As the leader of Prussia's entire textile industry and a Silesian textile tycoon, Philpott had been provided with new technology by the Prussian government, and the efficiency of his machinery had indeed improved.
But there was a good chance those technologies had been stolen from factories in the Austrian Empire, forcing him to spend every day on tenterhooks. After all, the Austrian Empire truly had the power to enforce its laws across borders, and the Prussian government did not even dare stop them.
Whether the Prussian government could stop the Austrian Empire was beside the point. If they could find a scapegoat, they certainly would not risk offending the Austrian Empire themselves.
Lord Philpott knew this well, which was why he had specifically hired twenty professional soldiers to protect him. In truth, he was still somewhat worried—worried about the weavers.
Oh, no, the workers. In short, those mud-legged peasants.
As one of the greatest victims of the former Silesian Uprising—as the Prussian authorities called it—Lord Philpott remembered it as vividly as though it had happened yesterday. Now, he vaguely had that same feeling again.
Yet Philpott, once glorious beyond measure, had not lived well these past years. Even that clean, beautiful white house had been painted a gloomy black.
It suited his mood perfectly. After the establishment of the Zollverein, the impact on Silesia's textile industry—or rather, Prussia's textile industry as a whole—had been far too great.
Cheap cloth from Austria and Saxony had successively entered the Prussian market. It was cheap and beautiful; though its quality could not compare to first-rate goods, it far surpassed second- and third-rate products.
But the problem was that the first-rate goods in his hands were still far inferior to the fine products on the market. The true upper class simply had no use