I want to be emperor

Chapter 764
Luo Zhixue went to Tianjin Lida Textile Company for an inspection. The inspection was only on the surface, and it was more to convey to the outside world the empire's attitude towards the light industry represented by the textile industry. In fact, the inspection was nothing to look at.

After all, no matter how much the textile industry blows, it is just a low-tech labor-intensive industry.

The importance of the textile industry is related to people's livelihood!

On the one hand, the textile industry is related to clothing, an important livelihood industry, and the textile industry occupies such a large category of clothing, food, housing and transportation.

Whether you can dress warmly or well, directly affects the living standards of the people of the empire.

At the same time, the textile industry's low technical threshold, wide adaptability, small investment, and large market base allow the textile industry to fully blossom. Whether it is in the economically developed Guangzhou, Songjiang, Tianjin and other places where a large number of textile industries are concentrated, a large Small and medium-sized cities also have a large number of textile enterprises.

Even Heyuan Prefecture, where Wang Tu is in charge, has a complete textile industry chain in the poor mountainous area of ​​northern Guangdong, from spinning to weaving, printing and dyeing, and garments.

In this way, the textile industry has become the first choice for industrial development in many places, especially in economically backward areas.

Can't handle iron and steel machinery, and can't handle textiles?

Is this thing difficult? Just build a few spinning machines and looms, and just recruit dozens or even a dozen workers. The spinning machines and looms don’t even have to be powered by the latest steam engines. , Just get a second-hand old steam engine.

Therefore, in the north and south of the Great Chu Empire, the textile industry is the most common type of industry.

At the same time, it is also the industrial output value of the Great Chu Empire, the type of industry that stimulates the largest number of employees, and it is also the leading industry that drives a large number of industries to develop together.

Behind the textile industry are a large number of messy industries such as machinery, chemicals, steel, shipbuilding, railways, and shipping.

This is why when agricultural countries engage in industrialization, they often choose the textile industry as the breakthrough point.

In the original time and space, Britain, which was the first to industrialize, relied on the textile industry, and subsequent countries such as France and Germany also relied on the textile industry at the beginning.

Japan, a backward country, basically relied on the textile industry during the Meiji Restoration and the following decades.

When we waited until the end of the [-]th century when it was time to open up, we also focused on the textile industry at the beginning.

Don't tell me that heavy industry is better, that steel is the foundation of industry, everyone knows the truth, the question is whether it can be done.

Without the foreign exchange earned from a labor-intensive industry like the textile industry, what do you use to buy machinery and equipment?Without mechanical equipment, what kind of steel do you practice?
How did Japan develop its industry during the Meiji Restoration?
The model is very simple. One is to rely on their own raw silk and export the raw silk to the United States and other places to earn foreign exchange.

At the same time, cotton was imported from India and other places, and then processed into cotton cloth with cheap domestic labor, and then exported to China and other places. After earning foreign exchange, they went to Europe and the United States to purchase machinery and equipment and even warships.

Raw silk and cotton cloth, these two major types of textile industries supported the industrial source of Japan's Meiji Restoration period.

Without the textile industry, Japan in modern times could not even afford machinery and equipment, so how could it develop heavy industry.

It is worth noting that our industrial model in modern times is also highly similar to that of Japan, and our exports are mainly dependent on raw silk... and the two sides are each other’s biggest competitors in the international raw silk market. Divide life and death.

From an economic point of view, the series of wars between China and Japan in modern times were the inevitable result of mutual competition. The wars caused by commercial competition lasted from the late Qing Dynasty to World War II.

Even in the late [-]th century, for a long period of time after our reform and opening up, we relied on the textile industry and other low-end labor-intensive industries to produce products, and relied on labor cost advantages to open up the international market and obtain foreign exchange.

8 million shirts are exchanged for one plane, which is what we are talking about.

And Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and other countries behind them are crossing the river by feeling the stones of China, and they are also pursuing the same economic development model, that is, giving priority to the development of labor-intensive industries such as textiles and electrical product assembly, and using the demographic dividend to accumulate industrialized capital.

This economic model, in the words of economists, is: demographic dividend...

In plain English, it means: selling cheap labor!
So when talking about demographic dividends, don't be proud...

Putting it on the current Great Chu Empire, of course, it is different from the backward countries in the original time and space. The Great Chu Empire does not need to use cheap labor in exchange for foreign exchange.

The Great Chu Empire valued the textile industry, and what it valued was the large number of jobs it could bring, and the low threshold could support the industrial development in more places.

As for things such as exporting to earn foreign exchange... In fact, that's just incidental.

