A little over two months after starting the reclamation work, I visited Kunst and Albers, and Adolf Dattan welcomed me warmly.
“Welcome, Viktor. I had something to tell you anyway.”
Even after the reclamation work was finished, I had stopped by Kunst and Albers several times to purchase various necessary items, and I had become quite close with Adolf Dattan.
“Oh? What do you have to tell me, Adi?”
Adi was the nickname for Adolf Dattan.
“I’m talking about the items you ordered last time. They’ve arrived.”
“Didn’t you say it would take about half a year?”
“Half a year was the maximum estimate. Luckily, I was able to send a telegram just before the ship was about to depart from Germany, so it arrived faster than expected.”
“That’s great, because I was just getting to the point where I needed new machinery. Is the hay binding machine in there as well?”
“It is. Since you’ve already paid the price, it’s yours. Everything from the hay binding machine and the steam engine to the thresher and the rice polisher is included.”
“Now that the engine has arrived, we can start the hay binding work. The engine can run on wood, right?”
“Of course, anything that burns is possible. Coal is quite expensive here, so you’ll have to use wood.”
“I thought it would be impossible to do this autumn and was planning to bind the hay by hand, but I’m glad it arrived earlier than expected. Now I should try supplying the hay to the military.”
I spoke in German.
“And you brought plenty of German books too, right?”
Adolf Dattan shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it and replied in German.
“Who would believe this is German learned in just two months? Of course, I brought many books. From the Grimm’s Fairy Tales you wanted to university textbooks, I brought several hundred volumes, so take them.”
In the meantime, under the pretext of learning German from Adolf Dattan, I had been conversing with him in German and borrowing books from his collection.
In truth, I was pretending to learn German because I was afraid I might accidentally speak it when talking to Germans. I also intended to maintain the persona of a genius boy.
Seeing me speak fluent German only two months after starting to learn, it was no wonder he was surprised.
“I think it’s because I learned several foreign languages from a young age.
I followed my father around and learned Chinese and Russian, and I also learned the languages of various ethnic minorities.”
“Even so, you are excessively fast. It’s truly an unbelievable level.”
“Enough about that. What do you think? Do you think the army will buy some hay?”
“They’ll buy it, of course. Hay is always in short supply, and they’re constantly in an uproar over it.”
As Adolf Dattan said, the Russian Army in this region was always short on hay.
There was a Cossack Cavalry Regiment here; even if each person had only one horse, there were at least 2,000 cavalry mounts alone, not to mention the pack horses used for moving cannons or military supplies. Combining them, there were roughly 3,500 horses.
If you estimate that each horse eats about 2 tons of hay a year, they need 7,000 tons. If you calculate they eat 3 tons each, it becomes 10,500 tons.
If this were western Russia, it probably wouldn’t be an issue. That region has active hay production, so they can just buy hay from civilians.
The problem was that there were no professional hay farmers in the Primorsky Krai region.
The people here also raised horses, but they didn’t cultivate hay separately; most just let them graze or cut grass to feed them.
Furthermore, the horses in this region were small, so they ate less and required much less for the winter.
As the saying goes, “the sky is high and the horses get fat,” the horses in this region gorged themselves on the grass scattered everywhere in the autumn to pack on fat, then survived the winter on small amounts of fodder.
Therefore, the farmers who came from China or Joseon hardly produced any hay, and many found it difficult to produce enough food even for themselves.
The immigrants who came here after being liberated from serfdom were few in number, and even those who were present mostly lived in Amur or Khabarovsk and were reluctant to come down to Primorsky Krai. And because their numbers were so small, they wouldn’t be much help even if they did come down.
In the end, the hay needed by the military in this region was brought in by ship. And because it would be embarrassing to import it from another country, they loaded it at Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula and brought it across the Suez Canal.
If it were grain for food, I would understand, but procuring hay through such a long voyage made the price of hay incredibly high.
“How much does the hay brought in by ship cost?”
“That is a military secret and isn’t disclosed externally, but after calculating this and that, it seems to exceed 30 kopeykas per pood.”
A pood is a Russian unit of weight, where 1 pood is approximately 16kg, and a kopeyka is a sub-unit of the ruble, where 100 kopeykas equal 1 ruble.
“Is it that expensive?”
In the European part of Russia, it costs about 5 kopeykas per pood, so this was unbeatably expensive.
“It’s being brought from Ukraine not by sailing ship, but by steamship, so it has to be expensive. Other calculations suggest it could be around 40 kopeykas. I suspect it’s somewhere in the middle.”
“Then I could probably charge about 20 kopeykas per pood.”
“You should charge at least that much. For the hay brought from Russia, it’s not just the price; there are too many inconveniences. It sometimes rots during transit, and even if it doesn’t, the supply doesn’t always meet the schedule, which is a bigger problem. Last time, because the ship bringing the hay was delayed, they even had to feed the horses wheat straw. If you can provide a sufficient supply of hay, they will likely continue to trade with you even if you ask for 30 kopeykas. Even at the same price, supplying it from here reduces a lot of hassle. By the way, how much do you expect to harvest this year?”
“This year, I expect to get about 15,000 poods from roughly 60 dessiatines of land.”
“Oh, at that rate, you could get at least 3,000 rubles even at a low price.”
“To be honest, considering the money spent on machines and horses, it’s a bit of a deficit.”
“In exchange, you can reclaim much more land next year.”
“Speaking of which, I want to order five more reclamation plows, and two each of disc harrows and rollers from the United States.”
“That will require about 1,800 rubles.”
I placed the 4,000 rubles Adolf Dattan mentioned on the table.
“Use this, and with the rest, please buy some horses. Naturally, please buy about twenty Swedish or Canadian horses that can withstand the cold here. I’ll give you the remaining balance after seeing the condition of the horses.”
