The newsboys who stopped Lynch realized after taking out the masthead that the days of misery would not be changed by the disappearance of a person who oppressed and exploited them.
A lot of people always talk about the misery of life as if there is a rock over their heads and if they just move it away, their days will get better, and they even deliberately tell people, in a kind of forced tone, that the ones who exploit them are the same ones who pay their salaries and give them money to support their families.
Maybe it's true, but not quite.
The situation of the children doesn't get better when the masthead dies, because it's not the masthead that really oppresses and exploits them, it's the profit-oriented society.
It may even be that the disappearance of the masthead has made life a little more difficult for these children; without the social connections of the masthead, without its deterrent effect on outsiders, the children can't enjoy the resources that the masthead used to be able to get its hands on, resources that didn't seem special to the children, or even the source of their misery.
They can't buy newspapers, and in this day and age, when paper still occupies the main media channels, the newspaper company doesn't worry about selling newspapers at all, and basically sells out what it prints every day, which means that there will be a part of the market that will be empty.
If the masthead disappeared, other mastheads would want to gobble up that share, and they would take the masthead's share to crowd out the masthead's turf and market, and in a collusion of interests that the kids didn't understand yet, newspapers were sold to other mastheads.
Newsboys they hadn't seen before also began to appear in the neighborhood, waving freshly baked papers with a strong smell of ink, taking paycheck after paycheck out of other people's pockets, paychecks that should have been theirs to begin with.
Not only that, but the scrap yard, for various reasons, had a good relationship with the masthead, and now that the masthead was gone, they started ruthlessly undercutting the price of recycling to make more profit for themselves.
Anyway, the children had no way to fight them, and they could make money by squeezing them without any worries.
The children always thought that the masthead was the source of their nightmares, but at that moment they realized that their understanding of this society was really too shallow.
The money left by the Masthead was enough to keep them going for a while, but if they couldn't find new income, the money would soon be exhausted.
Some of the older children think that it can't go on like this, that if they don't get the money to give to their parents, to the orphanage, they will be taken away, broken up, and sent somewhere else to continue to be oppressed and exploited.
So they had to stand up, they had to have an income, they had already rebelled against their fate and managed to turn over a stone, so they would continue to fight and one day they would be able to lift the thick dark clouds and see the blue sky.
They found Lynch, perhaps the easiest way they could think of at the moment.
Lynch looked at the two children and shook his head slightly, "Sorry, I'm not in that kind of business anymore ...".
With a large number of finance companies and laundromats being seized, and more and more people realizing that someone might be tampering with the coins, the coin exchange business had just hit its peak when it crashed into the doldrums.
And with a record of a large cash withdrawal from a bank opening, Mr. Fox didn't need to use this backward method to make his money look a little more legitimate.
The two children, despite their best efforts to appear ... breezy, had uncontrollable disappointment on their faces.
One of the older children couldn't help but ask again, "Mr. Lynch, you're a good man, is there any work we can do?"
Afraid that Lynch would say no, he immediately added, "We can ask for less money than ordinary workers, as long as we have food to eat and some pocket money, we don't have to ask for much.
You see, reality is so ironic, they realized reality after moving away from the stone, and now they were looking for another stone that looked more suitable for them, intending to press it on their own bodies with their own hands.
The corners of Lynch's mouth curled up slightly, every time he smiled he was at his kindest, a smile was a language that cut across race, gender, age, education and understanding, it's affinity could ease agitation and be a bridge between strangers.
"I've got some work I'm willing to find someone to do, but ...," his smile grew friendlier, ".... I know your boss, the owner of this masthead, and if you guys need a job, it would be better if he could come talk to me."
"I know you are employed by him, and if we cross him to talk about these things, he might not be nice to you, and I don't want anyone to get hurt!"
Hear, hear!
Sweet, sweet Lynch was such a good-hearted man, and everyone's bad opinion of him was only because they didn't know him, and his serious expression made the older kids' faces stiffen a little.
Everyone knew, including Lynch, that the Masthead was dead, stabbed to death by these older kids on the road out of town that very night, but he still emphasized this thing he knew so well now, and his purpose was quite simple: to make these kids realize that before they had the ability to have equal contact with adults, they had to have a bridge.
That bridge used to be the masthead, and now that they were missing it, they would have to find one again, unless they could take on that role themselves, or give something.
The younger child does not react to the sight of his "older brother," even if he is mature enough in most people's eyes to be called a "young adult," he is still a child.
A child's prematurely matured mind could never be compared to an adult's quick thinking and ability to summarize, and so the child said something that should not have been said in the first place.
"The masthead? It's gone!"
The older child immediately showed a shocked face, and as he pulled the younger child with him, he bowed to Lynch as he pressed his hat and said goodbye, "Mr. Lynch, we're very sorry to have taken up your precious time ...".
The death of the masthead was a secret that even the younger kids in the dormitory didn't know about, except for a few of the older ones.
A secret that belonged only between them, the older kids!
The Federation had laws for the protection of minors, but these laws protected the rights of these innocent, normal, ordinary minors.
For minors who commit crimes, especially underage criminals in vicious cases like murder, the laws never advocate that they should be protected, and would even have more considerations in terms of sentencing.
Sentenced lightly, will give these children a kind of "even if take other people's lives have no serious consequences," the wrong understanding, sentenced heavily, on the contrary, will make them hate, distorted mentality to hate the whole of society, so the minor offenders are often very complex, but also supplemented by psychiatrists to say that is in prison, but it is better to say that it is a ... process.
Every now and then people praise the petty criminals, who are as crazy as they are, numbly give the standard answers that people need, and once again the great Commonwealth has won the humanitarian war.
Well, far from it, the two children were just about to leave when Lynch pulled them back.
"Not anymore?" He raised an eyebrow, "Did he run, Michael was convicted, he shouldn't have run."
The sudden step froze both kids, Lynch had even helped them find ways and excuses to cover it up, and the two kids who knew the secret but thought Lynch didn't know the secret suddenly had a thought - this man was no fool, I'm afraid.
But just as they were going down that step, the younger kid, who knew he had made a mistake, shut his mouth, and the older kid nodded his head and said, "Yes, Mr. Lynch, our BOSS 'ran away' .... "
'Ran away' was a street term that fit the environment this child was exposed to, Lynch nodded with satisfaction, "It looks like you guys aren't having a very good time right now?"
The older child nodded repeatedly, "Yes, sir, we are not having a good time!"
The kind and gracious Master Lynch breathed a sigh of relief, "I love children and have a kind heart, I have a job here that you might like." He seemed to forget that he was only twenty years old himself.
His clothes were more mature now, though, it wasn't too much of a stretch to say he was twenty-four or twenty-five, and wouldn't twenty-four or twenty-five be looking at these children?
"Your mercy shines like the sun!"