Volume 2 Chapter 165 Advantage of beastmen workers
After over two months of preparation, the preparations for the non-ferrous mine near the Voller Tribe was pretty much finished.
After Xu Yi and chairman Renersa brought the goods that chief Voller needed, they had fulfilled the agreement between them and now they could officially start mining the non-ferrous metal vein.
After meeting with chief Voller, the two sent the last batch of magic machines required to the mine. Then they held a small ceremony to announce that the non-ferrous mine jointly operated by the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, the Renekton Chamber of Commerce, and the Amrit Chamber of Commerce was officially open.
Since the non-ferrous metal smelting plant wasn’t open yet, the non-ferrous metal mined would be temporarily stored in the Voller Tribe. Once the smelting plant was open, they would begin smelting the ores.
They didn’t achieve much on the first day, they didn’t even mine one ton of non-ferrous metal ores.
But Xu Yi and chairman Renersa weren’t surprised by this, since the real part of the mineral deposit was hidden underground and they wouldn’t be able to mine it in the beginning.
Being able to mine ores on the first day was already enough to show how rich the mineral deposit was and that the vein was easy to open.
According to the investigations by the dwarves, this non-ferrous mine was rich in aluminum and copper. Of the less than one ton mined on the first day, most of it was copper ores.
Based on the copper ores that were mined, there was a large amount of copper ores in this mine.
According to the data from an Angola Tribe dwarf from the copper mines under the Falcao Chamber of Commerce, the percentage of copper in these ores were much greater than the Falcao Chamber of Commerce mines.
This was a result that Xu Yi was very satisfied with.
Right now, because there was a breakthrough with the Wind Generator, where the teams led by Bella and Camby had already stabilized a small Wind Generator, they needed a large amount of copper with stronger conductivity for the next part of their research.
Of course, since he was reminded by Still, Xu Yi wasn’t as rigid about developing electricity as he was before.
After thinking about it and comparing it, Xu Yi found that although electricity was widespread in the industrial system on earth and was very important, for the Sines Continent, because of the existence of magic, they could use magic to replace electricity in many things and it would even function better than electricity.
For example, the air conditioners. Air conditioners on earth ran on electricity, so to maintain a stable temperature, it ran at three or four kilowatts, which spent three or four kilowatts per hour.
With the most basic form of fossil fuel electricity, it meant that half a kilogram of coal was burned for an hour.
This was a very high energy consumption rate.
But when it came to the Frestech Brand Magic Air Conditioner, it would only cost a Magic Crystal that was smaller than their palm to keep it running for three days.
Averaging that, an hour of consumption was a Magic Crystal that wasn’t even the size of a fingernail.
With how there were Magic Crystal mines all over the Sines Continent and it contained rich magic energy, it could easily be seen that in this world, Magic Air Conditioners were more suited compared to electric air conditioners.
The most important thing was that Magic Crystals didn’t have any pollution, so it was much stronger than fossil fuels just based on this.
So although Xu Yi felt electricity being developed was important, it wasn’t that important.
For him, electric power was just a supplement for magic machines.
Because magic couldn’t solve all problems, so electric power could be used when it was needed.
Other than the copper ores, Xu Yi also felt that the aluminum in the mine was also very important.
Aluminum was also very widespread and important in the industrial system, all kinds of aluminum alloys were used on earth.
Although it didn’t have as many uses as iron, there were many places where iron couldn’t replace aluminum and aluminum alloys.
For example, in the important fields of aviation, buildings, and cars, the special characteristics of aluminum and aluminum alloys played an important role.
Although the Frestech Chamber of Commerce had developed many special steel alloys, they were limited to iron. No matter how they developed it, there were still some characteristics that they couldn’t develop.
Now that they had this non-ferrous metal mine, there was plenty of room to develop for chief Siluka and his dwarves.
In the future, there would be more and more magic machines with different uses from the Frestech Chamber of Commerce.
While Xu Yi was watching the ores being mined, chairman Renersa had been watching the workers mining the ores.
After reaching the agreement with chief Voller, chief Voller had sent ten clansmen to enter the mine today, to let them test this work out. It also allowed Xu Yi and chairman Renersa to see if they were suited for this kind of job or not.
After watching them, chairman Renersa found that although these wolfmen were a bit clumsy since it was their first time having contact with magic machines, their efficiency was better than the skilled human workers.
