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Pov of Veteran of The Eighth Army
15-20-December-1920
''Everyone likes money, but to make money, it is often necessary to make investments that allow even more to be generated. For example, keeping the factory where you work operational has its own operating costs, which are investments the State constantly makes: the cans, the electricity, the machines and your wages. After the sale, income is generated and a study is carried out based on how much has been produced in order to analyze the correct path forward. In our case, production must increase by 24% to meet the State's goal and satisfy the export contract we have with Denmark'' said one of the foremen, who was teaching us all the company's numbers.
''For that reason, the order was given to install a new production line, in addition to establishing contracts with suppliers and local farms to achieve the expected increase in our production. This investment reduced your dividends, but it will allow us to remain competitive in the future without needing to considerably increase the number of workers who must handle everything. Once that investment has been paid off, in the next dividend payment you will receive the same amount or even more, depending on how the market stands at that moment.
That is why reinvesting is important, but there must always be a plan. We have growing demand. If we did not have it, we would simply devote ourselves to handing you the dividends, innovating in other areas or exploring other markets'' the foreman said while using his pointer to indicate everything he was explaining.
This was something quite common in the workplace. When we fulfilled the production quota we had to complete during our shift, the foremen always took us out of work to make us sit down and explain the fundamentals of financial education, how to invest and how a company should be managed.
It was assumed that, later on, if we kept working in that company, instead of a large part of the profits going to the State, which at that moment received approximately three times more than all the workers together, we would be the ones who would end up dividing that share among ourselves.
But we would also have to choose who would run the company, since when the State handed it over to us, the foreman and the professionals it had sent to establish production quotas, determine wages and secure suppliers would be withdrawn, so we would have to find someone.
The government was supposedly offering a business administration and management program at the University of Riga to train people capable of doing that work, but they also educated us so we would not end up choosing some idiot who offered us enormous returns for our shares and then left us swindled.
But besides all of that, I could say that my life had taken a very different course since we decided to follow Karl within the Eighth Army.
Now that our services were no longer necessary, for multiple reasons, among them the simple fact that the Baltic State could no longer continue paying the wages of an army as large as the one that had formed during our rebellion, the time had finally come to receive our payment.
And an important part of that payment had come in the form of land and property.
I had been given a three-story house inside the industrial sector of one of the many cities that had been built during the last few years precisely to house us.
We had escaped the hell that housing in the great German cities could become.
In that way, I had managed to get my family out of that horrible room where all of us had to live together, sharing the bathroom with practically all the neighbors in the building and enduring the typical problems with gas or electricity that constantly appeared in those old dwellings.
So, at least for me, the payment had been more than fair for all the effort we had been forced to make against the forces that sought to depose our commander and Herzog.
Now he was working to ensure that all of us had employment.
At least that was what the newspapers constantly said. Our Herzog spent his time negotiating with dignitaries and businessmen from other countries to secure new contracts that would allow production to keep increasing and, with it, guarantee that in the long term there would be even more work.
Most of us veterans of the Eighth Army lived in an almost entirely German city, where around eight thousand people resided.
The city had been built between eight small colonies and functioned mainly as an industrial and logistical center.
We received an enormous quantity of products from the entire periphery, and our industry was responsible for processing them almost completely before returning part of them to the same villages that supplied us.
Cheese, canned foods, pickles, preserves, powdered soups, powdered milk and many other things of that sort.
Everything that was not needed to supply the city itself and the nearby villages was exported, because there were numerous export contracts with neighboring countries.
But it was not only Germans who lived there.
Some Latvians and Estonians had also been integrated, as well as a few Englishmen.
Most of them made an effort to speak German and attended classes to learn the language while working alongside us.
Apart from their accents and the fact that sometimes it was hard to understand what they were trying to say, we had never had too many problems with them.
Except, perhaps, for the strange obsession our British neighbor had with tea.
The man seemed incapable of going too many hours without drinking a cup and, to our amusement, he even brought something with him to have a cup in the middle of the Friday football match in the local league.
Life had been good to us and now, thanks to one of our Herzog's ideas, I found myself having received a good amount of marks in December, although I still did not really know what to do with them.
I had been given one thousand marks all at once, equivalent to five of my wages, corresponding to the company's dividends. Since we had had many sales and, besides, life was nowhere near as expensive as before, that money represented quite a lot to me.
I did not have to pay rent, food was cheap and we did not spend too much on water, electricity or gas either. Even after allowing myself the occasional luxury, such as a beer or some cigarettes, I normally had around sixty-five marks left from my monthly wage. Of those, I gave thirty to my wife so she could use them however she considered convenient and saved the other thirty-five.
That was why those one thousand marks in dividends were a considerable amount.
Everything they told us in the classes about buying shares in companies and making our savings produce even more money had stayed quite firmly in my head.
The problem was that there was no quick way to buy shares from our city. If I wanted to do it, I would have to pay for a train ticket and travel to Riga, because there were still no branches of the Riga Stock Exchange in the less important cities.
So there I was, with money in my hands and thinking what the hell to do with it.
Some had not taken long to decide.
They had begun buying certain luxuries, and that had caused many of our own neighbors to start looking for ways to sell them the things they wanted.
