, population—everything seemed to circle back to the starting point.

The population issue was comparatively easier to resolve.

How to increase population? First, a stable environment; second, a relatively fair food distribution.

As long as a national regime could maintain these two fundamental conditions, the majority of common civilians under its rule would be willing to give birth and raise children.

Moreover, they were a newborn country just emerging from the baptism of war and famine.

At present, land resources were distributed more fairly and abundantly, so the civilians’ desire to bear children would be extremely strong.

The people’s thinking was very traditional, but they also had their own kind of shrewdness.

The more children a family had, the more laborers it possessed, and the more land it could receive.

Even if they didn’t farm, there were alternative livelihoods.

The cost of raising was low, and the return rate was high—there was no better bargain.

She could also appropriately increase policy support in this area, such as fertility bonuses and subsidies, or shaping a sense of honor—like the title of “Heroic Mother.”

However, as the number of children increased, the burden of raising them would also grow heavier.

Thus, little girls, who were weaker during childhood, would often be intentionally or unintentionally neglected or treated harshly.

But whether male or female, they all counted as the labor population Mitia needed.

She would not allow prejudice to exist.

Setting aside the magician class, the status of ordinary women in this world was still rather low.

Or rather, as long as a society was in the agrarian stage, where resources created were insufficient, physically weaker women inevitably held lower status and had to contribute their value to fill the deficit.

The fortunate thing for Seris was that their current emperor was a female Empress.

Moreover, from the very start of her rise, Mitia always stood on the side of the people in handling and viewing issues, constantly and invisibly influencing the commoners’ perception of women.

Whether it was disaster relief, land allocation, granting slaves a new path, or converting tenant farmers into free citizens—her external image was exceedingly favorable.

But perhaps this was still not enough.

Farming women could not compare with strong young men, so she had to diversify job allocations—for example, letting them enter factories to do meticulous work.

For the first batch of women leaving the fields, she needed to give them some temporary support.

As for boys, there was no worry—they were indispensable for continuing the family line, an eternal issue one could never bypass.

But girls needed Mitia to provide them with some initial survival guarantees.

Among all guarantees, the attraction of a good job was, without question, the greatest.

Thus, for textile workers, she would set a gender priority threshold, with salaries and benefits subsidized by the treasury—20% higher than those of the same level.

By balancing high income against middle income, she could exchange it for status equilibrium.

It was not that Mitia deliberately wanted to enforce female priority.

Her goal was to provide those shrewd but illiterate elders with an anchor point to calculate the cost of raising daughters.

As long as future returns were considerable and stable, they would most likely not begrudge giving a girl a bowl of food.

Before independence, women’s economic labor remuneration would increase, taking a significant share of household income.

Then, through propaganda and guidance, it would continuously and subtly shift perceptions.

The textile industry was a labor-intensive one and would inevitably be transferred away in the future.

What seemed now like a secure and carefree “iron rice bowl” would, in reality, not last many years before disappearing.

This was a temporary benefit.

After all, from nothing to something required a strong medicine at the start, along with deeply memorable slogans such as “Women can hold up half the sky.”

By the time large-scale textile industries lost their value domestically, Mitia believed that Seris would already have moved past the age of relying solely on the land to survive.

By then, the so-called gender disadvantage would naturally cease to exist.

But high welfare was not something easily obtained either.

In other industries, the work intensity standards would remain the same for both men and women—equal pay for equal work.

In livelihood-related industries, only textiles and food would provide special preferential treatment for women.

Other sectors would still be allocated according to individual abilities and qualifications.

In the afternoon,

Mitia attended a joint session of the upper and lower houses of parliament.

This was also the first grand assembly since the founding and reorganization of the nation.

As expected, this meeting would determine Seris’ overall development strategy and direction in the coming period.

The proposals Mitia put forward—population incentive plans, female-supportive policies, and so on—all passed the representatives’ vote.

The bills would officially come into effect after a two-month public announcement period.

These matters were not really the problem.

The focus was on the upcoming nominations, voting, and selections for the newly re-divided state-level governing teams.

In other words, the previous acting officials would be formally reclassified and officially authorized, directly relating to the distribution of interests.

Seris had once been a military government transitioning from an army regime, only later evolving into the current normal parliamentary government.

Everyone in the assembly hall had transitioned from military to political roles.

Who among them wasn’t loud-voiced, combative, and hot-tempered? They had all received Mitia’s military training and guidance.

So why should it be you who succeeded, and not me?

The Speaker, acting as Prime Minister, was sweating profusely as he tried to mediate everywhere, occasionally even taking a punch.

Representatives from the lower house—workers and commoners—watched the chaos in dazzlement, as if only short of cracking sunflower seeds for entertainment.

Mitia, for her part, sat at the main seat with great interest, resting her cheek on her hand as she watched them quarrel noisily.

When she noticed a few farmer representatives—elderly grandfathers—looking her way, she smiled and responded.

She had been rather extreme in the selection of representatives.

Farmer group representatives were randomly chosen, with sergeant majors from out-of-province troops selecting elderly men above the age of seventy and escorting them to the capital.

The selection time was irregular, the number of people uncertain, never the same each time.

Worker representatives were also chosen this way, but in reverse—the youth group was randomly selected.

Elderly men, having lived long enough, had seen through life.

They had already experienced the pros and cons of various policies and could make conclusions.

And young people, full of vigor and only just stepping into society, dared to voice what difficulties and injustices they currently faced.

These two groups were the most suitable to represent ordinary people.

As for why the army carried out the selections—it was because the bond between the army and civilians in Seris was the strongest.

If even that bond could not prevent problems, then nothing else would stand a chance.

As for middle-aged people… at that stage of life, what they did and said was already no longer entirely up to them.

It was better to have factory and company employee committees and unions speak on their behalf and fight for their interests.

The unions held the insurance funds of employees—medical, pension, accident, and so forth.

They had the obligation to speak for workers and negotiate with companies.

When workers’ incomes rose, unions could obtain more profit in turn.

Mitia served as the terminal supervisor of the unions, and she could also obtain a share of management dividends, thereby indirectly providing the unions with a protective talisman.

The employee committees were proxy holders of workers’ virtual shares, standing as a community of shared interests on the same line as the workers themselves.

This was also why Mitia could sit back comfortably and watch the show.

“I’ve already done my utmost for the internal foundation. What remains is up to you all to perform~”