Christian stood on a high iron gantry, the chill of the early spring morning failing to cut through the immense, latent heat radiating from the nearly completed National Steel Foundry. Below him, the massive Bessemer converter—a monstrous steel egg that had consumed a year of labor and a river of gold—was being prepared for its inaugural firing. It was to be the industrial heart of his new Denmark, and today, he would see if it had a pulse.
His chief engineer, Hansen, stood beside him, his face smudged with grease and etched with a profound lack of sleep. "All is ready, my lord," Hansen said, his voice nearly lost in the ambient noise of the surrounding workshops. "A year of work comes down to this moment."
It was at this peak of anticipation, as Christian was about to give the order to begin the first pour, that a frantic messenger found him, climbing the gantry stairs with a haste that signaled a crisis. He delivered a sealed note from Baron Fievé.
Christian read it, his expression hardening. He turned to the waiting engineer. "You will have to wait for the birth of our steel age, Mr. Hansen," he said, his voice cold and sharp. "It seems we have a problem with the human factor."
He arrived at the main rifle factory to find a tense and volatile situation. The factory was silent. The great steam engine was still, and hundreds of workers were gathered in the yard, their faces a mixture of anger, fear, and defiance. A work stoppage.
"It started this morning," Fievé explained, his face tight with fury as he met Christian at the factory gate. "They demand shorter hours and more pay. They complain of accidents. It's absurd. They are paid a better wage than they ever saw as farmers. This is sedition. We should have the city guard arrest the ringleaders and be done with it."
Admiral Løvenskiold, who had also been summoned, looked at the crowd with a more troubled expression. "These are the men who build the rifles for our soldiers, Baron. They are not criminals. If their conditions are truly so poor, we have a duty to hear them out."
Christian looked past his two allies at the assembled workers. He saw the human element of his machine, the one variable he could not perfectly control with schematics and calculations. He saw former farmers, unaccustomed to the brutal, fourteen-hour rhythm of the factory floor. He saw men who had lost fingers to gears and suffered burns from hot metal. He knew from his own history that Fievé's path led to bloody crackdowns and radicalized opposition, while Løvenskiold's path, though noble, could be perceived as weakness.
"Neither of you is correct," Christian said quietly. He turned to the factory foreman. "Gather every worker in the main assembly hall. I will address them."
"My lord, it is not safe!" Fievé protested.
"It is far more dangerous to let this fester," Christian replied, walking toward the factory doors without a backward glance.
He stood on a raised loading platform, looking down at the sea of grim, soot-stained faces. He did not shout. He did not threaten.
"I have been told you have grievances," he began, his voice cutting through the tense silence. "That the work is too long. That the pay is not enough to justify the danger. That you are being treated like cogs in a machine."
He let the words hang, acknowledging their truth. "You are right. The work is hard. It is dangerous. And you are cogs in a machine. You are cogs in the most important machine in all of Denmark: the machine of our national survival. The steel you forge and the rifles you build are the only things standing between our homes and foreign domination. Your work is a patriotic duty."
He saw the skepticism on their faces. They expected patriotic words to be a substitute for bread.
"But duty must be rewarded," he continued, his tone shifting. "And loyalty must be earned. As of tomorrow, new regulations will be enacted in all Committee workshops."
He raised his voice for all to hear. "The workday will be reduced from fourteen hours to twelve. Every worker will receive a five percent increase in wages, with further bonuses tied to exceeding production quotas. A new Workers' Compensation Fund will be established, funded by this committee, to provide a pension for any man permanently injured in the service of this factory, and to provide for his family. And finally, each workshop will elect a council of three men to meet with the factory management once a month to voice grievances and suggest improvements. We will build this new Denmark together, or not at all."
A wave of stunned disbelief rolled through the crowd. They had gathered for a confrontation, expecting police batons and dismissal. They had received a twelve-hour day, a pay raise, and a form of representation that was unheard of anywhere in Europe. The anger in their eyes was replaced by confusion, then by a dawning, powerful sense of relief and loyalty. The strike was over before it had truly begun.
Later, Fievé confronted him privately, his face aghast. "Count, what have you done? A twelve-hour day? Compensation? You are setting a disastrous precedent! You will ruin us!"
"Baron," Christian replied, his voice cold and analytical. "A strike would have cost us thousands of rifles and weeks of production. The cost of these reforms is a fraction of that loss. A healthy, loyal workforce is a productive workforce. Discontent is an inefficiency, and I will not tolerate inefficiency in my system. What I have done today is not charity. It is simply better management."
Fievé was left speechless, unable to argue with the cold, ruthless pragmatism that framed even workers' rights as a tool for greater production.
Christian had averted his first labor crisis. He had introduced modern social reforms decades ahead of their time, not from a sense of moral obligation, but as a strategic necessity. He was learning that to build an empire required more than just command of industry and politics; it required a mastery of the complex, volatile, and ultimately crucial human factor. He was not just building an empire; he was engineering a new society to sustain it.