national surname chiming

Chapter 411 The Millennium Plan ([-] words)

A few days later, early June.

Zhu Shuren, who has lived in Nanjing for half a year, finally made his first trip this summer - to Taiping Mansion, to inspect the Ma'anshan Iron Mine, which has just begun to be explored and mined in recent months.

As a prince, of course Zhu Shuren needs at least thousands of cavalry to provide guards when he travels. The army and horses marched from Nanjing to the southwest, passed Dasheng Pass, and arrived at Dangtu County in Taiping Prefecture.

At this distance, later generations can also go directly to Nanjing subway, but now it takes two or three days to walk.

Everyone on the earth knows that Ma Anshan is Nanjing's younger brother.So since Zhu Shuren will be based in Nanjing in the future, it is absolutely reasonable to build a new military industrial base under his nose as a backup to add an insurance to Ming's military industrial system.

You can't put all your eggs in one basket.Although Huguang was his early base, he will not have time to stay in Huguang in the future. Now he can let his confidants Zhang Huangyan and Fang Yizhi stabilize the situation, and these people will continue to be promoted in the future.

Before Zhu Shuren arrived in Ma'anshan, the Ministry of Industry and other companies had been operating there for two or three months. However, during the busy farming season, they did not use too much private labor, but mainly employed the Ministry of Industry's own people.

Now that the summer double rush is over, the surrounding farmers are generally idle, so a large number of people are hired to speed up the construction progress.

When Zhu Shuren arrived at the place, he was taken directly to the Nanshan Iron Mine. When he climbed up and looked far away, he could see under the scorching sun in June in the south, tens of thousands of peasants were there carrying earth and rocks, filling roads, laying rails, and building various futures. Plants for mining.

Unlike Daye's iron mine, although Daye's iron mine is also an open-pit iron mine, large-scale mining began as early as the Southern and Northern Dynasties.On the Ma'anshan side, large-scale mining did not start until the late Qing Dynasty in history, but now it is only the late Ming Dynasty, so there is naturally no infrastructure at all.

It took a few months to look for mines before. Taking advantage of the busy farming season, professional and technical personnel led a small team to do it first.It took great difficulty to accurately locate and take a small amount of samples to confirm the grade, and then large-scale construction was carried out after the slack season.

Originally, other iron mines in the late Ming Dynasty did not have railroad tracks, nor did they have the kind of minecarts with iron wheels in western movies.But Zhu Shuren had pushed it before at Daye Iron Mine, and now Ma'anshan is copying it.

Rail mine cars can greatly improve the transportation efficiency of ore in the mine, and can also reduce most of the transportation accidents in the future. The move is worth it.

After Daye Iron Mine and Steel Plant got on the right track, this kind of low-quality steel, which was worse than the later generation's strip steel, was no longer so valuable.This kind of low-quality steel can't be used to make weapons, and it's not even very useful as a farm tool. It happens to be used to lay trolley rails, which can be regarded as a high-quality match.

Everything starts from scratch, the conditions are naturally difficult, and some civilians die in accidents during the construction process, which happens from time to time.This is not because the labor protection measures are not done enough, it is really limited by the technology of the times. Even in the 20th century, migrant workers occasionally died when building houses on construction sites.

"In the autumn of national calamity, we have to hurry up. The people are not easy, and there is nothing we can do about it." Zhu Shu put his hands on his eyebrows to shade the sun, looked around, and sighed in pity.

Accompanying him on the inspection was Song Mingde transferred from Daye, that is, Song Yingxing's nephew.

He had been with Zhu Shuren a few years ago. When he was in Daye, because of his meritorious service over the years, he has also climbed to the position of the head of the sixth-grade Ministry of Industry. His uncle Song Yingxing has even climbed to the doctor.

Hearing the prince's sympathy for the poor at this moment, he couldn't help pointing out from the bottom of his heart: "The prince's benevolence and virtue are beyond comparison in governance. The folks in the Ma'anshan Iron Mine are all paid [-] yuan a day. They also take care of the food and wait for the common people. Employment, how can you get such treatment?

As for the previous years when the imperial court conscripted corvees to build water conservancy projects, mine mines and roads, there was no money to subsidize them.

When the Ministry of Industry was organizing, it deliberately followed your instructions before, and selected more refugees who fled from the north to the south, and the yamen in charge of the army will raise staff.Although the work is tough, these refugees are newcomers and have no foundation. It is their wish to sell more energy and earn some rations for their families during the slack. They are all grateful to the prince for his kindness. "

Zhu Shuren listened carefully and did some calculations in his mind.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to successive years of natural disasters, the price of goods was already very high. In the big cities in the south, the price of two taels of silver or more than one stone can be found everywhere, and it is even more common in a place like Suzhou, which is rich in the world.

