Chapter 119: Chapter 119 : I Like Money
Preparations for the postal service went smoothly.
Finding mail carriers was not difficult at all.
I already employed numerous couriers to connect my various businesses, and Rome was full of unemployed men desperate for work.
As I had done with the signalers, I decided to accept recommendations from each of Rome’s tribes.
"We already mapped out Rome’s addresses to some extent during the insurance business. We can use that as it is,"
Felix said, scratching his nose.
"However, connecting Rome to other cities by post will take some time. Our insurance business hasn’t expanded to other cities yet, after all."
"Even organizing the addresses will take considerable time."
I nodded.
Ostia was the only exception.
When we built the first signal tower there, we expanded our insurance business into the city at the same time.
Aside from Ostia, we had almost no reliable records for other cities.
We had maps showing the roads and the surrounding terrain, but turning a city’s sprawling streets into a coherent address system was another problem entirely.
"For now, simply handling Rome’s internal mail will be overwhelming enough. Let’s worry about connecting other cities later."
Rome was a true metropolis, with a population approaching one million.
Once we accumulated enough experience here, expanding the service to other cities would be much easier.
"But are you truly not going to collect the fee from the recipient?"
Felix asked.
"Wouldn’t it be better if the recipient paid instead of the sender? That would make calculating the fees much easier as well."
"We will charge a flat rate for all letters sent within the city."
"You want every letter to cost the same?"
Felix’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
Come to think of it, it probably sounded completely absurd to him.
The labor and cost involved varied wildly depending on the distance.
It seemed only natural that a letter sent farther away should cost more.
"But if people had to calculate the postage by distance every time they sent a letter, it would become far too expensive and inconvenient. Far fewer people would use the service."
Of course, distance-based fees would still be necessary in some cases.
We’d have to charge special rates for distant regions or islands like Sicily.
But the distance-based pricing system had to be simplified.
This was the very innovation Britain achieved through its postal reforms in the nineteenth century.
The key was simple: have the sender prepay the fee instead of the recipient, and combine that with an affordable flat rate.
This made the postal system far more efficient.
And naturally, the number of users skyrocketed.
Postal services being what they are, the more people used it, the more profitable and efficient it became, not to mention the boost to communication between citizens.
"Besides, if we have the recipient pay, the risk of taking a loss is far too high."
I continued my explanation.
It was perfectly logical, once you thought about it.
Delivering a letter took horses, carriages, and manpower.
But if the recipient refused to accept the letter at the door, we would suffer a serious loss.
"Not to mention, people could exchange messages by leaving marks on the outside of the letter, then refuse delivery. For example, if the sender left a prearranged mark on the envelope, the recipient could read the message without accepting delivery or paying the fee."
"I hadn’t even considered that,"
Felix muttered.
"I suppose nothing tempts people more than the chance to send messages for free. By the way, how did you even come up with such a scenario, Young Master?"
I shrugged, turning my gaze away.
Truth be told, this was a problem many postal services had faced throughout history.
Running a postal network within a single city was harder than it sounded.
"In a massive city like Rome, we can’t force every person to go to a designated location and pay a fee every single time they want to send a letter. It would take an eternity just to send a single letter."
"We would need a staggering number of employees even to process a few thousand letters a day, much less tens of thousands."
Felix let out a heavy sigh.
"I assume you already have a solution for this as well?"
"It’s simple. We install large boxes throughout Rome and have people drop their letters inside. Our employees would only need to collect them once a day."
"But then how do we collect the fees... Ah, we could have them enclose the payment with the letter!"
"That’s not a bad idea. But I have an even better method."
The innovations Britain introduced during its postal reforms did not stop there. One invention would change the history of mail entirely.
"What if we sold a special little piece of paper?"
"Paper?"
Felix tilted his head.
"You mean the paper they write their letters on?"
"No. We sell a tiny slip of paper that proves the sender has already paid the postage. We will deliver only letters bearing that slip of paper. A single as should be enough."
Britain had found great success with the Penny Post, which charged one penny for short-distance mail.
"A piece of paper that proves they paid the fee...? I’m not sure."
