Chapter 409 Mrs. Harrington's Shock
Hal's aunt, Mrs. Harrington, took a slight breath when she heard her daughter ask this question unexpectedly, and seemed a little annoyed that her daughter asked this question so abruptly.
Fortunately, Ms. Will did not notice anything strange about Mrs. Harrington, and instead looked surprised.
Hal was a veteran of the "Tarantan School" who was a contemporary of Charlie Rex, Ms. Mia, Tattle Joe and others. Ms. Will had long been familiar with his name.
Especially after becoming a clerk in the Logistics Department, Ms. Will also participated in the logistics support work of the prisoners' road construction team for a period of time. She was very familiar with Hal Maxwell, the former director of the Westham Detention Center and the current director of the Labor Reform Bureau of the Innadri Justice Department.
Well, because the locals are relatively unfamiliar with the term "reform through labor", most people are still used to calling Hal the warden...
"Yes, so you two are relatives of the warden, Mr. ?" Ms. Will was sincerely happy for Hal and said excitedly, "I have also heard that Mr. Hal is looking for his lost relatives. That's great. Mr. Hal will be very happy to see you."
Mrs. Harrington was stunned.
Mrs. Harrington had lost too many relatives during the years when the Maxwell family was in decline. When she learned that Hal was still alive, although she was still upset about what happened, it could not cover up her longing for her relatives, so she did not hesitate to bring her daughter and Jasper, the mercenary hired by Hal, to come here from afar.
Hal must be doing well in the Eastern Kingdoms since he could hire top mercenaries to find them. But Mrs. Harrington would never believe how popular Hal was with the locals - her daughter was still young and didn't remember much about the situation, but Mrs. Harrington knew too well how much trouble this nephew could cause!
Just a few years ago, she had even seen a wanted poster for her nephew Hal!
Mrs. Harrington was a little surprised that the well-mannered Ms. Weir, who was dressed in a Town Hall uniform, would react in this way when she heard that they were Hal Maxwell's relatives.
After a moment of silence, Mrs. Harrington finally remembered something and asked doubtfully, "Ms. Will, are you saying... Hal is the warden?"
"Yes, ma'am." Ms. Will said with a smile, "There are thousands of prisoners in Innadri under the care of Mr. Hal. In the past two years, not only have we not heard of any prison escapes, but many prisoners have reformed and successfully returned to their families after being educated by Mr. Hal. As far as I know, many families in Innadri are very grateful to Mr. Hal. It was Mr. Hal who helped their families get back on the right track."
Mrs. Harrington: “…?!”
"Is cousin Hal so powerful?" Mrs. Harrington's daughter asked curiously.
"That's not all." Ms. Will said proudly, "Mr. Hal not only managed the prisoners very well, but also oversaw the construction of more than 300 kilometers of railways in the past two years..."
The low-speed green train (the operating speed is only required to be 60KM per hour) has very low railway requirements. Except for the rails that must be transported from the earth and then pulled to the construction site, the other roadbed sleepers are completely makeshift... If there are wooden sleepers, use wooden ones. If there are no wood, then cement steel bars can be pulled in and cement sleepers can be cast on site.
Hal had a group of heavy-duty prisoners who could be used as consumables without any regret or compensation if they died, so he let these prisoners do all the risky work such as blasting mountains and rocks. In addition, most of the road construction areas were uninhabited areas, which saved the trouble of demolition and resettlement. The national team engineers carefully considered the construction level of this world when helping to plan the route, and would rather take a detour than design in bridges and tunnels, so the progress was naturally fast.
Of course... even if this level of construction and technical content was infinitely close to the railway projects of the 19th century, building 300 kilometers in two years was astonishing enough. As Kenyan citizens with some knowledge of railways, the Harringtons and their daughter inhaled exaggeratedly on the spot.
Even Jasper, the mercenary hired by Hal to protect the mother and daughter, looked over in astonishment.
Not to mention Mrs. Harrington, who knew Hal inside and out, even Jasper, a mercenary who had only dealt with "Razor" Hal a few times, found it hard to believe such an outrageous thing...
Because she had served as housekeeper for many years for the senior clerk in the secretariat of the previous Innadri regime, Ms. Will had a fanatical admiration for the current senior officials of the City Hall - any one of them, picked at random, would be far superior to Mr. Gerry.
Seeing that Mr. Hal's relatives seemed to have some misunderstanding of him, Ms. Will seemed to feel the same as when she was not understood by her family, and she became more active and said, "The railway that Mr. Hal presided over and built from Innadri to the depths of the Tarantan wasteland is very important to us Rhine people. Even if we don't mention the coal and iron ore deep in the Tarantan, I don't know how many large farms and ranches can be developed just by developing the wasteland along the railway..."
In order to let Mrs. Harrington fully understand Mr. Hal's achievements, Ms. Will took the examples of the public collective farms, collective ranches and collective breeding farms in Innader and Adler territories, and introduced the impact of these farms and ranches on the lives of local people.
"In the past, an egg cost at least one copper coin, but now, one copper coin can buy three eggs; in the past, a bag of rye (with bran) bread cost at least five copper coins, but now it only costs three copper coins; in the past, locals needed to buy a can of butter for thirty copper coins, but now many families no longer need butter. A layer of corn syrup or two slices of pickled radish are no worse than spreading butter on the food."
