Don Peoli looked on the verge of madness. He could not accept the fact that Cuba's sugar and tobacco output had hit new highs again, while its ports, roads, and other infrastructure were advancing by leaps and bounds.
Seeing his old friend nearly driven mad, Yero shook his head and dug into the apple pie with gusto. He was out of money; that newspaper had cost him the last coin in his pocket.
In truth, Franz had planned from the start to replace manual labor with machinery. Laughably enough, Cuba's agricultural mechanization rate at this point was even higher than Cuba's agricultural mechanization rate in the late nineteenth century in history.
Franz could only say that slavery had done immeasurable harm. Labor in Cuba was too cheap, and combined with its blessings from nature, they could turn a profit even without changing a thing.
Extensive use of machinery both reduced the demand for manpower and increased domestic orders for machinery. Coupled with the economies of industrial scale—the larger the production scale, the cheaper it became—the Austrian Empire had entered win-win-win mode.
However, Franz was not arrogant enough to think machinery could do everything. The Austrian Empire's trade with the American South was also carried out in batches.
This flexible arrangement provided Cuba's agriculture with a safety net to a certain extent, while also raising the cost for the American South if it tried to back out halfway through.
In truth, Franz had worried too much. The American South simply did not have the nerve to violate its deal with the Austrian Empire, and in fact the whole of America was quite satisfied with this transaction.
By this time, Blacks and natives had basically vanished from Cuba Island, while whites who had taken part in the rebellion or did not look