"I suggest that if you have a suspicious target, don't alert the other party first. You can try to play the long game and catch a big fish. You may get unexpected gains!" Fang Lang saw that Chief Hodges already had a suspected target and was about to arrest him, so he quickly reminded him softly.
When Chief Hodges heard this, Fang Lang's words immediately made sense to him, and he was no longer in a hurry to go back to catch the spy. If he could discover more spies through this spy, he believed that the mayor would not have any objection.
"Fang, you are right. You have helped me a lot this time. Yesterday, Blackwell told me that your compatriots were targeted and humiliated by the Japanese in Sao Paulo. As the police chief, I failed to do anything. It was my dereliction of duty. Don't worry, from today on, the Japanese will become an unwelcome group in Sao Paulo. I will ask all police officers to put them under house arrest and make it difficult for them to move in Sao Paulo."
This is the main purpose of Chief Hodges' visit this time. He hopes that Fang Lang can apologize for the fact that the St. Paul Police Department failed to stand up and deal with the bullying of the Chinese community in a timely manner in the past.
Fang Lang understood that if it weren't for Colonel Teach asking Captain Blackwell to take care of his safety, what happened last night wouldn't have happened, not to mention the director's visit to apologize today.
It seems that Brazil is a relatively authoritarian country with a very serious bureaucratic style. It is not wrong for me to choose to continue staying in the army. After all, Brazil will have a 21-year period of military dictatorship in the future. Only by holding power in the army can I ensure that the interests of Chinese compatriots in Brazil will not be violated.
"Haha... Director Hodges, what are you talking about? We are friends, and friends should understand each other. Let the original incident go! But I hope that we can always be friends and good friends in the future. How about it!" Fang Lang stood up and shook hands cordially with Director Hodges.
"Okay, good friend, Fang, from now on we are good friends. If you need any help from me, please don't hesitate to ask. I will spare no effort to help you achieve it."
"Haha... Hodges, my friend, if I need your help, I won't be polite! But don't worry, we Chinese will never let our friends help us in vain!" The two of them laughed tacitly.
...
...
At noon, Fang Lang kept Chief Hodges and Captain Blackwell at home and had a sumptuous lunch with Fang Lang's family. He also introduced his family to the two friends one by one.
Especially Fang Lang's uncle Fang Xinshui, who already knew Chief Hodges, but their relationship was not very close. However, after Fang Lang's introduction, Chief Hodges directly stated that if Fang Xinshui had any problems in the future, he could go directly to the police station to find him, or call him. There was nothing he could not handle. The only thing he did not do was to say directly that he would be Fang Xinshui's umbrella in the future.
After the guests left, the family members were curious about why Fang Lang knew so many important people. For ordinary Chinese families, the garrison commander and the chief of police in São Paulo could indeed be considered very important people.
Fang Lang smiled and said that he would be an even bigger person in the future, which made his family members roll their eyes at him.
In the afternoon, Fang Lang wandered around the village to relax while thinking about what to do tonight. He thought about it for a long time and realized that he could only recruit people to work for him. He could not expose his goals directly. After all, to establish a secret organization, he had to do it secretly. He had to examine the beliefs, abilities, and loyalty of each member before inviting him. If he directly established an organization without thinking twice, the whole of São Paulo would probably know about it in less than two days.
So, when many young people from the village came to Fang Lang's house at night, Fang Lang said that he wanted to recruit some crew members from Global Trading Co., Ltd. and train his own captain. He would then fly the route from Brazil to his motherland and hoped that those who were interested would report to him.
This caused dissatisfaction among many villagers, who thought that it was a major matter concerning the interests of all Chinese people to be discussed. As a result, they came to recruit crew members. Many people turned around and left, swearing. However, Fang Lang did not care at all. He was even secretly glad that he did not directly express his intention to set up a Chinese organization. Otherwise, with the situation of these people, they would probably be asked to leave soon after coming in. Then what secrets could this organization have?