"Fried potato chips, potato cakes, and mashed potatoes are our locals' second favorite food now. The first favorite is chicken breast coated with cornmeal and breadcrumbs and fried in oil (the same as street tenderloin on Earth)... You will like these two foods when you arrive in Innadri. Believe me, even fried potatoes and fried chicken breast made by roadside stalls are very delicious and not expensive."
During Ms. Will's enthusiastic introduction, Mrs. Harrington's daughter couldn't help but secretly swallow several times...
After introducing the fresh delicacies "developed" under the guidance of the dead after the local agricultural production capacity was improved, Ms. Will, who did not realize that she had gone off topic, enthusiastically introduced several radio dramas launched by the radio station. She generously lent the two guests from Kenya a radio and headphones so that they could experience the charm of the radio dramas.
The next day, the passenger ship arrived at the town of Newing. When Ms. Will, Mrs. Harrington and her daughter, and the mercenary Jasper got off the ship together, Hal's cousin had already become close friends with Ms. Will. The two parties agreed to keep in touch by writing letters, and Hal's cousin reluctantly got on the carriage arranged by the Town Hall to pick them up.
After waving goodbye to her new friend, Ms. Will couldn't help but cover her face shyly when the carriage drove out of the Newin Town Pier and disappeared from her sight... It was the first time in her life that she had spoken so many words to someone else.
"I hope they don't think I'm too noisy."
Mrs. Will, anxiously worried about whether she would receive her letter, hailed a carriage.
She could also reach the countryside by taking a public carriage, but since she needed her family to pay attention to her and accept her opinions when she returned home this time, it was necessary to spend some money to rent a carriage and put on a little show.
The little cousin, who was leaving in the carriage at the town hall, could not see Ms. Will waving goodbye to them, so she could not help but say to her mother: "Mom, although Will is only a few years older than me, she is really amazing and knows so many things."
"Since you like her, then write more letters to her and learn from her good qualities." Mrs. Harrington patted her daughter's hand and said with emotion, "Hal is so admired by such a smart and capable clerk... It seems that your cousin has grown a lot over the years."
A few hours later, the carriage drove into the city of Innadri.
Mrs. Harrington and her daughter, who had been on the road non-stop and had not gotten off the boat to see the local customs when passing Adler Territory, curiously opened the car window and looked out.
The city of Innadri was built less than a hundred years ago, so the buildings along the streets are relatively new (compared to cities with longer histories), and the roads are relatively wide (when the ancestors of the Bartles family became local lords, there were already pneumatic cars, so when the city was built, the roads were wider than in traditional cities that only considered horse-drawn carriages).
However, these were not the things that surprised Mrs. Harrington the most - there were also many new cities in the southern part of the Kenyan Empire, and compared with those new cities, Innadri City did not seem particularly outstanding.
What surprised Mrs. Harrington was that the streets were so clean that they looked like the courtyard of some noble family. Although it was the outer city area just after entering the city gate, which should have been the worst place in the city, there was no garbage piled up on the roadside and no urine stains on the walls of the buildings along the street.
The mother and daughter were looking outside with curiosity, when they saw from afar an old man in a yellow vest coming out of the alley by the roadside carrying long fire tongs and a dustpan.
The old man with a wrinkled face and a slightly hunched back lowered his head to look around, then walked straight towards a leaf that had fallen beside the curb and skillfully picked up the leaf and put it into the dustpan.
Mrs. Harrington's daughter said in surprise: "Look, Mom, there is a person who specializes in picking up leaves there?"
The contract worker who drove the carriage to pick up the warden's family turned around with a smile: "No, miss, those are sanitation workers from the Environmental Protection Bureau of the Civil Affairs Department. Their job is to ensure that the areas they are responsible for are clean and tidy, so they pick up the fallen leaves."
Mrs. Harrington was stunned and said in amazement, "It's like this. No wonder. When we lived in a big city in northern Kenya, it wasn't as clean as here."
"Isn't it?" The contract worker said proudly, "We have more than 3,000 sanitation workers in Innadelli. The city hall allocates more than 30,000 gold coins every year to improve the sanitation of various towns. No matter which town you go to, it's the same as the city."
Mrs. Harrington was shocked: "More than 30,000 gold coins?! Just for cleaning the streets??"
"My God, how clean is the lord here?" The young daughter was shocked.
The contract worker said naturally: "It is of course a good thing for the neighborhoods where we live to be clean, but spending so much money is not just for this. As for the more than 3,000 sanitation workers, each of them can receive 13 months' salary as long as they work for a full year, and the annual salary is 10 gold coins, which can provide the minimum living security for . Isn't this killing two birds with one stone?"
Mrs. Harrington stared dully at the contractor driving the carriage in front of the car.
The young man was wearing dark blue work clothes (labor protection clothes) made of sturdy fabric. His face, neck and arms were tanned, and his hands were covered with calluses. He did not look like a gentleman of status at all.
Mrs. Harrington slowly raised her hand and covered her mouth.
A clerk lady you meet by chance on a passenger ship may be able to tell you everything about the achievements of senior officials, the policies of local lords, and the prices of goods in the entire territory.
A worker who worked as a coachman could say words full of wisdom that shocked her, the former wife of a wealthy bourgeois businessman and the wife of the Maxwell family.
——How could he make it in this regime full of talented people? What on earth did her nephew, who in her memory was only a troublemaker, experience over the years? ?
