I Became A Black Merchant In Another World-Chapter 204: If you keep telling a lie, it becomes the truth (6)

The guild masters of the carpenters from all over the empire had gathered.

They wore expressions that looked as if they were ready to take up arms and kill enemies at any moment.

No, they were in a state where they would have no qualms about killing one or two people if it meant protecting the interests they had upheld for generations.

Tischler, the master of the Torino Carpentry Guild, had the same mindset as them.

‘For the sake of myself and my children, the guild system must be preserved.’

If Fabio had been there, just by looking at their expressions, one would have mocked them, thinking they were like the righteous volunteer soldiers who fought with their lives during the Japanese invasions of Korea. They all had the resolve to fight to the death.

The representative of the Florence Carpentry Guild, the guild master of Florence, opened his mouth with great weight.

“Our ancestors created the guild system to preserve our crafts during the empire’s turbulent times.”

The Florence Guild master represents all the guilds in the region, but in reality, he is just a representative. His actual standing is essentially equal to the others, and it’s impossible for him to interfere with other guilds.

Even though he’s a representative, he still has to use respectful language.

“Thanks to the guilds that have been passed down from our ancestors to us, the empire has been able to progress. We’ve blocked the decline of ancient techniques and continuously developed them.”

Overall, this wasn’t entirely incorrect.

However, the guilds today are nothing more than a reactionary force that obstructs the development of techniques.

The members of the guilds think of themselves as if they are fighting against tyrants in the name of justice.

“The emperor’s plan to abolish our guild is like expelling the faithful servants who have contributed to the empire’s development from behind the scenes. The carpentry guild cannot accept this lightly.”

The Florence Guild master slammed his hand down on the desk before him.

“The Blacksmith Guild, the Stonemason Guild, the Butcher Guild, the Mill Guild, the Baker Guild, and so on. All the guilds across the empire have signed a petition. The content is simple: we will halt all production until the decree to abolish the guild system is withdrawn.”

The reason guild masters, simple artisans, can hold seats as city council members and lead lives as luxurious as many nobles is because they are the ones who make the empire run.

But what happens if all the guilds stop production for just a week?

‘When the heart stops, the person dies; when the guilds stop, the empire dies.’

Tischler, the master of the Torino Carpentry Guild, also fully agreed with this.

This was an opportunity to strike back at the stupid nobles who couldn’t live without them.

“If we don’t receive a withdrawal of the guild abolition, we will stop all production and sales for two weeks starting today. After that, we will continue halting production and sales every two weeks. It will be difficult, but let us all unite and endure. I now declare the meeting adjourned.”

Tischler supported this and shouted.

“We must win!”

After watching motivational videos, the first hour is spent planning to do something.

Then, like human nature, you relax and return to your old ways.

Tischler’s burning determination started to waver bit by bit.

“Is there no damn backstabber like that traitor Gildo?”

If it weren’t for Gildo, the traitor of the Pisa Blacksmith Guild, Tischler’s resolve would never have wavered.

If the guild system were abolished, he would be ousted from his position as guild master, which he had worked hard to maintain. Moreover, he wouldn’t be able to pass down his artisan position to his children.

He had secretly bought three workshops to leave for his children.

He had also made sure the apprenticeship process was more comfortable and enjoyable than others, with clear evaluation standards for creating masterpieces and even bribing the senior artisans who served as judges.

How could he bear to see the guilds being closed after all that?

‘If a traitor appears, we’re screwed.’

“As long as there’s no backstabber, we’ll win for sure.”

Fabio, the one who orchestrated all of this, also knows this basic fact.

But the problem is that there’s no guarantee that there won’t be a traitor. There are too many places where a traitor could appear.

There are very clear reasons for betrayal.

If some evil person completely abandons their conscience and starts doing business while everyone else is on strike, what would happen?

All the surrounding nobles, merchants, and citizens would place orders with that person.

The work would pile up, and everyone would be eager to pay extra for the privilege.

Who wouldn’t betray for the immediate benefit?

“We can trust the guild masters, though.”

At this point, saying you trust them is essentially the same as not trusting them at all.

However, he continued to rationalize his thoughts and analyze the current situation.

When the guild masters all unite to preserve their interests and continue their total strike,

“Surely we can’t trust the other artisans either.”

No matter how good your employee management system is, there’s a high chance it won’t work.

Even if they don’t obtain the position of guild master, the bottom-tier artisans who will end up rotting in small workshops have no reason not to sell out.

‘If the guilds are shut down, who cares about the master or anyone else?’

“We can’t trust the artisans. It’s impossible to trust them with our eyes open. It’s unfortunate for the other guild masters, but this is something we have to do to survive.”

Moreover, the other guild masters will likely brag about how their guilds are the best and the cheapest, claiming that they can dominate the entire empire once the guilds are abolished.

Those bastards will likely let their rivals continue the strike while they make a fortune by working.

‘I can’t trust them.’

“The abolition of the guilds is one thing, but we need to be able to trust these bastards. Our guild has to stay in normal operation.”

And most of the guild masters, of course, backstabbed each other.

The ones who kept their promises were the fools.

In the end, only the loyal ones lost out.

“As you predicted, Baron, only a handful of guild masters actually went on strike.”

This was to be expected.

In any military, if there are two commanders, it’s doomed to fail.

Even if the generals Yi Sun-sin and Gang Gam-chan are on opposite sides, the result will still be disastrous.

But in an organization where hundreds of people are in similar positions, if you sow a little discord, the whole thing can be dismantled quickly.

“Who’s going to strike when it’s obvious the other side will backstab you? If you hand them a sword and say, ‘I’ll give you hundreds of gold coins if you stab me, but don’t, because we’re friends,’ who wouldn’t stab you? What a ridiculous thought, your mind is a flower garden.”

Internal informants are notoriously unreliable in any organization.

The exception is when a lower-ranked person tries to expose an attempt to screw over the organization’s leader.

Otherwise, if someone exposes the fact that a department head harassed an employee or that someone was exploited and died, they might be hailed as heroes at first...

But by the time the incident is buried, that person’s desk and chair are removed, and they are fired for absurd reasons.

Afterward, their reputation spreads, and it becomes difficult for them to get a job in the same industry or even at other companies.

The higher-ups aren’t ignorant of the rightness of the informant’s actions.

They know that once internal exposure starts, it can spread like wildfire and threaten their necks.

Let alone broken promises between friends that don’t matter if kept or not?

Sebastian handed me a report.

“This is a list of good workshops I’ve gathered based on my orders. The owners are skilled, and their reputations are solid. It would be good to acquire them.”

In our empire, the concepts of mass production and mass consumption don’t exist.

Simply put, no one even thinks about building such a large factory.

It’s not that people here are ignorant and incapable of thinking of such things, but the concept itself is foreign to them.

Just like how it took humanity over a hundred years to come up with a can opener after inventing canned goods.

I’ll take advantage of this.

“I’ll buy up all those workshops and gather all the poor people from the slums.”

Updat𝓮d fr𝙤m ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com.

From now on, they’ll be doing what artisans do, but they’ll become factory workers instead.

A salary of one and a half gold coins a year, the same as the city’s commoners, will be enough.

“About 500 people should be sufficient. Then, I’ll build a large factory, not a workshop, according to the plans that Gildo made for me.”

After promising him money and women, Gildo completed the plans secretly in just two months.

What a smart kid.

“From now on, it’s the era of mass production and mass consumption.”

Although it won’t be possible to mass-produce things like crazy without steam engines...

With highly advanced division of labor, we can at least imitate it.

“Let’s start by building the factory.”