The next morning, the man got up early and left home. Carrying the documents proving the factory owed him back wages, he headed to the factory early.
He walked there the whole way.
The blizzard had destroyed the city's transportation system, and even the few buses available had all stopped running.
The temperature was very low today, more than thirty degrees below zero. Fortunately, he had been walking the whole way and was dressed warmly. By the time he reached the factory, he was even sweating a little.
He hurriedly took off his thick coat and draped it over his shoulders.
Quite a few people had already arrived at the factory. He found a spot among people he knew and got along with fairly well.
Everyone was chatting. He listened for a while, then joined in.
"They really plan to sell all this stuff?"
The man in line found it hard to believe.
Although the factory was not particularly large, the machines on its production lines were all fairly new. Most of them had only been installed six or seven years ago.
That had been the year before the Federal Government officially announced that the Ice Age was approaching, when the world economy was soaring and international trade was thriving.
As long as you had a product, you could receive orders from overseas. It could be said that this had been the period of the world's fastest economic growth.
The company owner had acted on a whim, gathered a group of envious partners, and invested in new production machinery. Before they had even had time to achieve their wealth goals, the Ice Age had arrived.
Many of these machines had barely been used!
A Coworker nearby sighed. "What else can we do?"
"The Federal Government's goal is to stimulate the