Galicia, once the Dniester River's floodplain, had now become a vast expanse of fertile land. The floods never came anymore.
This was all thanks to the efforts of more than a million people, whose labor had also won them a relatively stable place to live.
But no one was willing to stop. Everyone hoped to do a little more, grow a little more grain, clear a little more wasteland, and take on a little more work so they and their families could live better.
Churches, hospitals, schools, post offices, shops, and taverns rose one after another in the towns. People could spend the money they got from the grain officials, or first sell their own goods for cash and then buy what they wanted.
The roads in the main regions had now been completed, and people said railways would be built in the future. They were full of hope for a brighter tomorrow.
The life they had once known—enslaved, beaten at will, starved, and forced to perform backbreaking labor—seemed like a distant nightmare.
Harry Charn had once been a serf in Little Russia. His master had sold him to a Jew, and later, when Cholera broke out, he had been driven out of Russia along with the Jews.
Harry Charn now owned forty mu of land, all of it cleared by his own hands. But he couldn't possibly farm so much land by himself.
Harry Charn had married and had a child. He needed to have a few more, so life would be easier.
Harry Charn's wife was a Jew from Prussian-controlled Poland, but neither of them spoke Hebrew. They could only communicate in broken German, and more often than not, they had to rely on gestures and facial expressions to make themselves understood.
But the language barrier didn't stop