When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

#390 - Civil engineering, the hottest industry right now

Halkin dusted off his rear and stood up, noticing the surprised gazes around him, but he didn't feel any shame.

Back when he was chased to his doorstep by those thugs and hooligans, he endured far more scornful looks than this.

As a new-generation Dwarf of the Dragon Cult, Halkin was highly secularized, lacking the strong sense of honor of the older generation of Dwarves.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have chosen the profession of a merchant in the first place.

Leading his pony out of the stable, Halkin didn't ride it, but instead led it towards the town hall.

Now that he had seen his father and delivered the electrum and mithril, he could conveniently pick up the list of artisans for the Holy Forging Department from Graypeak Town.

Leading his pony along Graypeak Town's main street, Halkin looked around, feeling that this place was completely different from the Graypeak Town he had come to years ago.

The original red-light gambling dens and brothels had been completely demolished and transformed, some into worker dormitories, and others into public buildings and shops.

The garbage and illegal constructions along the roadside had been cleared away, leaving a wide avenue that could accommodate two carriages side by side.

Along the road, everywhere he looked, there were stonemasonry teams carrying hammers, planks, and buckets of mortar.

Halkin stopped and started, only to find that at least three out of ten houses along the road were being renovated, rebuilt, or torn down and reconstructed.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," Halkin couldn't help but click his tongue as he stood next to a bustling construction site.

The construction site in front of him was originally the gambling den that had swindled him out of his entire fortune.

Times had changed, the owner behind the gambling den had been hanged in Jeanne d'Arc Keep, and the thugs and hooligans who ran the gambling den had collectively gone to Daze Township to dig mud.

And Halkin himself? He had become the director of the Holy Forging Department, a respected figure wherever he went.

Fate is like a wild donkey; once it starts running, it doesn't stop.

Everywhere Halkin looked, there were construction teams led by stonemasons building new houses and roads.

Bricks were stacked together, then plastered and reinforced with mortar, and wooden frames protruded from the plaster.

Plasterers wearing open vests sat on the beams, covering the roof panels with large pieces of shale.

"To the left, to the left, hey, hey, hey, good, good!"

"We're short on bricks, go to the nearby villages and see if you can get them to burn another batch by paying them extra."

"Ouch, ouch, my leg is broken."

Stonemasons holding rulers and marking lines roared, directing the pulley cranes, and occasionally a few unlucky plasterers fell from the roof.

Several alchemist priests from the construction team placed their hands on the walls, reinforcing the newly built mortar walls, while laborers pushed wheelbarrows to dump building materials on the ground.

With the end of the turbulent environment, after the harvest season, massive amounts of grain flooded the market, and the original tense atmosphere gradually faded.

Thus, the reconstruction work of Graypeak Town and even the entire Kush Territory was restarted.

The emergence of such a bustling scene was not only due to the encouragement of the people but also to the strong promotion by the Horne government.

Not only were new houses exempt from taxes for three years, but also various building materials were given substantial tax breaks.

Some relatively low-end and easily sourced building materials industries have become the preferred sideline for major rural households.

For example, brick kilns, almost every household area with good clay nearby has built several of them.

In the past, a medium-sized town house cost about 5 to 20 gold pounds, but now, the highest does not exceed 10 gold pounds.

The most outrageous thing is that the price is not only cheap for building materials such as mortar but even for labor costs.

After the abolition of the Labor Law, there was no upper limit to the wages of laborers, and laborers were not prevented from buying and wearing better clothes and accessories.

In the early days of the abolition of the Labor Law, the market price of labor did indeed usher in a wave of increases.

However, with the end of the harvest season and the entry into the slack farming season, the abolition of the Fugitive Slave Law allowed farmers to move around, leading to a large number of rural youths entering the labor industry.

As a result, the price of labor wages fell like a dive, and city residents wanted to take this opportunity to quickly build a new house or repair an old house, or take the opportunity to invest in a wave of houses or shops.

Some Salvation Army retired veterans or farmers who participated in the previous fortress construction formed civil engineering teams after returning.

