Chapter 221: Suffering First

January 11, 1870.

Hohenzollern Castle, gardens.

"One hundred and eleven, one hundred and twelve, one hundred and thirteen..."

Ernst gritted his teeth and counted the number of push-ups with difficulty, his white cotton vest soaked with sweat.

"three hundred!"

"Huff... This challenge is still too difficult for me!" Ernst said to the coach while panting.

He supported his thighs with his hands, and sweat was pouring down his forehead. Tom handed him a towel at the right time, and Ernst took the towel and wiped the sweat off his face.

"Your Highness, it's great that you can persist. I'm afraid it's difficult for ordinary people to have such perseverance!" the coach commented.

"Coach Rowett, you are too kind to me. I can't persist without someone supervising me. Only someone like me who has a little money would do such a boring thing."

Some time ago, Ernst looked in the mirror and found that he had gained a lot of weight, which was a bolt from the blue for him.

In my previous life, I had always had a normal body shape, but after traveling through time, I gained a lot of fat because the food was too good and I didn't exercise much.

Ernst will be 20 years old at the end of this year. He is currently 178 cm tall and he probably won't grow any taller. This is something Ernst himself cannot control.

Prince Constantine's appearance cannot be said to be ugly, but it can be said to be mediocre. Ernst only made a slight breakthrough in Prince Constantine's appearance.

As he was relatively young, his appearance was above average in this era. It could be said that Ernst had temperament and spirit, but he was not handsome at all.

Based on this, weight has a huge impact on Ernst. If he is a little fat, he will look ugly. However, Ernst is self-aware and knows that he does not have the perseverance, so he hired a professional to tailor a weight loss plan for him.

"Your Highness, your figure is actually not bad among the nobles. There is no need to do anything called 'weight loss'," said Tom.

"You don't understand. My aesthetic standards are different from those of ordinary people. I only consider something good to be good. Other people's standards have no effect on me. My life is all about being satisfied with myself, not just following the crowd."

After hearing what Ernst said, Tom stopped trying to persuade him. In Tom's opinion, Ernst was just asking for trouble. Before losing weight, Ernst's figure was very similar to that of Prince Constantine. That was good-looking, at least he looked very stable.

If Ernst knew what Tom was thinking, he would probably be depressed for a while. Prince Constantine was not steady, but he was indeed a little heavy, and his face was almost pancake-shaped.

…

"Ding-ling-ling..."

"Your Highness, it's a call from His Majesty the Prince!" A servant came to the garden and reported to Ernst.

Ernst sent Tom and the coach away and went to the telephone room to take the phone from the operator.

"Wait outside the door first, and come in if I call you."

"Yes, Your Highness!"

The operator closed the door with ease.

"Hey, father, what do you want from me?"

"Ernst, I want to ask you about something regarding the population of East Africa."

Hearing this, Ernst became attentive. The population of East Africa has always been a major concern for Ernst.

"Father, what do you say?"

"It's like this. In 1869, the total number of newborns in East Africa was more than 200,000. I think you are familiar with this number, but this year the number of newborns in East Africa may reach a new high. According to reports from governments at all levels, we can now roughly determine that the number of newborns this year is likely to exceed 500,000!"

"Isn't this a good thing, Father?" Ernst asked puzzledly.

"It seems that you don't understand the seriousness of the situation. 500,000 is just a conservative number. The number could be 600,000, 700,000, or even more. The number of families in East Africa is more than 1.11 million. Excluding those who just gave birth last year, there are still more than 900,000 families. These more than 900,000 families may give birth this year, and some families may even have a second or even a third child. If this trend continues, think about how many children will be in East Africa in the next 20 years?"

"That's a bit too much indeed!" Ernst fell silent.

"It's more than a bit too much. If we assume that each of these families will have at least five children in the next 20 years, and if we add in new immigrants, the population of East Africa will definitely exceed 10 million by 1890. It won't even take 20 years, but 10 years will be enough."

"What do you think about this issue, father?"

"What I mean is, should we intervene administratively in East Africa's population to make them have fewer children?"

"That's absolutely not possible!" Ernst objected firmly. "It's easy to correct people's reproductive concepts, but it will be troublesome to correct them in the future. Therefore, we must not use administrative means to intervene in the population of East Africa."

Ernst was a staunch opponent of family planning, which was related to his own life experience in his previous life. If family planning was enforced, Ernst would not have been born in his previous life. Even so, Ernst's family was fined a large sum of money. People were generally poor at that time, so all the valuable belongings in Ernst's family were moved out. Moreover, later when the country became rich, no one was willing to have children. Ernst himself had never even been married.

"Uh... didn't you ask me to tell you what I think? I just said it casually." Constantine didn't expect Ernst to object so strongly.

"Father, since the people of East Africa are interested in having children, let them have children. As long as these 20 years pass, the children will grow up. They will be the future of East Africa. Then the population of East Africa will no longer be a problem. It just so happens that mixed-race families account for the highest proportion. This is the prototype of the German nation in East Africa." Ernst said.

"I know you have always emphasized that population is the cornerstone of a country, and a larger population is the cornerstone of a strong country. But the education and upbringing of so many children alone is a heavy burden for East Africa!"

Ernst thought about it carefully and said to Prince Constantine: "Father, the cost of raising children in East Africa is comparable to that of rural areas around the world, not Europe. I don't think East Africa needs to worry about this population growth. As for the education issue, East Africa has always been poor in education. The fundamental reason at the beginning was to liberate the labor force in East Africa and let women participate in more labor tasks. The industrial scale in East Africa is very small and does not need so many educated people. Therefore, we can be more flexible on the issue of compulsory education. Now schools in East Africa are small classes. These newborns will go to school in about four or five years. It will be just right to change to large classes at that time. By then, the students of the previous classes will also graduate, and they can just solve the teacher shortage in East Africa. Anyway, they just need to read according to the textbooks, and the requirements do not need to be too high.

The main problem facing East Africa now is how to raise so many newborns. My personal opinion is to let women become housewives and no longer participate in agricultural production activities. It is not difficult for a mother to take care of five or six children, and they are only responsible for food and clothing. As for the problem of the lack of agricultural population, use black people to make up for it! "

After all, the key to solving the problem is "labor". There are only adult males among the black slaves in East Africa, and there is no need to worry about their unlimited reproduction. They can only exist for one generation in East Africa. Spreading the agricultural work among them is equivalent to letting them use their own generation to support the current generation of newborns in East Africa. When these newborns in East Africa grow up, it will be the time for the "farm tools" to retire from East Africa.

This is a cruel thing, but since the level of mechanization cannot be improved, Nig will have to suffer for the time being. Ernst promised that after finding new tools to replace Nig, he would help send these kind-hearted people who have made important contributions to the construction of East Africa back to their "hometown" in advance.

(End of this chapter)