Wild North America 1846

Chapter 39
This is a blueprint that can be exchanged for 50 reputation points in the reputation store. It is a gold pan equipment driven by a water wheel. The slots are arranged ingeniously, which can improve work efficiency hundreds of times.

A gold pan equipment built by carpenters and blacksmiths can replace the daily screening of 760 gold diggers, and only 7 to 8 people are needed to operate it.

As an armed group, Datang Society must of course have its own fixed industry and stable income channels.

Relying on mountains to eat mountains, relying on water to draft water.

Such a simple truth, of course Richard knows that the gold mines by the American river are a well-known secret in San Francisco, but this news has not been leaked out, thus triggering a gold rush all over North America and even the world.

The ultimate reason is the mischief of regional thinking.

In San Francisco, no one is willing to share the gluttonous feast of gold mining with those outsiders, so every participant consciously keeps the secret of the gold mine and does not reveal it to outsiders.

if history doesn't change

Until two years later, in 1848, a clever grocer leaked the news, which triggered a worldwide gold rush. The influx of a large number of foreigners made the grocer a lot of money.

In fact, at that time, there were very few surface gold resources that were easy to mine by the American rivers, and it was necessary to use steam mechanical mining equipment to further excavate deeper gold resources.

Judging from the current total gold production, the American riverside gold diggers can harvest about 240 million to 250 million ounces of gold a year. Gold resources are extremely rich, and gold can be panned with the simplest tools. The peak period will be two years later. Capable of reaching 520 million ounces of gold.

With such a huge amount of wealth, why not take a share of it?
The agreement hall is engaged in the skin and meat business, and the income is 10,000+ ounces of gold in a year. At first glance, it looks like a lot, but its actual influence is limited, accounting for about one-twentieth of the current production of the entire American River gold reserves.

This is obviously not enough to satisfy Li Cha's appetite. He took out the blueprint and asked, "Can you understand the blueprint?"

"President, this set of drawings is not complicated to disassemble. It should be composed of waterwheels, transmission rods, washing tanks, gold pans, screens, and water pipes. The production is not a big problem, so I will handle it. .” Gai Wangshan replied after a careful look.

"4 sets were manufactured in the early stage, and the blacksmith also used our people. We must pay attention to confidentiality. We disassembled the drawings of the carpenter and blacksmith to build them, and strictly prevented the behavior of eating inside and outside."

"Understood, I ask Captain Liu Wu to help check it."

"Okay, Liu Wu, you can choose capable personnel for the personal guard, and you can expand it to about 50 people. Weapons and equipment are given priority, and you can cooperate with General Manager Gai to do this well."

"Your Majesty's order." Liu Wu accepted the order with a solemn expression.

"Yeah." Li Cha nodded in satisfaction, looked around the crowd, and ordered; "Since everyone has assigned tasks, then hurry up and do things, the general manager will be here temporarily, and nothing will happen. Mike Hurry up and contact Captain William Richardson of Fangcao, I want to meet him as soon as possible."

"As ordered!"

After everyone took orders, they dispersed abruptly, and the meeting hall became empty again.

Sitting alone in the hall, Li Cha picked up his teacup and took a sip leisurely, thinking about the current complicated situation in San Francisco and considering the next move.

in the plans he contemplates;

Datang Club is mainly engaged in the two industries of commerce and gold panning, and concurrently operates the grape valley and rose manor agriculture and animal husbandry industries. These three industries have great development prospects.

Needless to say, if you are engaged in commerce in San Francisco, every grocery store is simply a money-printing machine that makes money every day, from hoes.Everything from pans, flour, weapons, kerosene lamps to clothes and fabrics can be sold at sky-high prices, and the profits are astonishing.

Except for John Sutter who owns several cargo sailboats in the entire city, the other channels for importing goods are all in the hands of the captains of Fangcaodi, basically monopolizing the channels for importing local goods, and thus making a fortune.

Every businessman in San Francisco has to get goods from the British captains in Fangcao, which is an unavoidable hurdle.

Behind these British captains is the Caribbean Fleet of the British Empire across Central America. The Royal Navy's Caribbean Fleet can make rampant Caribbean pirates run away and basically monopolize the regional maritime trade routes.

With the current strength of Datang Society, it is far from enough to challenge all these.

Therefore, in order to engage in commerce, one has to obediently deal with the captains of Fangcaodi and accept a layer of exploitation.

In the gold mining industry, it is inevitable to compete head-on with Alexander Madison.

Alexander Madison and his group are out-and-out gold bullies. In order to protect the interests of Chinese gold diggers, the armed cavalry of the Datang Society have had several small-scale conflicts with them.

Although there has not been a big fight yet, the two sides have already tied the knot.

If the Tang Dynasty will start panning for gold by the American River with great fanfare, once a gold-rich area with astonishing profits is discovered, the two sides will inevitably go to war.

In the eyes of Alexander Madison and his group, the American River gold mining area is their territory, and anyone who dares to mine gold here with great fanfare is tantamount to stealing their wealth.

Whether or not this gangster theory holds water, that's what Alexander Madison and his gang did.

They are running around the gold mining area like mad dogs. Any gold prospectors who find rich gold veins, whether they are white, Chinese or Mexican, as long as they smell a little fishy smell, it is difficult to escape their poisonous hands.

The primary goal of the armed forces prepared by the Tang Dynasty is to deal with this group of rampant white gangsters.