Because the main market for a series of industrial products of the Great Chu Empire is in the country, the export share is actually very small...

After all, the Great Chu Empire has a population of hundreds of millions, and it is still a country that has initially completed industrialization, with a huge urban population.

This means that the consumer market is extremely large.

Even the military industry with huge export profits is the same. The export of ordnance seems to be several times the profit, but in fact the total amount is actually very small compared to the huge industrial output value of the Great Chu Empire...

The military industry of the Great Chu Empire mainly relied on the procurement needs of the domestic army itself.

For example, the navy builds so many warships every year, and the price of these warships is extremely expensive.

The purchase price of a Yingtian-class battleship with a full load displacement of 83 tons is about [-] Chu yuan.

The purchase price of a Jinzhou-class cruiser with a full load displacement of 45 tons is about [-] Chu yuan.

The purchase price of a 560-ton Baling-class frigate with a full-load displacement is 28 Chu Yuan.

This is only talking about the three major types of capital ships of the navy. In addition, there are also large quantities of other ordnance and equipment purchased. The army orders thousands of artillery pieces at every turn, and millions of orders when it is replaced with rifles.

The new 23-year-style flash cap percussion rifle, the model used by infantry alone, has reached 150 million production equipment, and a large number of old-style flintlock guns have also been modified.

Therefore, relatively speaking, although the export of ordnance makes money, it is just pocket money to put it bluntly. If you really hope to make money from export, a large number of domestic arsenals have long starved to death.

Likewise, the textile industry is no exception.

This is an industry with strong internal demand, a vast market, and low investment thresholds. Therefore, the Great Chu Empire has always attached great importance to the development of the textile industry in the past two decades.

This is also the main reason why Luo Zhixue went to Tianjin Lida Textile Company for inspections when he was inspecting in Tianjin.

As for the inspection itself, it wasn't very interesting.

A group of people pretending to be acting there, what's so interesting about it.

But after arriving at Tianjin Songshi Glass Company, the inspection was different.

Tianjin Songshi Glass Co., Ltd. does not occupy a large area, the factory building is not too large, and even the number of employees is not large, and a considerable part of its employees are R&D personnel and technical engineers.

Purely low-end ordinary workers actually do not account for much.

This is completely different from the textile industry, which is a low-end labor-intensive industry.

However, although the scale of the family seems small, the output value is very large and the gross profit is extremely high.

When Luo Zhixue heard the person in charge of Song's Glass Company say that in the two quarters of the first half of this year, their major businesses had completed sales of more than 500 million Chu Yuan, he couldn't help but say: "Your output value, It is more than some large factories with thousands of employees!"

At this time, an admiral next to him couldn't help muttering: They bought tens of thousands of Chu Yuan for a single nautical telescope, so it's no wonder that the output value is not high.

The navy is very resentful about their company's products being so expensive.

It is estimated that the main telescope attached to the Yingtian-class battleship will cost [-] Chu Yuan!
Nima, anyone who looks at this price will find it expensive.

It's a pity that the navy still has to hold its nose to buy it, because the large monocular nautical telescope made by Song's Glass Company is really good. It is set up on the watchtower of the warship. When the weather is good, the watchman can pass through the telescope. Find and accurately identify targets tens of kilometers away.

And you can only see so far, not because the telescope of Song Glass Company is not good, but because the height of the observatory of the battleship is limited, and it cannot see farther due to the influence of the curved surface of the earth.

Other common nautical telescopes and even ground-based military telescopes are not cheap.

Relying on telescopes alone, Song's Glass Company can earn more than 100 million a year... After all, in the field of telescopes, Song's Glass Company occupies a major market share, whether it is for military or civilian use.

In addition, Song Glass Company has a considerable market share in the field of microscopes and other specialty glass products such as laboratory glassware.

And these things are expensive.

As for experimental equipment, there are no cheap ones.

However, while Song's Glass Company has large sales and high gross profit, its research and development investment is also very large.

They have invested a lot of manpower and material resources in research and development all year round.

For example, if you want to build a new type of high-magnification microscope, ordinary glass is not enough, and you need glass made with a special formula.

And glass processing is also a very troublesome thing, because the optical field has very high requirements on the flatness of the lens, and the lens is not only high in flatness, but also a concave-convex product itself.

How to process an ultra-high-precision flat front in a convex or concave lens, and it also requires industrial mass production, or even small batch production by manual and mechanical methods.

This technical requirement is very high, a proper high-precision field.

Because the high-precision mechanical equipment on the market cannot meet the high-precision lens processing needs of Song's company, they even invested a huge amount of money in research and development of high-precision lens processing equipment.

