"I suggest that if Mr. Director has a target he suspects, don't alert him first. You can try to fish for a big fish with a long line, maybe there will be an unexpected harvest!" Fang Lang saw that Director Hodges already had a target he suspected. , he was about to arrest people, he quickly reminded softly.
When Director Hodges heard this, he immediately felt that Fang Lang's words made sense, and he was no longer eager to go back to capture the spies. If more spies could be discovered through this spy, I believe the mayor would not have any objections.
"Fang, what you said makes sense. You have helped me a lot this time. Blackwell told me yesterday that your compatriots were targeted and humiliated by the Japanese in Sao Paulo. As the police chief, I failed to make a difference. It was my dereliction of duty. Don't worry, from today onwards the Japanese will become unwelcome in Sao Paulo, and I will ask all police to place them under residential surveillance to make it difficult for them to move around in Sao Paulo."
This is the main purpose of Director Hodges' visit this time. He hopes that Fang Lang can express his apology for the St. Paul Police Department's failure to stand up and deal with the bullying in time when the Chinese community was bullied in the past.
Fang Lang understood that if it hadn't been for Colonel Teach's instructions to Captain Blackwell to take care of his own safety, what happened last night would not have happened, let alone the Director's visit today to apologize.
It seems that Brazil is a relatively authoritarian country with very serious bureaucracy. It is not wrong for me to choose to stay in the army. After all, Brazil will have a period of twenty-one years of military dictatorship in the future. I only have Only by holding power in the military can we ensure that the interests of Chinese compatriots in Brazil will not be violated.
"Haha... Director Hodges, what are you saying? We are friends. Friends should understand each other. Let him let the original matter go! But I hope that we can always be friends and good friends in the future. , how about it!" Fang Lang stood up and gave Director Hodges a cordial handshake.
"Okay, good friend, Fang, we are good friends from now on. If you need my help in any way, I hope you are welcome. 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 in vain!" The two of them said to each other. He laughed uncontrollably.
At noon, Fang Lang left Director Hodges and Captain Blackwell at home, had a sumptuous lunch with Fang Lang's family, and introduced his family to the two friends one by one.
In particular, Fang Lang’s uncle Fang Xinshui already knew Director Hodges, but the original relationship was not very close. However, after Fang Lang’s introduction, Director Hodges directly stated that if anything happened to Fang Xinshui in the future, he should directly contact the police station. If you go to him or call him, there will be nothing that he can't resolve, except that he will not directly say that he will be Fang Xinshui's protective umbrella from now on.
After the guests left, the family members were curious as to why Fang Lang knew so many important people. For ordinary Chinese families, the garrison commander and the police chief of St. Paul can indeed be regarded as very big shots.
Fang Lang smiled and said that he would be a bigger shot in the future. This made the family members roll their eyes at him.
In the afternoon, while Fang Lang was wandering around the village, relaxing, he was thinking about what to do tonight. He thought about it for a long time. Now he could only recruit people to do things for him, and he couldn't directly expose his goals. After all, he had to To establish a secret organization, you have to do it secretly, and you have to examine each member's belief, ability, and loyalty before you can send an invitation to him. If you just set up an organization directly regardless of the situation, it will take less than two days. St. Paul knew it.
Therefore, when many young people in the village arrived at Fang Lang's house in the evening, Fang Lang said that he wanted to recruit some crew members from Global Trading Co., Ltd. to train his own captains. At that time, he would run the route from Brazil to the motherland. He hoped that interested people would come. He's here to report.
This made many villagers dissatisfied. They thought it was a major matter related to the interests of all Chinese people that needed to be discussed. As a result, they came to recruit crew members. Many people even turned around and left, cursing, but Fang Lang didn't care, and even felt a little happy in his heart. , Fortunately, I did not directly express my intention to establish a Chinese organization. Otherwise, based on the situation of these people, they would be asked to leave soon after they came in, so what secrets would this organization have?