But that was because of the wolfman’s natural physique, where they were stronger and more flexible than humans. As long as they didn’t need to use the magic machines, their efficiency was higher than the humans.
After watching for a bit, chairman Renersa couldn’t help saying to Xu Yi who had been observing the quality of the ores mined, “I’ve suddenly found that your idea of hiring beastmen workers is quite good.”
“Oh?” Xu Yi looked at him in surprise. Although chairman Renersa had never rejected his idea, he had never been that supportive either, “What? Did you see something?”
“Un.” Chairman Renersa nodded, “I can tell that these beastmen have better physiques. Although they are a bit dumb, they are very suited for physical labour. A mine is a place where plenty of physical labour is required, so it’s faster to let the beastmen workers do it compared to our human workers.”
“So that means that any race has advantages and it’s all good as long as they use their advantage.” Xu Yi revealed a faint smile, “Moreover, you’ve forgotten an important thing, which is that the beastmen workers have much lower wages compared to the human workers.”
Chairman Renersa gave a bitter laugh.
Xi was right. Because this non-ferrous metal mine was in the Black Rice Wasteland, on the territory of the beastmen, the three companies could only give a higher wage to attract human workers.
In the end, each human worker in this mine was earning over thirty gold coins a month!
This far surpa.s.sed the average wage in Banta City.
Moreover, because it was far from Banta City, it wasn’t easy for these human workers to get supplies.
So calculating it all, they needed to spend close to ten gold coins a month for each worker to ensure that they could live a normal life.
This meant that for each human worker in the mine, they had to spend over forty gold coins a month on them!
This cost was close to double what the cost of workers were in Banta City.
Right now there were two hundred human workers at the mine, so the three companies spent close to ten thousand gold coins each month on them alone!
Comparing it, when Xu Yi and chairman Renersa talked to chief Voller, Xu Yi only gave the wolfman workers a wage of five gold coins a month which made chief Voller’s eyes light up as his face was covered in joy.
And these wolfmen lived right by the mine, so there were no living costs at all.
Comparing it all, for a worker in the same mine, a single human worker cost as much as eight wolfman workers, this really was a large gap.
“It seems like your idea of hiring beastmen workers in the beginning was quite good.” Chairman Renersa said with a sigh, “If the beastmen workers weren’t that dumb and had difficulty working the magic machines, I feel that we wouldn’t need human workers at all in this mine.”
“No, that is definitely impossible.” Xu Yi shook his head, “This mine needs to be mainly humans. We can hire beastmen workers, but humans have to make up the majority. Otherwise if it is completely controlled by the beastmen, it is likely we’ll lose control.”
“Un, your worries are correct.” Chairman Renersa nodded in agreement, “The beastmen are mostly unruly and savage by nature, so if there were all beastmen workers here, they might want to take everything for themselves.” After pausing, chairman Renersa then asked, “That’s right, did you tell chief Voller that each beastman family can only get a single labour card because you considered this?”
“That is only a part.” Xu Yi laughed, “The real goal is to use this limitation to make each family in the beastman tribe think about their family member working in our human factories and their tribe’s right to obtain labour cards, so they will never dare have bad ideas towards us humans. Think about it, if those beastmen dare do anything to us humans, not only will the highest ranked member in their family lose their job, they might even implicate their entire tribe. Do you think they would dare do anything?”
Chairman Renersa took a cold breath and looked at Xu Yi in surprise.
“Chairman Xu, when you wanted to hire beastmen back then, did you already think of this?”
Xu Yi revealed a faint smile, “Didn’t I tell you before, there are methods to control the beastmen.”
Chairman Renersa looked at Xu Yi in surprise for a bit before he couldn’t help shaking his head and saying with a sigh, “Chairman Xu, you really have considered everything, I’m even a bit afraid of you. But how are you certain that the beastmen will have these kinds of worries? Isn’t it just a single job? The beastmen didn’t even have jobs before, but didn’t they live normal lives?”
“That is because they’ve never enjoyed a comfortable life before.” Xu Yi said with a faint smile, “Believe me, when they can have stable jobs and bring good lives to their family with these jobs, they definitely will not give up this kind of lifestyle. Before the beastmen didn’t fear not walking shoes, but after they’ve put on shoes and have experienced how comfortable they are, they definitely wouldn’t be willing to take them off and walk barefooted anymore.”