Chapter 25 Chapter XXV Chaos on the Barges of Squeeze City

We put Mr. Scrooge aside when the conductor pushed him out of the car.He stood on the platform for a while, staring sleepily at the departing train.After the train disappeared in the distance, Miser went to a bench by the platform, stuffed his top hat under his head, covered it with a newspaper, and stretched himself down on the bench.It was very early.It was still pitch black, and no one disturbed the Scrooge's sound sleep. Dawn came soon.A station watchman came to the platform, and he woke up the miser, saying that he should not sleep here.At this time, a passenger train came into the station.The platform was quickly crowded with disembarked passengers.The miser got up from the bench, put on his top hat, stood thinking for a while, and followed the passengers who got off the bus to the city.

He glanced at the newspaper he still held in his hand, remembering how much money he could make on the deal, remembering his plan to buy large plant stocks when they were down.After thinking about it, he understood that in order to carry out such complicated money transactions, he should not stay in the city of lies, but should stay in the city of squeezing, looting, or the city of holy mosquitoes, because only these cities can There are specialized markets for the sale of various stocks. It should be said that the market for trading stocks is very different from the ordinary market for selling apples, tomatoes, potatoes or cabbages.The situation is this: a fruit or vegetable seller has only to place his wares on the stand in order for people to see what he is selling.The person who sells stocks keeps his goods in his pocket. The only thing he does is call out the name of the stock he wants to sell and the price he wants to sell, and all the buyer does is call out the name of the stock he wants to buy. .

Since the emergence of the stock market, some lunar people have bought stocks not only to make some money in a certain company, but also to sell the stocks at a higher price.There have been a large number of businessmen buying and selling stocks, and they can make huge profits in their trading.This kind of businessman does not go to the market himself, but hires people with loud voices or asks brokers to do it.Many brokers work not just for one master, but for several masters at the same time.Such a broker buys one stock for one owner, another stock for another, and not buys but, on the contrary, sells for a third owner.

Such a broker picked up the market and began to shout at the top of his voice. It is hard to imagine what it would be like: "I'll pay seventy-five for Scrooge's coal stock! I'll pay ninety for Crush City's sugar stock, and forty-three for oil stock!  …" But it is impossible to imagine how deafening the noise was when all the brokers gathered together, chanted such things, and tried to drown them out. When the first batch of stock traders appeared a long time ago, a square was specially set up for them in Squeeze City.But residents in nearby neighborhoods have complained to the city that the loud noises have left them trying to get by.Since the municipality did nothing, the residents took sticks and stones and tried to disperse the loud brokers themselves.The broker didn't want to be bullied, and also attacked the residents.There are fierce battles almost every day!The municipality, at a loss as to what to do, moved the noisy market to another square, but bloody clashes continued there too.

The municipality lost all patience, loaded a big barge with all the loud brokers, and hauled it to the middle of a lake in Crush City.The barge was permanently anchored with anchors.Loud agents get the possibility to yell, and it doesn't matter if they lose consciousness, which is no longer a hindrance to anyone.They came to the barge every morning in a small boat, and later, there was even a small boat going back and forth between the barge and the lake shore.In this way, everyone will be happy. Soon, such barges were also set up in the city of Plunder, followed by the city of Holy Mosquito.After the invention of the telephone, the three barges were connected to each other by telephone wires, so that the loud broker on the Squeeze barge could always know what was going on on the Raid and St. Mosquito barges.

Like all millionaires, the Scrooge had his brokers on every barge, and he could order them to buy this or that stock at any time by telephone.However, you must know when to buy at all times, otherwise you will spend more money.In order to keep abreast of the situation and avoid losing money, the miser decided to go to the barge in Squeeze City to feel the market conditions of large stocks.Of course, he couldn't go to the station right away, because he wanted to go home first, and then visit his macaroni factory.Thinking that he should go home, he looked around and found that he was walking in an unfamiliar street.

"Probably I took the wrong turn after getting out of the car," muttered Scrooge distractedly. But he still decided to go along this road, thinking that he would always meet a familiar place, and then he would know where to turn.However, this street will soon end.Miser found himself out of town into an open field. "It's ridiculous! It's the end of the world!" the miser smiled and murmured. "Fool, I've lost my mind thinking about these stocks, and I'm dizzy!" He turned and walked back, walked to the other end of the street, then turned into a tree-lined avenue, walked through the tree-lined avenue, and came to a new, unfamiliar street.

