Naturally, Knight Lawrence came here for the "Strength Pill" that can perform miracles. But after he explained his purpose, Scrooge shrugged his shoulders and said, "My friend, I'm sorry, but I can't agree to your request, whether it's authorized production or patented shares."

"Why?" Lawrence asked, "If you have any dissatisfaction with my conditions, or if you have any new suggestions, we can talk about them."

"Ah, my friend, you have misunderstood," said Scrooge. "As far as I am concerned, of course, I am willing to continue our cooperation. But, well, maybe you came in a hurry and missed today's news. ” Scrooge said as he picked up a newspaper from the coffee table and handed it to Lawrence.

Lawrence took the newspaper, glanced at it suspiciously, and saw a line of black words on the headline: "The House of Representatives passed a resolution to restrict the export of key technologies related to national security."

"Mr. Lawrence, you know, my business has grown and I've made a lot of money. Naturally, some people don't like me. So, um, someone came up with this thing." Scrooge put on a look of helplessness "Although it has only been passed by the House of Representatives, the Senate has not yet considered it, so this thing has not yet become a bill, but at this time, it is not appropriate for us to talk about this matter. If someone knows it, they will detain it for me." Labeled a traitor. Of course, I am working hard in the Senate. If the Senate can defeat this bill, we can continue to cooperate on this issue.

This situation was obviously beyond Lawrence's expectations. Who knows why the U.S. Congress would suddenly pop up and go crazy?

"If your country's Congress continues to adopt this practice that is not conducive to the freedom of business, the United Kingdom will not do anything." Lawrence thought for a while and said.

"I also hope that you can put a little pressure on those idiots in Congress to let them know that it is immoral to hinder the freedom of business," Scrooge replied.

"If we can't talk about co-production for a while," Lawrence said, "then we hope to be able to get a sales agency in Europe."

After hearing Lawrence's words, Scrooge sneered inwardly. "Strength Pill" has now become a strategic material, and the benefits of being able to monopolize the sales of such things are of course very huge. If this is achieved, the British can even use it to influence the situation in Europe at will. But because of this, such a condition cannot be agreed to anyway. Otherwise, Scrooge would be completely making wedding clothes for others.

"Mr. Lawrence, you should understand that such conditions cannot be accepted. There are both economic and political reasons for this. Moreover, I do not like this practice of violating the normal principles of free trade. Therefore, I can't agree to conditions such as who should not sell the goods to but only to whom. However, considering that we have been cooperating very happily, I can give His Royal Highness the price Some concessions. Of course, this is not without cost."

Lawrence has almost figured it out now: Scrooge feels that he already has enough power, and he is unwilling to easily share his interests with others. Regarding this collaborator, His Royal Highness did not fail to investigate carefully. Lawrence knew that Scrooge is now one of the most important donors of the Republican Party, and in the North, the Republican Party has inherited the politics of the former Whig Party. Legacy, whether in the House of Representatives, which is determined by the number of seats, or the Senate, where the number of seats is determined by the number of states, the Republican Party and pro-Republican forces already control the majority of seats (of course, this also makes President Buchanan lame early). Under such circumstances, if Scrooge is unwilling, how can the House of Representatives pass such a bill? Perhaps this proposal was created by Scrooge himself under the instigation of others, to use the power of the US government to reject them and monopolize the profits that the "Strength Pill" can bring.

However, the more he understood this point, the more depressed Lawrence became. If it was in other countries, the British Empire could still use its powerful economic and military power to force the opponent to submit. But for the United States, it is not so easy. At a time when the situation in Europe is changing and uncertain, it is completely impossible to send troops to threaten the United States. As for economic sanctions, well, the President of the United States may be very worried, but the gang of Republicans in the US Congress are eager to have trade friction with the British. Because they are trying to take advantage of this opportunity to raise American tariffs, to drive European, especially British, industrial products out of the American market, and make room for northern industries.

