At this moment, Isha is in the former Royal Capital of An Zhu, talking to a chimney sweeper.
“Yes, madam, if you want to get those little spirits down, you can wet the straw, light it, and then the straw will quietly smoke without catching fire, which will soon coax those little spirits down.”
The chimney sweeper added, “Other fancy smoke sources don’t work at all; they will only stun the little spirits.”
But Isha’s gaze was not on this worker; instead, she was looking at the child crawling out of the chimney.
“Isn’t the ‘Child Labor Law’ already enacted? From now on, new tools will replace child labor, but why, in factories and other places, are there still so many child laborers in An Zhu?”
Seeing through Isha’s thoughts, the worker said, “Madam, you are kind and cannot bear to see these children working, but it is also unavoidable. After all, it is not us who recruit these ‘apprentices,’ but their parents who send them.”
Just then, a parade passed by on the street not far away.
“Release the child workers! Guarantee the working rights of child workers!”
One person was shouting in front, while others following the parade also numbly shouted, “Release the child workers! Guarantee the working rights of child workers.”
This was not the first time Isha witnessed such a parade; the Empire had no external enemies, but there were still some unstable factors internally, just as Isha saw.
Isha had visited those parents who sent their children to factories instead of schools, and the responses she received were mostly rooted in poverty. Even if schooling was free and meals were provided, other living expenses still required money. Many families had five or six children, and these kids were crucial sources of labor and income for the family, making child labor impossible to eradicate.
No matter how strict the government orders were, they needed people to enforce them.
Once, a worker desperately pleaded with Isha not to send his child to school because his wife was sick, and they needed a stable income to barely maintain their family.
To be honest, even Isha felt lost after her visits; the results of her investigations were not what she had imagined, and greatly differed from her expectations.
This was the first time Isha doubted her investigations. The soot-covered children, those who suffocated in the flues due to adult negligence, and those who had never seen sunlight in factories and mines were all telling Isha that sometimes the truth is not as simple as it appears.
A girl from a mine once told Isha that twelve hours of her day had to be spent in the dark mine, where she had to operate a device to prevent toxic gases from accumulating underground.
Isha personally went down to the mine to check the area where the girl worked; despite Isha’s relatively petite stature, she still could not squeeze into that space.
Narrow, dark, and cramped—a normal adult would likely encounter mental problems after not too long, let alone an eight-year-old girl.
And eight years old was already quite big among these children, for if they grew older, they would no longer be able to do this work. Most children doing this work were around five years old, and of course, children in such places did not grow up.
The girl’s happiest moments were when payment was distributed, and she could go to the nearest small town with her parents and eat a meal of not-so-hard black bread with her family.
When Isha asked the girl if she wanted to continue working there, the girl silently nodded and said, “Yes.”
When the little girl expressed her desire to continue working there, Isha suddenly felt a chill shoot up her spine. She remembered the former serfs and realized that the current workers seemed no different from the former serfs.
Isha then met the girl’s parents, who appeared simple and honest. They had more than just the girl, as other children were also working.
The eldest child was already twelve years old. They used to have a fourteen-year-old child who was of formal working age, but unfortunately, that child died in a mining accident when Alberto was in power, and the couple did not receive any compensation.
At that time, no one would question a family who lost their eldest son due to a mining disaster.
Isha wanted to send the children of this family to the newly established public school, but the two parents knelt down, crying and begging Isha not to take their children away, insisting they needed the children to work to barely make ends meet.
In the end, Isha did not know how she walked out of that family’s home, as many bloody words still echoed in her ears.
Unlike before, when Isha felt powerless to change the situation and decided to fight for everyone’s cause, now Isha had the power to change the situation, but she could only punch at cotton, unsure of how to exert her strength.
Especially when Isha saw that couple again among the anti-child labor law parade.
The couple, like others, marched with blank faces and occasionally let out a couple of numb protests, looking like empty shells without spirit.
After communicating with Lind, he comforted Isha and gave her an address. Isha had the power to act freely, and now it was time to execute that power.
Lind also understood that some situations could not be resolved overnight. Improving workers’ treatment, improving factory conditions, implementing relevant laws, and providing compulsory education and aid to impoverished families all needed to come together for those wretched little spirits to stay in school obediently.
The Empire had also been promoting these policies, at least on the surface, it was prohibited to recruit children under fourteen.
In reality, in the Northern Border, without basic educational qualifications, you couldn’t even enter a factory because the production equipment there was among the most advanced. To operate that production equipment, even if you lacked professional skills, you at least had to be literate; otherwise, you wouldn’t even understand the basic regulations of the factory.
Sometimes, investigations need to go beyond grassroots levels; a broader perspective is necessary to connect various clues.
Just like Isha’s grassroots investigations can help Lind better understand the current situation of the people in An Zhu, Lind can also clearly feel through his subordinates’ intelligence and data that there is a force in An Zhu consciously rejecting more advanced production equipment.
Connecting that with the reports from Isha about factories and mines still using the cheapest and most outdated production equipment, even a fool could understand what was going on.
Of course, Lind had long suspected such situations, after all, he never overestimated the bottom line of those guys.