“Good. If it’s business with our reliable Mr. Viktor Lee, that’s certainly possible.”
“And who should I meet to supply hay to the army? I brought some sample hay with me, so it would be good to talk right now.”
Adolf Dattan readily introduced me to a Russian Army colonel, and I went into the base with the Russian trio, pulling a cart loaded with hay to show him.
“I only brought a little as a sample for now.”
The Colonel did not come alone but brought another officer, who looked at the sample we presented and said:
“Oho, is this oat hay?”
“You’re an expert. It is indeed oat hay. As you can see, it was harvested before the ears had sprouted.”
The Colonel chimed in.
“It’s not from a crop that has already had its grains harvested? Isn’t this the season when oats would have already been harvested?”
Indeed, it was the time when oats were already being gathered. Claiming to have harvested a crop that hadn’t even sprouted ears at this time was suspicious.
“Because the reclamation was delayed, the seeds were sown late, and we harvested them before they had a chance to grow properly. If you inspect it, you will see there are no signs of ears. Regardless of anything else, wouldn’t we know if we just fed it to the horses?”
If you give horses hay cut before the ears have sprouted along with hay that once had grains, the horses won’t even look at the latter and will only pick the hay with no ears. That side is much tastier.
The officer brought by the Colonel nodded, and when two horses were brought over, they approached the bundles of hay on the cart and began to eat.
“As you can see, it’s hay so delicious that the horses rush to it as soon as they see it. Honestly, if it’s hay the horses like, there’s no need to speak of its quality.”
“So, how much can you supply it for? And how much quantity can you provide?”
“We can supply about 15,000 poods. And as for the price, how would 30 kopeykas per pood be for this year?”
“30 kopeykas per pood? Did you use gold dust as fertilizer for this hay? What kind of hay costs 30 kopeykas? I’ll give you 10 kopeykas. Even that is double what other regions pay.”
“Colonel, don’t you also know how difficult it is to grow hay here? We have costs involved, so that price is nonsense. I know that just a month ago, you brought in Ukrainian hay by steamship, so how can you say that price? Having to transport it by steamship, not even a sailing vessel, through the Suez Canal—if you calculate those costs, doesn’t it come to 40 kopeykas?”
When I mentioned a cost similar to the reality, the Colonel seemed at a loss for words. He turned to Fridolf Gek and Mikhail Yankovsky, whom he apparently already knew among the Russian trio, and spoke to them.
“Skipper Gek, Mikhail Ivanovich, why are you two staying silent and letting this Koryo-saram kid handle things?”
The two shrugged, and then Mikhail spoke.
“That’s because it’s not our property, it’s that boy’s property.”
“It’s not hay you harvested?”
“That’s right. Since we aren’t the owners, but that kid is, naturally he is the one speaking. Besides, that kid is better at price negotiation than we are. So even if the hay were ours, we would have left it to him.”
Unable to deny the statement that I was better at negotiating, the Colonel looked at me once with a sour face and said:
“25 kopeykas per pood. I can’t give a single kopeyka more. In exchange, I’ll purchase all 15,000 poods.”
At the price suggested by the Colonel, it would total 3,750 rubles, which was a satisfactory first transaction. I nodded.
“Then we shall settle on supplying 15,000 poods at 25 kopeykas per pood. Shall we arrange for payment to be made at the time of each delivery?”
“I’ll pay one-third upon delivery and the rest in November. That’s because the money comes from the government at that time, so there’s nothing I can do.”
Since that wasn’t an untruth, I didn’t deny it.
Once the price negotiations for the hay supply were finished, I wanted him to resolve the ownership issues of the land I had newly reclaimed. At the same time, I wanted him to use his influence for the grant of land for a ranch.
The reason for speaking to a Colonel about land grants was that policy decisions in Primorsky Krai flowed from the Emperor to the Governor-General of East Siberia, then the Governor of Primorsky Krai, and finally the policy officer. However, such a small matter would never go that high. Usually, the signature of a policy officer was enough to finish the task, but the problem was that such signatures were heavily influenced by the will of the military.
If a Colonel recommended granting this portion of land to Viktor Lee, an expert in that field, to resolve the military’s hay supply issues, the policy official’s signature would drop immediately. Even the current Governor of Primorsky Krai was an active-duty soldier.
At the request for land needed for hay supply and military horse supply, the Colonel nodded and said:
“It was ownerless land anyway, and if it’s land reclaimed to this extent, it’s clearly yours. No one will touch it, and even the court will recognize your ownership. The previous Governor didn’t much like you Koryo-saram immigrating, but this Governor is different. He isn’t the type to say otherwise when he sees land reclaimed to this degree, so don’t worry. And just try to make this first delivery properly. If the supply is carried out faithfully, I can grant you not just 1,000 dessiatines, but even 10,000 dessiatines.”
Mikhail Yankovsky spoke of his plan for a military horse ranch.
“So, wouldn’t it be even better if we could become self-sufficient here, not just in hay but in military horses as well? A horse ranch needs a lot of land, so please, we ask of you.”
The Colonel nodded. If he could create the starting point for solving the hay problem and show the seeds of solving the military horse problem, it would be recognized as his own achievement within the military, and it wouldn’t be difficult for him to be promoted from Colonel to General. Of course, since horse breeding takes a long time, he would have to be satisfied with just seeing the potential.
“There isn’t a single person here in Vladivostok who doubts Mikhail Ivanovich’s skill in handling animals. If you just show proof that you are raising more than ten horses, I will handle that part immediately as well.”
Thus, the land problem was resolved. Now, it was just a matter of Kunst and Albers bringing the horses from Europe.