Stonemasons are responsible for the design, and civil engineering teams are responsible for the main construction work.

The stonemasons who led the construction felt that they had made money, the farmers who worked felt that they had made money, and the citizens and the Salvation Army government who paid the money felt that they had made money.

The only ones who felt they had lost money were probably the old laborers before.

Bypassing a closed road that was being built with mortar, the town hall appeared in front of him.

The town hall was a three-story building, covering an area of nearly two acres.

The town hall, more than ten meters high, was also ten meters wide, and the dark orange lime walls were full of gear-patterned relief panels.

Halkin did not take a detour from the main entrance but led his horse to the side door.

Under the arched doorway was deserted, and a lame old veteran doorman leaned back in a deck chair, dozing off, lifting his linen shirt to reveal his hairy belly.

But as soon as Halkin approached, the snoring stopped immediately, and he suddenly opened his eyes, looking at Halkin in front of him.

"Who... Lord Halkin?"

"Go and inform your secretary to bring down the updated list of artisans, I won't go up," Halkin said with a smile to the old soldier, "I caught you napping on duty."

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The first floor of Graypeak Town Hall was the townspeople's registration office, warehouse, and night watchman's office, the second floor was the finance office and court, and the third floor was the conference hall and archives.

The entire operation of Graypeak Town was basically in this small space.

Although the old soldier had a lame leg, he moved quickly. After a few minutes, a secretary trotted over from the stairs.

"Lord Halkin, this is the artisan list." The secretary, wearing a black woolen coat in the middle of summer, handed out a stack of thin paper booklets. From the short, stiff hair on his crown, it could be seen that the secretary was once a low-level monk.

"Oh." Halkin picked up the list and glanced at it, and after confirming that it was correct, he signed the secretary's receipt.

After collecting the list, Halkin greeted the secretary and the doorman, then straddled his pony and walked from the side to the main entrance.

The main entrance faced the street two meters away, with two bases, and the sphinx statues on the bases watched the passing pedestrians, their faces full of majesty.

Almost every town hall has two of these statues, said to show the majesty and courage of the Holy Son like a lion.

Although there are currently eight towns in Kush Territory, only three have truly established town halls: Graypeak Town, Sour Gourd Town, and Clay Town.

These three towns and Jeanne d'Arc Keep are the administrative centers of the 363 household areas in Kush Territory.

The remaining towns are either too small or have overlapping administrative divisions, and they are simply allowed to elect their own town chiefs, town constables, and other personnel for management.

Of course, although it is a self-election, the meaning of the Salvation Army government is also very important.

Their elected list needs to be signed and verified by the town hall of the superior level, and they have the right to propose a re-election or removal of the town chief.

The number of officials in the town hall is not large, basically maintained between 15-25 people.

Generally, there are five main public officials: the town chief, the secretary, the finance officer, the tax officer, and the captain of the night watchman, as well as some temporarily hired errand runners and clerks.

At present, these public officials are basically inherited from the previous ones, or hired, so the level is uneven, which has been criticized by Jeanne d'Arc Keep.

Riding on the pony, Halkin swayed out of the gate of Graypeak Town, but his heart was still thinking about other things.

According to the news that came out earlier, there may be a "bureaucratic system" reform in the future.

It is said to be for issuing benefits, and by then, these jobs in the town hall may not be so easy to get into.

I heard that the salary will be distributed according to the hierarchy in the future, so how much can I, the director of the Holy Forging Department, get?

Riding on the pony, Halkin looked ahead, his eyes scattered, but his thoughts floated elsewhere.

15 gold pounds a year, or 20 gold pounds, can't be lower than the war monks, right?

As he walked, Halkin smelled a strange stench, and it seemed that the pony under him was getting slower and slower.

Awakened from his vision of the future, he suddenly lowered his head and realized that the pony was trembling after seeing the scattered horse dung along the way.

"Damn it." Halkin got off his horse and looked at the scattered horse dung along the way, and then he realized, "I told you to feed it hay, feed it hay!"