However, Fang Lang still managed to recruit more than 20 people, three of whom were his childhood friends. The reason why Fang Lang was able to recruit so many people was not because it was difficult to find a job in Brazil. Brazil was in a period of rapid economic development at that time, and there was a shortage of human resources, so many people who came here actually had jobs. But to be honest, the welfare benefits of Brazilian workers at that time were very poor. Not only did the working hours exceed twelve hours, but the wages were also pitifully low. The average production worker earned less than twenty dollars a month.
This is also the reason why Brazilian President Vargas founded the Workers' Party in March. He hopes to expand his political influence by establishing the Workers' Party and improving the treatment of workers. Unfortunately, as the head of a dictatorial government, he began to let go of his power and hoped to change Brazil's political ecology with his influence. This is obviously too naive.
However, the current president is still far away from Fang Lang. What he can do is to give his compatriots a high salary of fifty dollars a month plus additional subsidies for going overseas to attract everyone to join his company. Although he will not tell everyone that this is his company, many people will definitely know who the real boss behind this company is in the future.
After informing everyone to go home and prepare, they boarded the ship in Santos Port a week later and then let everyone go home. Grandpa didn't understand why Fang Lang didn't organize everyone to form a Chinese organization as he said. But he didn't ask, because he knew that his eldest grandson was now a very independent person. He was old and had to believe in the abilities of young people.
The next morning, Fang Lang sent a telegram to notify three cargo ships in Rio de Janeiro to set sail for the Port of Santos, and also sent telegrams to the branches in Italy and the United States to inquire about the company's current situation.
Mr. Cohens, who was having a headache because of the Gambino family's urging for goods, sent a long telegram as soon as he received Fang Lang's message. In general, the cigarette market was very hot. Mr. Bojan Gambino hoped to expand the supply, saying that with the fierce battle, cigarettes were in short supply. At the same time, Mr. Cohens also expressed his concern that the company only had Gambino as a downstream distributor.
Fang Lang had not expected that in such a short period of time, the Gambino family had taken away more than three million US dollars worth of cigarettes from Global Trade. It seemed that he had to speed up the transportation of cigarettes.
As for Mr. Cohens's consideration of adding new downstream distributors, Fang Lang directly responded by asking Mr. Cohens to find downstream distributors of other products in Italy. The cigarettes should still be managed by the Gambino family, which was a plan agreed upon in advance. At the same time, he also asked Cohens to develop downstream distributors of cigarettes in France and Germany. He said that he would soon have cigarettes worth 20 million US dollars to be shipped from Brazil. He was worried that too much quantity would affect the price of cigarettes.
Cohens listed a long list of commodities that are now scarce in Italy, mainly daily necessities, mainly grain, oil, sugar and seasonings. However, the profits of these commodities are obviously not as high as cigarettes.
However, agriculture is Brazil's pillar industry, and these products are also materials urgently needed by European countries after the war. We must plan ahead and have the ability to process these goods while having strong transportation capabilities.
So in the next few days, Fang Lang began a crazy investment and acquisition campaign. Through Director Hodges, he got to know Mayor Scalia. After learning that Fang Lang was going to invest tens of millions of dollars in São Paulo on behalf of US Global Trade, the entire city government began to help Fang Lang carry out acquisition activities. In total, they acquired three cigarette factories, two sugar factories, a grain and oil processing plant, and a newspaper for Fang Lang.
Because they were all small factories, after the acquisition was completed, Fang Lang directly expressed the hope that the municipal government could sell a piece of land so that Fang Lang could build a larger factory area and purchase more advanced equipment from the United States to build a more advanced factory, which could then be centrally managed.
The city government was overjoyed and immediately began to re-plan the city, converting a 10,000-hectare piece of land in the city of São Paulo near the Port of Santos into industrial land and began to resettle the residents on the land.
To thank the municipal government for its support, Fang Xinshui, under the instruction of Fang Lang, set up a real estate development company to build resettlement communities for all the relocated households. However, in addition to using the land in the resettlement communities to resettle the relocated residents, the development company was allowed to develop real estate projects on its own. The municipal government readily agreed and tripled the size of the original resettlement area.
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