Felix said.
"Do you really think people will pay one as just to buy a tiny scrap of paper?"
"It will be more than a mere scrap of paper. It will bear a beautiful image."
I replied with a laugh. Even if I explained how profoundly the postage stamp changed postal history, Felix would not be able to grasp its significance.
But a stamp was not merely a piece of paper.
It was proof of prepaid postage—almost a kind of promissory note.
The postal office received the money upfront and took on the obligation to deliver the letter bearing that stamp.
It carried a fixed face value, came from a trusted institution, and could be exchanged for a specific service.
It held far more value than the paper it was printed on.
In a way...
You could almost call it paper money.
And when creating anything like paper money, one thing was absolutely vital.
***
"Caesar! You’ve finally come!"
Vitruvius ran over, waving his hand frantically.
I chuckled as I watched him panting heavily.
"Anyone listening would think I had returned from the dead, Vitruvius."
"You haven’t visited the factory in ages, Caesar. The same goes for the technical school. You used to drop by so often to check on us..."
"As you know, I have had my hands full lately. I’ll try to make more time."
At times like this, I really wished I could clone myself.
From the campaign against the bandits to the bank run and the signaler murders, It had been a truly chaotic year.
After the signal towers and the development of paper, I hadn’t been able to pay much attention to the technical school.
"More than a thousand patent applications are waiting for review. We are handling most of them ourselves, but we would like you to make the final decisions."
Vitruvius said, walking beside me.
We entered the paper mill situated by the river.
It was the same place I had visited with Cato and Brutus right before leaving for the bandit subjugation.
"Have them sent to my house. I’ll review them whenever I have time, and we’ll decide what to do."
"Actually, it’s not just that."
Vitruvius let out a dry cough.
"You have always had such flashes of brilliant inspiration. I am not the only one. The other engineers have been eagerly waiting for your next idea as well."
"Divine revelations do not come on demand, you know."
Whenever I sprinkled in a bit of my future knowledge, Vitruvius and the other engineers went absolutely wild.
Considering most of it was completely unimaginable in this era, their reaction was only natural.
However, I didn’t want the engineers to become entirely dependent on me.
That was the whole reason I introduced the patent system in the first place.
But today was different.
Creating stamps required one particular technique.
A simple technique, but a revolutionary one.
"I prepared the bronze wire you asked for. But what exactly do you plan to use it for?"
"Showing you will be faster than trying to explain it."
"As always."
I followed Vitruvius deeper into the factory.
As always, the interior was sweltering and filled with a foul mixture of smells.
Workers wearing cloth masks hurried about, soaking the pulp, lifting it out on molds, and hanging the sheets to dry.
"Ever since we began making animal glue from hide scraps, bones, and sinews, the paper quality has improved tremendously."
Vitruvius said, pointing to one side.
There, a cauldron boiled, filled with a bubbling reddish liquid.
"Once the paper is dipped in diluted glue and rubbed smooth, it takes ink much better."
"Cicero and the other lawyers were quite pleased with it as well. I hear hardly anyone uses papyrus anymore."
But I hadn’t come here today to improve the paper quality.
I had a far more important task.
"Bring me the bronze wire."
I took the wire Vitruvius handed me and bent it into a simple shape.
Let’s start with a V shape.
I fixed the bent wire in place with thread, then tied it directly to the papermaking mold.
As the workers stopped what they were doing to watch, I spoke.
"Now, use this mold to form a sheet. Let’s see what happens once it dries."
While the new sheet of paper dried in the sun, I toured the rest of the factory with Vitruvius.
When we returned, we examined the dried paper.
"It just looks like ordinary paper."
"Try holding it up to the sunlight."
"Hold it up to the sunlight?"
Vitruvius asked, looking completely baffled.
He held the paper up to the light and muttered.
"I really don’t see anything different... wait, something’s strange."
"Can you see the V-shaped line?"
"Yes, I see it! This is truly incredible. How did you make this using only a piece of bronze wire?"
"It’s not that complicated. Less pulp settles where the wire protrudes. So when it dries, that specific area is thinner, which allows light to pass through."