"What a miracle!" muttered the Scrooge to himself. "There are places in Liar City that I've never been to. I thought I knew all about Liar City." He wandered for an entire hour in some strange and remote places, and finally came to the conclusion that he was completely lost, so he began to ask passers-by where the Crooked Street, that is, the street where he lived, was.A passer-by said that Crooked Street is completely on the other side of the city.Scrooge got on the bus and traveled to the other side of the city, finally found Crooked Street, but he was surprised that everything had become unrecognizable since he left here.When he came to No. 14 (where he lived), he was so amazed that his tongue fell open.In front of me was not the small bungalow with fences made of yellow tree strips across the windows, but a two-story building with a beautiful balcony and a pair of stone lions standing in front of the door.

"It's amazing!" muttered the miser, rubbing his eyes, feeling that his brains were not enough. "Maybe it's some kind of magic?" Seeing a housewife on the balcony, he called out: "Excuse me, mistress, is this the home of the miser?" "What miser is not a miser?" replied the hostess angrily. "This is my home." "Ah... ah..." The miser opened his mouth wide, as if he couldn't breathe enough. "Ah... where did you take my house?" The housewife turned around, slammed the door and left the balcony. The miser hesitated for a while, then walked forward slowly.

"Okay..." He couldn't help but mutter to himself. "Well, since I lost my home, it would be nice if I could find my macaroni factory. A whole macaroni factory with twelve large factories and five thousand dwarf workers will not be lost." Scrooge meets a passer-by and asks him if he knows where Scrooge's macaroni factory is. "Yo ho!" Pedestrians laughed. "Is it here? Scrooge's Macaroni Factory is in Liar City. That's what it says on every macaroni box." "Aren't we lying about the city?" asked the miser in bewilderment.

