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The so-called assembly line operation is to divide the production process of an item into several steps, and then several workers who are only responsible for a single step will take turns to complete the entire operation.

Let's take a practical example. To make a stool, you need to make wooden boards and wooden strips first, then make the wooden boards into the stool surface, and make the wooden strips into stool legs and crossbars, and finally assemble them.

If a carpenter is asked to do it, he needs to find a suitable tree first, then cut the tree down, make it into wood, then process the wood into wooden boards and wooden strips, and then make the stool bit by bit. In this way, a carpenter can of course only make one stool at a time, and it takes a lot of time and energy. If you need to make many stools, either wait patiently or find more carpenters.

But if the assembly line operation method is used, the tree cutter only needs to cut the tree, the wood handler only needs to handle the wood, the wood board and wooden strips, the stool surface, legs and crossbars, and the final assembly are all different people. They only need to concentrate on their own part of the work and do not need to know too much. In this way, as long as they are skillful, they can complete the work with a little training, and there is no need to use professional skilled workers - carpenters - for such a small thing.

Moreover, because each group of workers only needs to be responsible for their own part, their skills will improve quickly, and it won't take long for the stools they make to be no worse than those made by carpenters.

Because they only know one thing, their wages will naturally not be as expensive as those of professional carpenters. So even if the production efficiency is slightly lower, the total cost can be reduced a lot.

Not only that, as the workers become more skilled, their production efficiency will also increase. In the end, their overall production efficiency will exceed that of most carpenters, providing greater profits for the workshop owner.

The most important thing is that the number of carpenters is limited, and it is impossible to train too many - it takes at least five years to train a skilled carpenter, and this is just to make stools. If the things to be made are more complicated, it may even take ten years.

In contrast, it only takes a few months at most to train a group of skilled workers in assembly line operations.

This means that the workshop can have a high output, enough to open up supply and occupy the market.

In this world, most handicrafts are in short supply, so the prices are often a bit inflated - for example, a stool in some remote places where carpenters are in short supply may cost four or five times as much as in prosperous places.

In fact, in those remote and poor places, people directly use wooden stakes as stools.

Although the wooden stake may be made into three or four stools, its price is often less than one-tenth of the stool.

There is an example that can illustrate the problem - since the Northwest Republic used the assembly line method to produce armor and weapons, the Void City has become the world's largest armor and weapons trading place, and is even moving steadily towards the direction of "the world's largest arms supplier".

All this is just because of a humble technology.

Sui Xiong did not keep it secret, but the armor and weapons workshops of the Northwest Republic paid great attention to confidentiality and never leaked the technology.

The goddess of wealth did not steal their technology, but she told some big businessmen who believed in her about the idea of ​​"assembly line method".

Those merchants naturally did not dare to compete with the Void City for business. Perhaps the Goddess of Wealth had warned them at the time, but there were many things that could be produced in the world. They did not produce armor and weapons, but that did not prevent them from producing wooden articles, decorations, various furniture and daily necessities.

Anyway, as long as they could make money, what they produced did not matter much?

It would be fine as long as the gold coins were the same...

But the Goddess of Wealth never expected that this petty thief's behavior would bring her such a huge trouble.

This caught her off guard and made her extremely distressed and helpless.

In the past ten years, merchants have been tolerant and giving in. They watched helplessly as they could not make the money they could make, and they were in pain and entanglement in their hearts.

Now, they finally stopped being patient.

Not only that, in the Gold Coin Federation, there was originally a contradiction between the nobles and the merchants. This contradiction was almost buried when the country was established. It has been accumulating and fermenting for many years. It is almost like a barrel of gunpowder. As long as it is touched by sparks, it may "boom" at any time and blow everyone to pieces.

The root of the conflict comes from "how to spend money after making it".

Some people want to be safe, so they choose to buy land and people and manage territories; others want to be aggressive, so they choose to expand their business and make it bigger and bigger.

At first, these two types of people lived in peace, but as time went on, the former gradually developed into nobles who controlled territories, and the latter gradually developed into big merchants who controlled trade routes, so conflicts gradually arose - merchants made profits by selling things, while the nobles found that the wealth they obtained from their business was far less than what the merchants obtained from trading, so they demanded taxes from them.

That was the first major conflict between the nobles and merchants of the Gold Coin Federation, and it almost led to a civil war. Finally, under the mediation of the goddess of wealth, the two sides sat down to negotiate. After almost two years of difficult negotiations, they formulated a tax standard that both sides could barely accept.

Later, the lords wanted to consolidate their rule and did not allow any forces that could threaten their rule to exist in their territories. Merchants wanted to protect their property no matter where they went, and even did not want any forces that could threaten their property to exist.

This was the second major conflict in the Gold Coin Federation. The result was naturally that the merchants gave in again. In the end, most of the major business houses chose to build their headquarters outside the city, which simply increased a lot of expenses and risks.

As the saying goes, once and twice, you can't give in again. This time, the merchants were unwilling to give in again. They shouted "We have given in twice" and asked the noble lords to give in once.

But the noble lords have long been accustomed to the merchants giving in. How could they be willing to give in?

Of course, there was also the promotion of the Noble God Church behind this. The Noble God Church claimed that the noble lords should rule their own territories. In addition to being loyal to the superior lords, they had no need to give in to other secular forces, let alone allow those large merchant organizations that seemed to have extraterritoriality to exist.

This statement was obviously inconsistent with the teachings of the Goddess of Wealth and was sneered at by the merchants. But many nobles don't believe this on the surface, but secretly they often praise this statement. The lobbyists sent by the Church of the God of Nobility always eat and drink well in their mansions and are treated as honored guests.

"Maybe..." The Goddess of Wealth was silent for a long time, and finally said listlessly, "I was wrong from the beginning. A purely merchant country cannot exist at all..."