Therefore, Richard's next strategy is very simple;
It is to win over the Fangcaodi forces, closely combine the interests of the two parties, and form a closely cooperative interest alliance to jointly fight against the local snake John Sutter and Jinba Alexander Madison.

Forging iron still needs to be hard on one's own. The premise of cooperation is that Datang will have a good armed strength and be able to rush to the forefront as a thug in Fangcaodi.

The cunning British colonized the world. They always liked to use local power to achieve their own goals, rather than doing everything by themselves and charging ahead.After all, the British white population is sparse, and life is even more precious.

The British have almost endless material trade lines, and they will never be stingy with taking out materials, tempting Datang to join their camp.

And at the beginning of development
What Datang Club lacks is rich material supply channels, and the two sides have a natural basis for cooperation.

Now turn around and talk about the third industry.

The farming and animal husbandry of Rose Manor and Grape Valley has become a surprisingly lucrative industry in the current gold rush in San Francisco.

With the influx of more and more gold diggers into San Francisco in the future, the urban population will increase from less than 10,000 to 11+ in just a few years, an increase of [-] times, and the gap in agricultural and sideline products will become larger and larger. .

The subsequent soaring prices are enough to make big farmers get amazing benefits and become the final real winners.

The development of these three major industries will create tens of thousands of stable job opportunities and help expand the basic base of Chinese influence.

At present, in the entire San Francisco (San Francisco) area, there are about 4000 people of Chinese descent, and with the addition of a few hundred people in Sacramento, the number is less than [-]. How can there be tens of thousands?

To know

The large Chinese population is not in the Eastern Empire, which is far away from the Pacific Ocean, but in Central and South America, which also includes Panama, Chile, Peru and Bolivia, and there are tens of thousands of Chinese labor groups.

After the concept of the Panama Canal was put forward, due to the huge amount of engineering, it required an astronomical amount of investment, and it is currently only in the blueprint and demonstration stage.

The first to be implemented is the Panama Railway invested by an American company, which is a transoceanic railway parallel to the planned Panama Canal and a railway transportation hub connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.

And this railway was built by a large number of Chinese laborers in the tropical jungles of Central America. More than 7300 Chinese laborers devoted themselves to it. Under the double oppression of tropical diseases and heavy labor, hundreds of Chinese laborers died here.

Now that the Panama Railway is completed, these Chinese workers who have contributed their hard work to it are no longer interested.

The American Railway Company, which once imported a large number of Chinese laborers, would not spend large sums of dollars to buy expensive boat tickets for the Chinese laborers to return to the land of China, but would abandon them like a pair of shoes, completely ignoring them.

A large number of Chinese laborers were forced to find work in white manors or farms in Panama, and endured bloody exploitation, and the journey back to the country was far away.

And in the saltpeter mines and farms in Chile, the sugar plantations in Cuba, the islands where manure piled up in Peru, and the plantations in Bolivia, there are no less than 30 to 33 Chinese laborers working hard day and night in exchange for meager income. income.

These people are the first targets that Li Cha considers.

One is that these overseas Chinese workers have experienced bloody exploitation, it is easier to gather solidarity, and they cherish the hard-won good life more. They are the best source of soldiers.

Secondly, most of these overseas Chinese laborers who have survived to this day are physically strong, have certain communication skills, are more likely to accept Western-style military training and the organizational philosophy of the Tang Dynasty, and can quickly integrate.

The three come from the same language and the same race, and it is easier to hold together for warmth in this foreign country. If you don’t rely on yourself, who can you rely on?

As long as they are given a home and good hope for the future, these overseas Chinese workers who have experienced all kinds of hardships are willing to risk their lives to follow Li Cha. This is a point that Li Cha attaches great importance to.

After his career in San Francisco is stabilized, Richard will try his best to start importing Chinese immigrants. The first choice is Panama and Peru, which are close at hand.

Needless to say, the railway workers in Panama, Peru is the second densely populated area of ​​Chinese workers, with a preliminary estimate of no less than 2 to 13.5 people, most of whom gather on islands rich in guano.

They work the hardest jobs and earn a living with little pay.

How valuable is bird droppings?

Take Peru as an example. After the founding of Peru in 1821, all the islands where guano was accumulated were nationalized, and high taxes of 65% to 70% of the selling price were collected from them.

As a result, Peru has reaped huge profits, and the income from guano has become the backbone of the country’s finances, accounting for about half of the total income. Peru has transformed itself into one of the richest countries in Latin America. It has experienced a 25-year period of prosperity, the so-called "Guano Era".

Today, Peru is in the golden age of the "Guano Era" and enjoys the high profits from guano mining. The small population of the country is not willing to do hard work at all, but wears gold and silver and dances and dances all day long. .

Guano mining is very simple, and there is almost no cost except for manpower. Peruvians are unwilling to engage in this kind of hard and low-level work, so they imported a large number of Chinese laborers from the Qing Dynasty to help them mine guano.

Through the mean squeeze of Chinese laborers, Peru has obtained a huge amount of guano export income, and the whole country is prosperous and rich, and these overseas Chinese laborers are at the bottom.

ten years later
In the "Guano War" that broke out in the three South American countries, an army composed of tens of thousands of Chinese miners joined the Chilean side to fight bravely and made great contributions to winning the final war. This is a later story.

(End of this chapter)