Compromise Amid Helplessness

Compared with private cars, trucks and tractors were actually more likely to win consumers' favor in the market.

The former were luxury goods that could only consume wealth; the latter were means of production that could create more wealth.

The wealthy were not fools. They could tell which mattered more and which less. When making a choice, they naturally had to base it on their own needs.

Generally speaking, capitalists in the cities preferred automobiles. Cars could display their distinguished status and bring them convenience in business dealings.

All right, that was merely a psychological illusion. Unless they went out to swindle people, deliberately flaunting their wealth to fool others, it might have some effect.

In normal business dealings, negotiations were still conducted as they should be. Before profit, no one yielded easily.

The real use of an automobile was probably to fool one's employees. By flaunting wealth in an invisible way, it told everyone: the boss had money, so there was no need to worry.

Aside from transportation companies, most buyers of trucks and tractors were rural farm owners, along with some nobles.

Farm owners genuinely needed them. Unlike the exorbitantly priced automobiles, tractors had been defined as cheap vehicles from the moment they were born.

This had nothing to do with Franz. In an agricultural power like Austria, once such a divine tool as the tractor had been discovered, it would have been strange if the Vienna Government had not intervened.

Beginning in 1883, the Vienna Government had issued decrees exempting tractor manufacturers from taxes and encouraging companies to sell tractors to farmers at low prices.

By now, several state-owned enterprises had entered the tractor manufacturing industry, directly driving down sale prices.

Compared with the enormous profits on automobiles, tractors were truly dirt cheap.

A dual-purpose tractor capable