The conversation with Viscount Leslie went very smoothly.
Compared with many arrogant, stubborn nobles, Viscount Leslie had one particularly notable virtue: even when he could not understand something right away, he did not dismiss it outright. Instead, he listened patiently and tried his best to accept it and give it a chance.
For instance, when Xu Yi spoke about liberating the productive forces, Viscount Leslie was completely lost and admitted that he did not understand at all.
Yet he did not refute Xu Yi on that account. He listened patiently as Xu Yi continued, only gaining some understanding when Xu Yi used the hundred slaves he had borrowed from him as an example.
While those hundred slaves had been under Viscount Leslie, they could only perform very simple, strenuous labor, producing extremely limited value. In fact, Viscount Leslie had to spend a small sum of gold coins out of his own pocket each year just to keep them fed.
After he lent them to Xu Yi, however, in a little over two months, their wages alone, if calculated at the normal rate, would have brought Viscount Leslie a substantial return of more than a thousand gold coins.
That was not even counting the vital role they played in the factory, generating enormous profits for the entire Xinfei Merchant Guild.
Viscount Leslie was also a major shareholder in the Xinfei Merchant Guild, so naturally, he received a share of its profits.
Thus, however reluctant Viscount Leslie might have been, he had to admit that Xu Yi had been absolutely right: these slaves created far less value under him than they did under Xu Yi.
Once he realized this, Viscount Leslie immediately became deeply interested in Xu Yi's proposed Farmer Support Plan. Though he still did not know the specifics, he made