Because the machining precision of the produced mechanical equipment is very high, and even slightly modified, it is made into high-precision mechanical equipment that can process other products for sale.

Therefore, Song's Glass Company not only manufactures glass, but also manufactures precision machinery and equipment.

When you enter their production workshop, you can see that their painting style is different from other factories. The production workshop is very clean and tidy, and there are not many workers, all of whom operate mechanical equipment to work.

And larger than their production workshops are their several R&D buildings.

Its main research and development building has five floors, a steel and concrete building, with a very large area, which is divided into many different research and development departments and laboratories.

All kinds of experimental equipment make people feel full of technology at a glance!
Even Luo Zhixue, who has the soul of future generations, couldn't help feeling shocked when he saw this scene.

Just looking at the interior of this R&D building, it’s hard to believe that it was in the late seventeenth century. According to Luo Zhixue’s limited historical knowledge, this place is probably similar to those R&D institutions of large companies in the twentieth century. Alright.

With such R&D hardware and hundreds of R&D personnel, it's no wonder that Song's Glass Company can be so strong in the field of optics.

Luo Zhixue felt satisfied with today's inspection after a visit to Song's Glass Company, and looked forward to the follow-up inspection in Tianjin.

Tianjin is an important industrial center in the north. There are not only Song's Glass Company and Lida Textile Company in this place. Strictly speaking, although these two companies are not bad, they can only be regarded as little brothers in Tianjin.

The large local enterprises in Tianjin are still those large government-run enterprises directly under the Ministry of Industry, such as Hebei Arms Company and Tianjin Machinery Company.

Hebei Weapons Company is one of the five largest weapons companies in the Great Chu Empire. It has more than a dozen large and small research institutes and [-] different types of arsenals. It is a comprehensive weapons company with product lines ranging from warships to bullets.

When Luo Zhixue inspected Qingdao before, the Qingdao Naval Arsenal he saw belonged to the Hebei Arms Company.

Tianjin Firearms Factory is the largest firearms production factory in North China, supplying 30.00% of the firearms of the Great Chu Empire, ranging from rifles to lances and pistols.

Tianjin Artillery Factory is also the largest artillery factory in North China. Its product line includes a series of army field guns. It also produces some front-loaded rifled guns for the navy. Its 75-type [-]mm front-loaded rifled gun has entered the navy's The equipment list has produced hundreds of units, and is widely equipped on a series of newly built warships, serving as the secondary guns of cruisers, frigates, small patrol ships, and the main guns of gunboats.

Even the army couldn't help it, and made more than [-] field cannon versions, and organized a test artillery regiment to study the tactical application of front-loading rifled guns in ground combat.

However, after research by the Army, they still believe that the current rifled guns have huge problems, the cost is too high, and the most important thing is that the quality of the barrel is too poor, the rifling is easily polished, and the barrel life is too short.

Unless the barrel life of rifled artillery is greatly improved, otherwise, it is impossible for the army to use rifled artillery on a large scale like the navy.

The navy can tolerate one or two hundred rifled guns with a barrel life for the sake of range and power, because the navy's warships rarely fire.

But the army is different. The artillery of the army is used very frequently in battle. After a big battle, hundreds of shells are fired at every turn.

If the lifespan of the barrel is too low, the artillery will be scrapped before a battle is over, so how can we fight?

These two arsenals were also Luo Zhixue's key inspection targets during his inspection in Tianjin.

Luo Zhixue visited the arsenal many times before, but most of them went to Dangtu Industrial Base, which is very close to Jinling City, to see the local Dangtu Gun Factory and Dangtu Artillery Factory.

There are relatively few arsenals in other places.

It was the first time to see the arsenal in the north, so Luo Zhixue was looking forward to it, and the Hebei Arms Company also attached great importance to it, and made corresponding preparations early on.

This kind of preparation does not refer to any safety preparations. After all, it is an arsenal itself, and its security precautions are very high on weekdays.

The preparatory work of the Hebei Weapons Company mainly focused on several new types of weapons.

Therefore, Luo Zhi learned that after a brief inspection of the Tianjin Firearms Factory and the Tianjin Artillery Factory next door, he came to the test range of the Hebei Weapons Company next to the arsenal.

At this time, the open space of the test range has been filled with all kinds of weapons and equipment, including active-duty weapons that the military has equipped on a large scale, as well as various new weapons and even conceptual weapons from Hebei Weapons Company.

It's a weapons show!
The audience was Luo Zhixue and a large number of military generals who came with him.

