Several days later.
In front of the gates of Donbas United Coal Company, more than a hundred workers shouted over one another: "My children are starving!"
"We need bread..."
"Our wages are too low! They must go up to 10 rubles a month!"
"That's right! No raise, no work!"
At a second-floor window of the company's office building, a ramshackle structure made of battered planks, Viscount Olivier frowned at the workers making a ruckus. He shook his head and said to his assistant, "Have they never seen a strike before?
"They don't even have placards, and their chanting is all over the place!
"Christophe, you'll have to give them a proper lesson tonight. Oh, and we need more people. God, my coal mine has over a thousand workers. Why have so few shown up?"
His assistant hurriedly replied, "You know these Russians all think they'll get a whipping, so they don't dare come..."
Viscount Olivier sighed. "If all else fails, give a few rubles to the ringleaders."
"Yes, sir. I guarantee we'll have twice as many tomorrow. No, three times as many."
Under Christophe's direction, the strike at Donbas United Coal Company grew larger and larger. It spread swiftly from the coal mine to the iron mine and the ironworks, bringing the entire company to a standstill.
The Russian police from Yekaterinoslav came twice. But after quietly accepting favors from the "workers' representatives," while the tightfisted owners of the Coal Industry Company refused to pay them anything "for their trouble," they stopped showing up.
News soon reached Krasnoyarsk, and several shareholders of John Coal Company immediately began to mock them. "Those poor Frenchmen. I hear even their foremen have joined the strike."
"Those Tatars want 10 rubles a month? They've gone mad!"
"Olivier's in real trouble now, haha. They say