Some former shoemakers who had ended up in the army had opened a shoe shop on the first floor of one of the houses in the sector. A group of tailors had done practically the same. Three men had opened what seemed to be a watchmaker's shop and another fellow, who had managed to gather a good amount of money through loans from his former comrades, had opened a jewelry shop.
It turned out that, before being recruited, he had been a goldsmith.
He had begun buying silver, small quantities of gold and all the tools he needed to return to his old trade.
And little by little, things began to appear that simply had not been there before.
Shoes made to measure instead of footwear mass-produced by one of the state factories that supplied the city. Suits made specifically for one person. Pocket watches.
Until then, if one wanted to know the time, one almost always had to look at one of the large clocks installed on public buildings. There was a fairly visible one in the canteen beside the state brewery and, for many of us, that was enough.
But now there were people willing to spend part of their dividends to have their own watch.
The watchmaker had even partnered with the goldsmith to make some silver-covered watches. Apparently, they already had an order from someone who had decided to spend a good part of his dividends on one of those watches.
And that made me start wondering whether I should do something similar too.
I had learned quite a lot during the classes they gave us at the factory. I understood much better how an investment worked, how to calculate basic expenses and why it was not a good idea to spend all the money as soon as it reached your hands.
But I had a rather important problem.
Unlike many of those men who were beginning their small businesses, I did not have a trade.
I had done all kinds of quick jobs when I was younger. I had cleaned chimneys, worked as a machine operator and done anything that allowed me to earn a few marks.
I had no field I could take advantage of.
I, on the other hand, after so many years in the army, could only say that I knew how to do two things really well: shoot a rifle… and drive a truck.
And that was when an idea occurred to me.
I began to look for what service I could offer and ended up realizing that I could take advantage of the way the Duchy's transport system currently worked.
Most connections were made by train. Goods traveled from city to city, passing from one railway node to another, but there appeared the same problem we had faced so many times in the army.
The train could take supplies up to a certain point, but someone had to be responsible for taking them from there to where they were actually needed.
At the front, it was exactly the same.
You could have a train full of ammunition, food and fuel, but if no one carried those crates from the station to the units that were fighting, they were useless.
And something similar was happening in our city.
There were plenty of people who constantly had to travel to the station to collect everything necessary to keep their businesses running. The watchmaker's parts, the shoemakers' leather, the tailors' thread and cloth and an enormous quantity of other supplies arrived by train.
The problem was that the railway mainly surrounded the industrial zones and the station was not exactly close to the residential centers.
That meant everyone had to waste time walking there, looking for some cart or carrying the crates themselves.
All of that could be done much faster with a truck.
''That is what I am telling you. I spent several days going around the shops and asking if they would be interested in paying for the service. I already have some orders. We only need to put in five hundred marks each and we can buy one of the trucks the State is selling for fifteen hundred marks. I already spoke with one of the officials and he can get us one at the internal sale price, not the export price, which is much higher'' I said while looking at two of my old comrades, who were resting outside their houses.
''I do not know… Are you sure about this? It is five hundred marks. That is a lot of money'' one of my friends said while taking out some cigarettes.
''Yes. I already did the work that had to be done. There are clients. At the very least, I have around two hundred and thirty-five marks a month secured only from the businesses here that need someone to transport goods from the station for them'' I replied while taking out some sheets where I had been writing down my calculations.
I spread them out in front of them.
''And that is only here. If we get the truck, I can start looking for clients in the nearby villages. You know how it works. There are places that only receive the state train once a week and practically have no trucks carrying goods from our city to them. We can make quite a bit of money with a single truck. We do not even need anything complicated. One of us drives and we simply transport goods from here to the nearby villages'' I said while showing them the calculations I had been making over the last few days.
I had written down how much the fuel would cost, how much we would have to set aside for repairs, how much we could charge for each trip and how many orders we needed for the truck to begin producing profits.
''Yes, that is fine by me… but who is going to drive? Because clearly he will have to resign from the company, and that means he will lose the dividends'' my other comrade said while taking a cigarette from the pack.
''I will do it. I will submit my resignation once we have the truck and it arrives at the train station. After that, I will dedicate myself to driving it. I will have to accept a reduction in income at first, of course, but if we get a few additional clients, we will not even need many more to cover the fuel, vehicle maintenance and pay me a wage similar to the one I have now. If everything goes well, we could recover the investment in a short time'' I said while breathing in and noticing the pleasant smell of the tobacco they were smoking.
''I understand… Do you want one? They cost me fifty marks, but these things are worth it. Flower of Herzegovina wrapped in papyrus. An Austrian from the area managed to bring part of his harvest before they expelled him and now he is selling it. And this shit is very good… Supposedly, it was one of the luxuries of the Russian nobility, so I told myself that I could indulge in that luxury too'' my comrade said while offering me a cigarette with a smile.
''If this goes well, we will be able to buy plenty of these'' I said while leaning closer to light the cigarette and letting the smoke enter my lungs.
''Well, it is not as if it is going to stay that expensive either. Supposedly, that Austrian bought one of the greenhouses from the State and reached an agreement with the Herzog to produce this tobacco here, guaranteeing fairly high quality standards. So we may end up being able to afford it without needing to make a fortune. But it never hurts to have our own company. I will bring you the money tomorrow'' my comrade said while finishing his cigarette.
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