The Hebei Weapons Company is planning to take advantage of this opportunity to get another batch of military weapons orders.

Luo Zhixue is also well aware of Hebei Arms Company's thoughts, but he will not stop him, and he even welcomes it!

Don't hide any good things, just bring them out to me, as long as they are good, are you afraid that I won't give you an order?

So as soon as he arrived at the test range, Luo Zhixue smiled and said to Dai Yong, the governor of the Hebei Weapons Company: "Dai Aiqing, bring out any good things!"

Dai Yongyan, who was nearly fifty years old, said with an air of honesty and honesty: "Then I have the guts to make a fool of myself!"

After saying that, he quickly stepped forward to the open space in front of him: "Please look, Your Majesty, this is the latest rifled gun developed by our company."

As soon as I heard the term breech-loading rifled gun, I looked at the rear of the front-loaded gun. It was indeed different from the front-loaded rifled gun, with several more parts.

Immediately, Luo Zhixue was shocked.

This Hebei Arms Company has come up with such a killer weapon as a rear-loaded rifled gun without making a sound?
Rear-loading artillery, like many weapons, is not a new concept product. Europeans began to use breech-loading smoothbore guns in the [-]th century, but at that time the method of mother-in-child artillery was generally used, which means that later generations of Chinese people are very familiar with it. The familiar Franc cannon, this thing is an imitation of the Portuguese mother-in-law rear-loading cannon.

But this thing has no future, because of serious air leakage and insufficient power, it can basically only be used as a light artillery, and it will soon be completely eliminated by the front-mounted smoothbore gun.

The Great Chu Empire has also continued the research and development of breech-loading artillery, and has also made improved models of Frang machine artillery, trying to process it with better technology to obtain better breech-loading smoothbore guns.

Unfortunately, this series of attempts were all unsuccessful.

The same rifled artillery is not a new thing. The Great Chu Empire began to think about making rifled weapons more than ten years ago, but the bronze artillery is not wear-resistant, and the steel material has not been able to break through for a long time, so there has been no actual progress before. .

Until recent years, with the continuous progress of the domestic steel industry and the ability to produce relatively high-quality steel, it began to use steel to produce bore barrels, but the performance is still not good, the wear resistance is very poor, and the pressure bearing capacity Not so good.

In order to solve many problems such as wear resistance and pressure bearing, the front-loading rifled guns currently used by the Great Chu Empire Navy actually use composite barrels...

The inner layer is steel material and the outer layer is wrought iron material.

Only in this way can there be front-loading rifled guns equipped by the Navy on a large scale.

Although the technical level of the current rifled guns is not good, and there are defects such as high cost and short service life, they are still there, so many artillery developers are thinking about starting to develop rear-loading rifled guns.

However, Luo Zhixue had never heard of any technological breakthroughs before. Last year, Jiangnan Arms Company tried to develop a breech-loading rifled gun... At first glance, it seemed to be quite good, but the air leak was so serious that it The limited range is very short, and the power when firing armor-piercing projectiles is even worse!

Coupled with other technical defects, it even exploded on the spot during the test firing!
Well, the Jiangnan Arms Company took their so-called breech-loading rifled guns back to the furnace and remade them in a desperate manner. God knows when they will be able to produce a perfect product.

The current Great Chu Empire wants to develop breech-loading rifled guns, but there is still a relatively large technological gap. They can't even produce a pure steel high-performance gun barrel, and the design of the breech block is not good, and the materials are not good enough. The ones that come out are basically serious air leaks, lack of practicality, and the extreme ones will blow you up.

Now Hebei Arms Company suddenly said that it had a breech-loading rifled gun, which made Luo Zhixue curious whether it was bragging or a technological breakthrough.

Immediately, Luo Zhixue watched them do it with great anticipation, and even let them conduct a test firing.

But when Luo Zhixue saw that their breech-loading rifled guns used a breech breech with a helical rear structure, um, that’s not the point... The point is that the shells fired well, and the shells went out smoothly without any air leakage. .

However, when preparing for the second test-fire of the shell, no matter how hard a few strong artillerymen tried, even with a big hammer, they couldn't unscrew the screw bolt at the tail.

Luo Zhixue couldn't help but rolled his eyes.

Feelings are still a one-time thing. One can tell at a glance that the breech block design of this thing must be flawed, otherwise the breech block cannot be removed after the cannon is fired.

At this time, Dai Yongyan, the Governor's Office of the Hebei Weapons Company, stepped forward and said with an embarrassed expression: "When the testers tightened the tail bolts, they used too much force. In addition, when the artillery was fired, the internal chamber pressure was relatively high, which caused the jamming. died!"

