Smart People

The economic crisis had hit even harder than Franz had anticipated. Under the butterfly effect, global industrial output was now far greater than at the same point in history, yet the market had not expanded by much.

Once the economic crisis erupted, all those hidden dangers were exposed. By the end of 1876, the crisis had crossed the ocean and spread to the Americas.

The first to be caught in the crossfire were not the Northern capitalists, but the Southern plantation owners.

It was not only Austria whose textile capacity had declined; the same was true across Europe. This directly reduced the market's demand for cotton, and for the first time, Southern cotton faced large-scale unsold stock.

What appeared to be an ordinary event had far-reaching consequences. Calls emerged in the Confederate States of America to develop its own cotton textile industry, and some had already begun taking action.

In pursuit of greater profits, the plantation owners were no longer content to merely supply raw materials and began reaching into downstream industries.

Franz merely smiled when he received the intelligence. The Confederate States developing industry would have little impact on Austria. In a sense, it was even a positive development.

It meant that the disparity in strength between the North and South would gradually narrow. In recent years, in order to balance that gap, the European nations had tacitly worked together to restrict immigration to the North.

Even with such blatant favoritism, they had merely maintained the balance; the Northern Government's advantage remained obvious.

If not for the deterrence of the United Kingdom, France, and Austria, which kept the Northern capitalists from acting rashly, the Second American Civil War might already have begun.

From Austria's standpoint, it naturally hoped that the Southern Government would possess a certain degree of industrial