“Meanwhile, it seems all the money in Austria-Hungary is going to buy products from the USE,” Hayley said.
“It’s not just the money Grantville is sucking out of the economy,” Sarah said. “It’s the plows. Didn’t Judy ever tell you my dad’s story of the Fed Fairies?”
“Sarah!” Judy whined, sounding like a twelve-year-old. “Can you imagine Coleman Walker in a tutu with a magic wand? Yuk!”
Which produced general laughter and a lightening of the mood.
“What about the plows?” Hayley asked.
“Not just the plows, but they make a good example,” Sarah continued. “A farmer can plow more fields in the same amount of time. It’s easier to arrange his furrows to minimize run off. The crops come in fuller and the next year he plows fifteen acres rather than ten and adds a bit of fertilizer. Now that farmer is producing twice as much grain as he was two years ago, but the amount of money available to pay for the grain is just the same, or even less, than it was two years ago.
“Since the price of grain has dropped, the farmer down the way who was a bit slow to take up the new ways or just had a bad year can’t make the rent. His family gets thrown off the land and they come into town looking for work. But there is no work. The carpenter has a drill press that he got from the USE and not only isn’t hiring, he’s laid off a couple of journeymen who are also out looking for work. Meanwhile, the money that might have been spent on the price of wheat went to the USE and there is even less available to pay anyone for anything. Causing unemployment and the lower wages you talked about. Unemployment must be even worse than we thought back in Magdeburg.”
“It is,” Hayley said. “We’ve been hiring people just because we couldn’t stand seeing them out of work. In fact, that was the whole basis for SFIC.”
“That won’t work on a large scale.” Sarah shook her head sadly. “We don’t have enough money. Not all of us put together.”
“Then we get the money. Get others to put it up,” Judy said. “We need a project . . . something impressive. Then we get investors.”
They tried to talk her out of it. Susan for business reasons, Sarah for economic reasons, Hayley for political reasons, Gabrielle because it looked like a lot of distraction from getting a better understanding of down-time medical science. But Judy had an impulse of iron. It was an impulse to do good, but it wasn’t a real plan.
“How do you form a corporation in Austria-Hungary?” Susan asked.
“They have a lot of laws, but not all that much in the way of corporate law. Moses Abrabanel has been pushing for limited liability laws, but with very little success. I have a lawyer who is familiar with the state of corporate law.”
“Good.” Judy commanded, “Susan, you and I will go talk to Hayley’s lawyer and set up a stock corporation agreement with the best protection we can get for potential investors. Then we need a project, something to excite people, get them interested and involved.”
“Well, like Hayley said, they need living space,” Trudi said. “How about a tram like they have in Grantville to make the land outside the walls more accessible?”
“I’ve been testing the waters about that. There’s not much interest and considerable opposition,” Hayley said.
“Why opposition?” Sarah asked.
“They don’t want to make it easier for the hoi polloi to get to town,” Hayley said. “It’s the whole peasant villager versus citizen thing. And the ferry boat to Race Track City hasn’t helped, either.”
“That’s stupid!”
“Stupid or not, it’s real,” Hayley said. “I don’t see them getting excited about a few miles of track till they see it in operation, and maybe not then. I do see the city council stopping the trams at the city gates and searching the passengers to make sure that they aren’t smuggling in bread or beer to sell in competition with the city bakers. They’ve occasionally done that to the ferry boat.”
“A building then, like the Higgins or some of them going up in Magdeburg,” Trudi said. “Only bigger. A combination hotel and office building. Prince Karl is getting to be a pretty good architect, isn’t he?” She looked at Sarah.
“Oh my God!” Sarah complained. “Don’t get Karl involved in this.”
“Yes!” Judy said. “Karl is crazy for architecture! And he’s actually good at it, too.”
* * *
Two days later, at the meeting with Hayley’s lawyer, Jack Pfeifer, it was pointed out that there was no law against selling stock in a corporation registered in the USE in Austria-Hungary. And, not to put too fine a point on it, the girls owned all or part of several. In fact, they had American Equipment Corporation . . . just sitting there. With Prince Karl already owning several million dollars worth of preferred shares.