Luo Zhixue also knew that under today's technical conditions, it is too difficult to produce a practical breech-loading rifle gun, and even if the test fails, he will not blame them, so he immediately said with a gentle expression: "It doesn't matter, scientific research Well, failure is the mother of success, it doesn’t matter if you fail once, you will always succeed if you work hard in the future!”

Luo Zhixue said a few words of reassurance here, but Dai Yongyan stepped forward again and said, "But we have three types of breech-loading rifled guns with different types of shooting, and there are two more in front, your Majesty, go and have a look?"

Luo Zhixue can still speak, keep watching!

As a result, it is estimated that a leaky artillery can't even recognize it, and an army general next to it fired on the spot. This firing, I am afraid that most of the artillery crew members will be killed on the spot...

There is another one that is even more outrageous. When it was fired, it was fine, and the breech block could be removed smoothly. As a result, the second test firing has not started for a long time. As a result, when I asked, good guy, there was a slight crack in the tail of the gun. , I dare not conduct a second test firing.

Luo Zhixue was convinced when he heard about it, and he dared to test such an immature thing in front of him... No wonder someone in the Ministry of Industry said that Dai Yongyan was not an ordinary person, and his mind was somewhat defective.

Just when Luo Zhixue thought this was the end of the matter, Dai Yongyan ran out again, and said with an honest and honest appearance: "Your Majesty, our company has also developed a breech-loading rifle, why don't you go and have a look?"

After hearing this, Luo Zhixue was not surprised, but asked cautiously: "This time it won't explode, will it?"

This is a public inspection, and a lot of people are watching. If there is an explosion, the impact will be too bad.

After Dai Yongyan heard this, he quickly waved his hands and said: "No, no, we have conducted several live ammunition tests before, and it will not explode, and we have adopted a newly developed paper shell ammunition, and used better ammunition. The rubber gasket, the air leak problem has been fixed..."

Dai Yongyan said so, but Luo Zhixue still remained skeptical!

Rear-loading rifles are not so easy to deal with, especially the problem of air leakage is always uncertain.

This is just one of them. Another bigger problem is the processing technology. It is not designed by you, but it can be done in the laboratory, and then it can be mass-produced and equipped in an industrialized manner.

Just like the front-loading rifle, the front-loading rifle using the Mini bomb was actually developed by the Great Chu Empire many years ago, but it has not been able to enter the large-scale service in the army. Up to now, there are still only nearly The guards are equipped with more than 2 in batches, plus a small amount of special troops of the army, mainly hunters.

The total equipment size is only about [-] to [-] pieces. Compared with the huge size of the Chu army, this amount of equipment is nothing.

The reason is very simple. The processing accuracy required by the Mini rifle is too high, and the material requirements are too high, resulting in too high a cost...a front-loading rifle with hundreds of Chu Yuan, the military said that it cannot afford it...

The breech-loading guns had the same problem, if not worse, because they had to deal with gas leaks.

Luo Zhixue himself is aware of the advantages and disadvantages of these new weapons. He is also very clear about which weapons are good and what is the future. Otherwise, he would not support the research and development of various new weapons.

The price of a 25-year-style front-loading rifle was more than 100 yuan, and he asked the guards to purchase more than 2 pieces, and asked the army to set up a special hunting army equipped with front-loading rifles.

The purpose is to allow Dangtu Firearms Factory to withdraw funds to continue research and development, and strive to greatly reduce costs in the future, and finally realize large-scale equipment of rifled weapons.

So today, he has the same attitude, even though he knows that the so-called breech-loading rifle on the opposite side is actually the same, but he still watched the live ammunition shooting.

But when the live-ammunition shooting started, Luo Zhixue found that this thing was quite interesting, not to mention the accuracy and range, and the rifled rifle was not far behind there.

What Luo Zhixue cared about was this breech-loading rifle from Hebei Weapons Company. Although there was still air leakage, it was not too serious. Only when the rubber ring was aging due to frequent shooting, the air leakage problem would become more serious, and The shooter can also directly replace the rubber gasket.

In addition to the problem of breech breech dirt during shooting that cannot be solved due to the defects of the paper shell bullet itself, which will cause air leakage to become more serious after long-term use, this breech-loading rifle is already considered good in Luo Zhixue’s opinion. , and even mass equipment can be put into use.

The only question is, can this thing be produced in volume and relatively cheaply?

If it is just a laboratory concept rifle, it is meaningless to the Great Chu Empire...

(End of this chapter)