Any number of the residents of Bamberg filed this interesting datum away for future consideration.
Early August, 1633: Würzburg, Franconia
"So where do we stand?" Arnold Bellamy asked. The reports he had been receiving from Franconia had disturbed him enough that he had climbed on a horse and come down to take a look in person. "Who's calling this race?"
"Paul is," Steve Salatto answered immediately. Anything to head off Reece Ellis.
"Well, then," Paul Calagna said. "If it's a race, overall, I think, thanks to Tania and Johnnie F., who adopted four children from the local orphanage, not to mention Joseph Matewski, who is volunteering at the hospitals when he isn't bandaging up our own people, showing the ladies new ways to cope with cradle cap and other infant ills, motherhood and apple pie appear to be considerably ahead of the rest of the Special Commission's horses. Apple Pie has found a down-time business partner in Zwetschgenkuechen and the two of them are showing up together on the bakery shelves. Those damson tarts are yummy."
"Be serious, blast it!" Reece snorted.
"I am serious," Paul protested. "Motherhood and Apple Pie are far in the lead. Voter Registration is running a strong third, though. Let's get Dave Stannard's input on that part of it."
Stannard was the inspector of elections for all of Franconia. Of all Grantville's regular rather than special staff, he was probably happiest with what the commission had been doing.
"Yes, it's been going great," he said. "This is one thing that the down-time district administrators understand. If you tell these Amtmaenner and their staffs to go out and make a list of all people in their district who are eighteen and over, arranged by town and village Gemeinde, they will by golly march out and make a list of all people in their district aged eighteen and over arranged by town and village. Pretty promptly and pretty thoroughly, too. If you tell them to contact each of those people, male and female, read them a page about the responsibility of voters under the N.U.S. Constitution, and register them to vote—at least for the election to decide whether or not their jurisdiction is going to join us; we can't do much about the qualifications for voting in local elections at the moment—the Amtmaenner will do that, too. These guys are really, really, good with lists. They send us tax assessment lists; lists of how many draft animals each village has; lists of who owes rents and dues to whom. Believe me; these guys have lists down pat."
Paul took up the narrative. "I don't know if we've persuaded them that voter registration is good for them, or if the existing elites will want to let all the people vote, when push finally comes to shove, but they've thrown themselves into getting it done. If you let them loose with personal computers, they'd put every single egg that a village chicken lays into a cross-indexed data base that assigned it a unique identification number. With provision for transferring the number to the proper chicken, if the egg hatched somewhere along the line."
"Tell me about it," Arnold answered. He had been subjected to the Joy of Statistics as represented by an Abrabanel with a laptop, more than once. "Thanks, Dave." He looked at their faces. "The other horses aren't doing so well, I take it."
"Forget about the Witches is hanging in there, thanks to Matz." Paul nodded toward Meyfarth, who was sitting on the other side of the table. "The people aren't really going to forget about them, of course. But we have managed to make the point to just about every town council and to the judicial officers of all three of the big jurisdictions, here in Würzburg, over in Fulda, and in Bamberg, that is, that we are not going to cough up government funding. So they are, for the time being, just stashing their grievances and biding their time, hoping that the fortunes of war will remove us and they can go back to pursuing their delightful hobby of witch-burning. Of course, we can't do anything about the parts of Franconia that aren't Catholic, and therefore aren't ours to administer. But most of them are Lutheran and Matz's boss is putting on the pressure there. We ought to send him a letter of appreciation."
Bellamy duly made a note about an appropriately flowery commendation to be sent to Duke Johann Casimir. Better, two: one from Gustavus Adolphus and one from Mike Stearns.
"Then we get to Separation of Church and State and the other horse in that team, Religious Toleration."
"Not so good?"
"Religious Toleration is pretty much running neck-to-neck with Forget about the Witches. Considering that we've managed to hitch them both to We Mean It, who has been lumbering along steadily, like a big old Clydesdale. We've been able to make the point that they have to do it—yeah, we've done that. Protestants can settle in Catholic Franconia. We've imposed that law as part of the occupation rules. The towns can't exclude Jews from trading privileges on the grounds of religion. We've imposed that law as part of the occupation rules. That won't stop them from trying to find sixteen other grounds for exclusion that accomplish the same purpose. We'll have to watch every town council very closely. What we haven't managed is to persuade them that it's a great thing, which is sort of what Congress assigned us to do. If enforcing it was our whole job, Toleration would be running pretty well. But the real kicker is that Congress told us to make them like it. Fat chance. On that, we're in possession of a thoroughly deceased equine."