"Why are you lying about the city?" The pedestrian asked strangely. "We are in Anzi Town." "What saddle town?" "It's such a town, it's called Anzi Town. Haven't you heard of it?" "Oh, Saddletown!" exclaimed the Scrooge when he finally understood what was going on. "So, I just got off the wrong station. No wonder everything here is different from our city of lies." The miser hurried back to the station.He had heard that there was no train to Crush before evening, and he would not be there until tomorrow morning.This makes the miser anxious, because the price of the stock changes rapidly. Indeed, on the very day that the Crush City Humor published the short article we already know, anyone who owned a large plant stock ran to sell it.On the Squeeze City barges, the shares sold at first eighty Shank apiece, then at sixty, fifty, thirty, twenty, ten Shank, but no one wanted to buy them. .By the next day, the day the Scrooge was walking around Saddletown, the price of the stock had dropped to five shanks a piece, but still no one bought it. Holders of large plant stocks are in despair.They see that they have spent money for nothing and now cannot get it back.However, the three rich men who bought a large number of large plant stocks in order to get rich—Squint Eyes, Meatballs, and Hanna Kunda—quickly figured out a way.They paid the owner of several newspapers in Squeeze City, Little Nasty, a large sum of money, and Mr. Little Nasty promised to publish a series of articles in his own paper that would turn the situation around quickly. Indeed, there was a short article published that day in the evening paper "Squeeze Town" belonging to Mr. Little Disgusting: Chaos on the Crush City Barge Since yesterday, there has been unprecedented chaos hanging over the Squeeze City barge.Holders of large plant stocks are eager to get their cargo off the ground.As usual, there were many sellers and few buyers, so the stock price plummeted.What was the cause of the confusion in the barges of Squeeze City?The reason was that nasty little article in the nasty tabloid, The Crush City Humor, which ran on the hated page.Little did the holders of the big plant stocks know that the filthy, worthless tabloid was published with the help of the rich man octopus, and it published only what was good for the octopus.There is no doubt that the tentacles of the voracious giant octopus are reaching for large plant stocks.After the stock price plummets, the stock will immediately be grabbed by the tentacles of the giant octopus, who will become the sole owner of the company with the largest revenue.Advice to credulous eccentrics: don't panic.It is none other than Mr. Big Octopus who refuses to let the benefits slip away. The next morning, an article titled "Please Be Careful of Your Pockets" was published in the "Lying Book Lover Newspaper", which is also owned by a small hater.The article says one has to beware of Mr. Big Octopus' pocket-seeking, as he wants to defraud holders of large plant stocks out of their money and has already started reaching out to them. These two articles were of course seen by people, and as a result, the price of large plant stocks suddenly skyrocketed, and when the barges in Squeeze City started operating, the price of each stock was not five mountain keks, but fifty Shankee got it. However, Mr. Miser, who arrived on the barge at Squeezefield that morning, found the price too high and decided to wait another day in the hope that it would soon drop. On the third day, there was an article in another newspaper, also belonging to the same small nuisance, with the headline "Where are the tentacles of Mr. Big Octopus reaching?" "The article said that the tentacles of the giant octopus are hitting the pockets of the holders of large plant stocks.in order to bankrupt them.The article also had an effect, and the stock was sold at sixty mountain kik each.The miser is afraid that the price will continue to rise, so he orders his broker to buy the stock at this price.Brokers bought a lot of stock at three barges.The sellers soon saw that their wares were being bought, and began to bid up the price of their stocks.The next day the large stocks were sold at seventy kik each; another day--eighty kik a piece. The rich, Squint, Meatball, and Hanna Konda didn't expect the price to continue to rise, but feared that it would start to fall again, so they hurriedly sold their shares to the miser for eighty kik a piece .Of course, they immediately regretted that they had not been patient enough to wait a little longer.It turned out that Mr. Little Annoyance was continuing to do his own business. On the same day, he published another article titled: "Why is the big octopus silent?" ".In the article, Pesky noted that Octopus hadn't responded to the accusations posed to him.Little Dislike wrote that since he is silent, it means that this is all the truth. Since this is all the truth, it means that the big octopus really wants to destroy people's trust in large plant companies and grab stocks by themselves. Anyone who has read this article is convinced that the next day the stock will be sold at a higher price, and in any event will return to its original price.The Scrooge is all the more pleased because, having spent almost all his capital, he has bought a large number of stocks in time, and now he has only to sell them at a higher price.All evening he sat by the telephone, calling the brokers on the barges in Squeeze, Raid, and St. Mosquito, telling them to come out on the barges early in the morning and sell stocks for a Fielding a piece.He sat all night calculating the profit he would make if all the shares could be sold at a Fielding apiece.The calculations were rather complicated, because not all stocks were bought at the same price: he bought some of them at sixty kicks, some at seventy kicks, and some at eighty kicks, as you know. kike. But all the miser's hopes of making a lot of money were quickly shattered like soap bubbles.The next morning, before the Crush City barges started operating, an article appeared in the Crush City Humor Gazette explaining the reason for the silence of the giant octopus.The article wrote that the big octopus is silent because it is ridiculous to reply to ridiculous accusations.When there is no large plant company in the world, how can Mr. Big Octopus destroy people's trust in it?the article asked.Since the founders of the company absconded with the money, the company ceased to exist by itself, for what value is a company without capital?What is a stock worth if the money collected from the sale is gone?The shares were worthless, of course, but one could not help being surprised that there were some eccentrics willing to spend money on shares that could only be used to plaster the walls of storage rooms. It's not hard to imagine what it must have been like on the barge when the cheapskate brokers started selling shares for a Fielding.All that was elicited by their asking price was giggles.As soon as the miser saw this, he ordered to sell it for ninety mountain kikes, then eighty, seventy... "He only hoped to get his money back, but he couldn't do it! He lowered the asking price to Fifty Mountain Keke, no one buys this kind of stock. The miser decides not to lower the price that day and waits for tomorrow.But by the next day, the papers were running articles about the escape of the little wink and the big crook, and a series of photographs of enraged crowds thronging the offices for the sale of large plant stocks demanding money.In a few photographs you can clearly see the empty safe, the empty safe with the door wide open, and the rope hanging from the window sill along which No Knowing and the Kid slid down the stairs. Of course, no one knew that the big octopus had bought the bosses of the newspapers, telling them not to publish the news about the escape of the little wink and the big liar.But now, as soon as the papers announced the matter, the only thing left for the miser was to throw the stock away.Now no one wants this kind of stock for free.The situation of the miser is, as the saying goes, a desperate situation.He needs to buy flour for the macaroni factory and needs to pay the workers.Because there was not enough money, he decided to reduce his wages: from one fielding a day to half a fielding. The workers were outraged; for one Fielding was half-starved.They said that if the miser didn't get a raise, they wouldn't work.The miser thinks that the workers are trying to scare him, so he refuses to raise his wages.The workers then dropped their jobs.The factories shut down, and the miser took no more.However, he was still unwilling to meet the demands of the workers, because he knew that if the workers did not work, they would not get any money and would starve to death.The situation of the workers is indeed very difficult, but there are workers from other factories to help.They know that if the miser wins this struggle, the other factory owners will also lower their wages, and then there is nothing they can do against the rich. The miser wants to hire another worker for his factory, but the unemployed in Liar City know that the workers are fighting against him, and no one wants to work in the miser's factory. Seeing that there was no other way, the miser decided to go to another city to recruit workers for his factory.He had read in a newspaper that the factory owners in St. Mosquito paid their workers less than anywhere else, and that it seemed to be the place where the most unemployed seemed to be.The Scrooge, glad that he had found the city where the working people lived the poorest, left everything else and hurried to the City of the Holy Mosquito.