However, Fang Lang still recruited more than 20 people, three of whom were Fang Lang's children. The reason why Fang Lang was able to recruit so many people is not that it is difficult to find jobs in Brazil. At this period, Brazil was in a period of rapid economic development and lacked human resources, so many people who came this time actually had jobs. . But to be honest, the welfare benefits of Brazilian workers during this period were very poor. Even if they worked more than 12 hours, the wages were pitifully low. The monthly salary of ordinary production workers was less than 20 US dollars.
This is also the reason why Brazilian President Vargas founded the Labor Party in March. He hoped to expand his political influence by founding the Labor Party to improve the treatment of workers. Unfortunately, as a somewhat authoritarian head of government, he began to let go of his power and hoped to use his own influence to reverse Brazil's political ecology. It was obviously too naive.
However, the current president is still far away from Fang Lang. What he can do is to give his compatriots a monthly salary of fifty dollars plus a high salary with additional subsidies for overseas employment, to attract everyone to join his company. Although he will not tell everyone that this is his own 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 to board the ship in Santos Port in a week, everyone was sent home. Grandpa couldn't understand why Fang Lang didn't organize everyone to form a Chinese organization as he said. But he didn't ask. He knew that his eldest grandson was now a very independent person. I am already old, so I have to believe in the abilities of young people.
Early the next morning, Fang Lang sent a telegram to notify the three cargo ships in Rio de Janeiro to set sail for the port of Santos. He also sent a telegram to the branches in Italy and the United States to learn about the company's current situation.
Mr. Coens, who was having a headache from the Gambino family's push for goods, sent a long telegram directly as soon as he received the news from Fang Lang. In general, the cigarette market was very hot. Mr. Boyan Gambino hopes to expand supply, saying that now as the war rages on, cigarettes are in short supply. At the same time, Mr. Kerns also expressed concern that the company only has one downstream distributor, Gambino.
Fang Lang also didn't expect that the Gambino family would withdraw more than three million US dollars worth of cigarettes from Global Trading in such a short period of time. It seemed that the speed of transporting cigarettes would be accelerated.
As for the issue of adding new downstream distributors that Mr. Cohen was considering, Fang Lang responded directly, asking Mr. Cohen to find downstream distributors for other commodities in Italy. The cigarettes are still managed by the Gambino family. This is a plan negotiated in advance. Kerns was also asked to develop downstream distributors of cigarettes in France and Germany. He said he would soon be shipping cigarettes worth $20 million from Brazil. I am worried that too much quantity will affect the price of cigarettes.
Coens also listed a long list of commodities that are now scarce in Italy, mainly daily necessities, mainly grains, oils, sugar and seasonings. However, the profits of these products are obviously not as high as those of cigarettes.
However, agriculture is Brazil's pillar industry, and these products are also urgently needed materials for European countries after the war. They must plan ahead and have strong transportation capabilities while also having the ability to process these goods.
So in the next few days, Fang Lang started crazy investment and acquisition activities. He met Mayor Scalia through Director Hodges. After learning that Fang Lang was going to invest tens of millions of dollars in Sao Paulo on behalf of U.S. Global Trade, the entire city was shocked. The government began to help Fang Lang carry out acquisition activities. A total of three cigarette factories, two sugar factories, a grain and oil processing plant, and a newspaper were acquired for Fang Lang.
Because they were all small factories, after the acquisition, Fang Lang directly expressed his hope that the city 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. time centralized management.
The city government was overjoyed and began to re-plan the city without saying a word. It converted a 10,000-hectare land in downtown Sao Paulo near the Port of Santos into industrial land and began to resettle the residents on the land.
In order to thank the municipal government for its support, Fang Xinshui established a real estate development company under Fang Lang's instruction to build resettlement communities for all demolished households. However, in addition to using the land in the resettlement communities to resettle the demolished residents, the development company must be allowed to develop real estate on its own. project. The city government readily agreed and tripled the size of the original resettlement area.