After thinking about this clearly, Knight Lawrence felt extremely frustrated. Since he didn't have a trump card in his hand to make his opponent succumb, he could only stop and listen to his opponent's opinion.

"Then, Mr. MacDonald, what are your conditions?" Lawrence asked.

"Mr. Lawrence, we need to buy a lot of raw materials, saltpeter, opium, and many other things. Especially saltpeter and opium. If His Royal Highness can provide us with saltpeter and opium at a price lower than the market price, we can naturally buy them at a more favorable price." Price to provide medicines to His Royal Highness. In this way, both of us will benefit. What do you think of this deal?"

Scrooge needed a lot of saltpeter, which was not unexpected to the British. Just as many people in the United States have seen the possibility of a civil war, the British have also noticed this. Many people are waiting for this war to break out so that they can make a fortune. So Lawrence also understood, and Scrooge must also know this, so he wanted to stock up a batch of saltpeter in advance to make a fortune. As for opium, because of the previous cooperation, the British already knew that one of the raw materials for the preparation of heroin, the magic drug that can cure all diseases, is opium. They are happy that the opium they planted in India has a new use. Of course, they will not object to the idea of Americans expanding their imports. As long as the manufactured goods are not sold in British possessions.

So, after some haggling, Lawrence and Scrooge finally reached a preliminary agreement on the purchase of the "Strength Pill" and other businesses, and now they are waiting for the final approval from the Prince.

After seeing off this big customer, Scrooge looked through the company's orders and found that the production capacity of McDonald's Chemical and Pharmaceutical Company has begun to become a bottleneck. It is imperative to expand production, but the construction of new factories takes time, and there is no rush. Perhaps, it is time to move out the big killer of assembly line production.

So, after spending one night, Shi Gaozhi studied the current production process in detail. Shi Gaozhi separated these disability processes into more than ten independent steps connected, and then found met the engineers in charge of production, and began to discuss how to improve the production process.

Compared with the previous production method, the assembly line production method is a revolution. This is not only because in this mode of production, workers do not need to move or perform overly complicated operations, which makes production more efficient, but also because in the game between capitalists and workers, its appearance makes capitalists' advantages more obvious. First of all, in this mode of production, the difficulty of worker training is reduced. A worker no longer needs to be responsible for so many things, and naturally does not need to master so many technologies. This makes it easier for capitalists to find qualified workers. workers, and let the status of the original "skilled" workers decline relatively. Secondly, through this method, it is also easier for capitalists to raise the labor intensity higher. For example, one of the easiest ways to do this is to speed up the conveyor belt a little bit. The amount of work that workers have to complete in the same working hours increases, so the labor intensity is unknowingly increased. Before the emergence of this mode of production, although machines were used in factories for a long time, production at this time was still produced by workers using machines. No matter how big the machines they used were, they were still under the control of workers. of. After adopting this method of assembly line production, workers are no longer human beings, at least when they are working. He was alienated into a part of the monster machine of the assembly line. Now, it is no longer manipulating the machine to produce, but the machine itself is manipulating the worker to produce. This is the real large-scale machine production!

However, the more monotonous and unchanging repetitive operations, the easier it is to make people tired. Once the workers are exhausted, the efficiency will drop rapidly, and various mistakes will continue to occur. Therefore, in the history of the original time and space, Ford, which was the first to use assembly line production, took the lead in implementing an 8-hour work system for workers. This was not because of the conscience of capitalists claimed by some people. An anti-union guy who blatantly declares that labor doesn't need a brain at all will have such a virgin conscience. The real reason is that not many people can maintain the error-free after more than eight hours of high-intensity labor on the assembly line. However, the characteristics of the pipeline make any error in one link interfere with other links. Therefore, when letting workers work longer, the efficiency of making money is not as good as simply recruiting another batch of workers.

However, Scrooge has a way to break through this time limit, because he has the omnipotent "Strength Pill" in his hand, but Scrooge does not intend to make the working hours longer, which is too obvious. He only intends to give the workers some "Strength Pills" first, and then let the assembly line turn a little bit faster.