When you thought about it, the underlying principle was incredibly simple.
But creating the first watermark took many years since the invention of paper.
"It is fascinating, certainly. But why would we need to make paper like this?"
"We will need to produce a very special type of paper from now on. We’ll have to increase the security around this factory to make sure no one can wander in freely."
Historically, when postage stamps were first introduced, there were plenty of fraudsters quickly tried to counterfeit them for profit.
Watermarks would make counterfeiting far more difficult.
And maybe...
"Because one day, we might end up making money here."
"Making money?"
Vitruvius tilted his head, then suddenly burst into a fit of coughing.
He leaned in close and whispered in a hushed tone.
"Don’t tell me you have found a way to make gold or silver this time."
"What if we could make money out of paper itself?"
"Money out of paper?"
Vitruvius stared at me blankly for a moment before bursting into laughter.
"I am not foolish enough to fall for a joke like that."
"Maybe you’re right."
I replied, laughing along with him.
"But you could be wrong this time, Vitruvius."
***
Once the watermarking process was ready, the production of stamps, and with it the postal business itself, was officially set in motion.
However, finalizing the details did not magically solve all our problems.
"We are going to run into a severe shortage of paper. At the very least, our current output will not be nearly enough."
After Britain’s postal reforms, the number of letters sent each year rose from tens of millions to over a hundred million.
Over the next seven years, it rose to 300 million.
Although paper could be produced in far greater quantities than papyrus, I wasn’t sure if we could keep up with the sheer demand among Roman citizens.
Even if Rome’s literacy rate was only a conservative 10 to 15 percent, that still represented a massive number of potential users.
To launch the postal service properly and create an administrative link between the collegia and temples, we needed vastly more paper.
"We need more paper mills. At least three or four more right away."
"That is easy for you to say, but spare a thought for the people who actually have to make it happen, Young Master."
Felix said, placing a goblet of wine down in front of me.
"We are already practically paralyzed just managing our current factories and businesses. The Strategy Office staff are already at their limit. If you add any more to their workload, they’ll flee for their lives."
"I suppose they did handle everything from the Floralia festival to the recent collegia investigation. It really would be too much to ask them to take on anything else."
During the Floralia festival, they had all but performed the duties of an aedile.
The recent collegia investigation had required more work than a census conducted by the censors.
"Does that mean you aren’t going to build any more paper mills?"
Felix asked, looking genuinely surprised.
"Knowing you, Young Master, I was certain you would simply tell us to hire more people and make it work somehow."
"Not every problem can be solved like that."
I replied with a chuckle.
There is a limit to how quickly any organization can grow.
Throwing more bodies at a problem blindly does not automatically make things more efficient.
Honestly, it was already a miracle that our current businesses were running smoothly at all.
We were already juggling insurance, Palmolive, the signal towers, paper production, and countless other ventures.
Without the Strategy Office acting as the central hub, the entire operation could have collapsed at any time.
"I have no intention of piling more weight onto Atlas while he is already holding up the sky."
A moment later, I was startled to see Felix looking as if he were about to burst into tears.
"What’s wrong?"
"You have truly grown so much, Young Master. How could I not shed tears of joy?"
"I keep telling you, I am not such a terrible employer."
Wait—if I had to say that myself, did that mean I actually was?
"But if we do not build more paper mills, demand will keep driving up the price of paper."
Felix asked.
"Well, since we control paper production, I suppose we could just rake in the profits."
"No, we have to increase paper production."
"But you just said you aren’t going to build any new paper mills..."
"I said we were not going to build them ourselves. I never said new paper mills wouldn’t be built."
"You mean..."
There was a common method modern corporations used in situations like this.
If a task was too difficult to handle internally, you simply handed it off to someone else: outsourcing.
"Are you going to make the production method public, like you did with Palmolive?"
"Similar, yes. But if we do that, we will not make any profit."
I leaned forward. How could I hand the work off to someone else and still rake in the profits?
"Let’s help our capable employees leave the nest and spread their wings."
Of course, once they spread their wings, they would still have to bring food back to the nest.
