What people feared most was having no hope. Though the three-million-worker placement plan could not solve all of Europe's unemployment problems, it could give everyone hope.
Following the principle of maximizing impact, each household was limited to one recruit in this labor drive unless they had skilled workers, and priority was given as much as possible to families in financial hardship.
In a sense, this massive recruitment drive not only eased employment pressure in various countries, but was also a large-scale poverty alleviation campaign.
Though the Vienna Government's wage standards were not high—only half of the average European income in 1893—they were already considered high incomes for those at the bottom.
In this era of vast disparity between rich and poor, a great noble or major capitalist's annual income equaled that of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of ordinary people. Meanwhile, over half of the lower classes earned less than 20% of the average income. The word "average" had long since lost all meaning.
If the jobs had not been overseas, with all aspects of basic conditions falling short, these positions would have been fought over tooth and nail long ago.
From this perspective, Franz had the annual poverty-alleviation championship in the bag. Perhaps he would even be the poverty-alleviation champion of the century; after all, a project of this scale was unprecedented, and likely would not see another rival in the coming years.
Once a labor contract was signed, three months' wages were paid in advance. There was absolutely no need to worry about being scammed—this recruitment was jointly organized with the governments of various countries, and everyone would continue to monitor the subsequent labor placements together.
Of course, no one knew exactly how far that monitoring would go. In any case, when it came to publicity,