Chapter 124: Austrian Civil Service Examination
The Austrian Government had been very busy lately. With the war over, it had to deliver the military merit rewards it had promised; the properties just taken over from the Church had to be managed; universal compulsory education also required vigorous cooperation from local governments...
With the government's workload increasing, manpower naturally fell short. Since they needed people, they had to recruit from outside.
There might be shortages of any kind of talent in this world, but there would never be a shortage of people who wanted to become officials.
Of course, there were exceptions in harsh and remote places, but such a thing would never happen in Austria proper.
Who knew how many noble sons were sitting at home unemployed, unable to find an opportunity, slowly degenerating into rice-devouring parasites.
Now that an opportunity had come, naturally they wanted to join the ruling class.
Don't assume that grassroots civil service jobs were unpopular. For fallen nobles, finding a respectable job was no easy matter.
Austria was conservative. The vast majority of noble children could not bring themselves to work for capitalists; it would damage their family's reputation.
They would rather join the army and slowly climb upward than receive a generous salary under a capitalist's command. To them, that would feel like an insult to their dignity.
At first, Franz proposed holding a nationwide civil service examination, only to meet with unanimous opposition from the government. After analyzing the realities of the situation, he readily abandoned the tempting idea.
There were not many educated people in this era. They were nothing more than nobles, capitalists, and the middle class; common-born students were as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. Even if there were any, Franz would not dare employ them.
As a