Therefore, the wages of thirty copper coins per day are equivalent to a little more than one or two per month. It is still heavy physical labor. It was impossible to survive by itself in the late Ming Dynasty, but it was different in managing food.

(Note: At the end of the Ming Dynasty, copper coins and silver were no longer theoretically 760 to 780, because silver was imported more, and silver actually depreciated by more than [-]%. Silver. Nine hundred cash can be converted into one, two, one and a half coins a month.)
Zhu Shuren was very concerned about the people's livelihood, and it happened that he came at the same time as the peasants were serving meals. Today, he specially did not notify in advance, in case the people below made fakes, so he took the opportunity to make a surprise inspection of the peasants' meals.

The clerks and supervisors below, seeing the prince personally inspecting the mine, naturally knelt on the ground long ago. Zhu Shuren went to the pot to take a closer look. The folks really ate thick porridge cooked with lotus root taro and a little miscellaneous grains. In addition, a little tilapia cooked separately and fish soup with pickled vegetables can be distributed as dishes.

Of course, the pickled vegetable fish soup is limited, but the porridge can keep you full, and you can add more after drinking, but the meal time is limited, and the meals are eaten in batches, and those who eat too slowly in each batch will not be discharged.

This is also a necessary management measure, otherwise all links will be delayed and the construction period will definitely be affected.Whether you have the opportunity to add more meals by using the eating speed card is also a reasonable indicator. After all, eating slowly means you are not too hungry.

Zhu Shuren randomly asked a few refugees who came to work, and they all knelt down and said that this is already an unimaginably good day. As long as they can eat enough, it is nothing to sell more energy.

Especially those refugees from Shaanxi and Henan said that they didn't even have to eat elm bark in their hometown, but they had enough grains and vegetables here.

Zhu Shuren was still among the folk husbands, and saw some children who were obviously too young, probably less than ten years old, doing some jobs like sifting soil that were not too hard, as long as they were careful and patient.

He still didn't go down to the grassroots level, so he couldn't help asking the person in charge of the department why there was such an arrangement.

Song Mingde who was on the side quickly came over and explained: "My lord, this is already a favor that ordinary people can't get. The officials know your benevolence, and have already ordered that it is okay to use children, but only in those fixed positions." I use children in my work.

As for the work that requires going down potholes, climbing over mountains, paving roads and filling holes, the environment is too complicated, so children are not allowed, so there is no risk of danger.

You don't know, my lord, that these refugees who have just arrived, even if they are organized by the government, life is very difficult.If the children are not allowed to come out to work, if they give birth to another baby, they will have to be strangled and drowned. Where will there be food to feed them?

Let the older children come out to work, at least so that their accidentally born brothers and sisters can have a mouthful of porridge and water, so that they will not be killed directly. This is already a benevolent government. "

Zhu Shuren was also silent when he heard the words. He had done a good job in the resettlement of refugees in Huguang a few years ago, and such a miserable situation rarely happened.

This year the refugee problem has worsened again. In the final analysis, there is still a steady stream of new refugees. They are all coming to the south for the first time. They have no foundation and are naturally miserable.

Dorgon is desperately "suffering the people" in the north, drawing lines internally and exploiting some of them desperately. It is conceivable that in the next one or two years, this frenzied flow of refugees fleeing south will continue, unless Zhu Shuren destroys the Qing Dynasty, Otherwise you can't stop.

So he doesn't want to say much about child labor for the time being, but he affirms Song Mingde's "do not allow children to do jobs that require working in a complicated environment", only fixed positions are allowed, and this is the limit.

In addition, the daily wages for jobs with fixed positions in a safe environment will be five to ten cents less than jobs that require drilling holes, depending on the level of hard work.This is also a bowl of water level, so as not to dissatisfy the civilian husband who does dangerous work.

……

Zhu Shuren inspected briefly for two days, and confirmed that the progress of various projects is still very smooth, and the use of civilian resources and logistics support are also safe, so there will be no problems.

The remaining key is to see if there are any new technology problems that need to be solved in the iron mines and steel plants on the Ma'anshan side that are different from those on the Daye side.

After all, the grades of mineral deposits are different in each place, and the natural environmental conditions are also different, and there are always differences in the specific details of "acclimatization".

Song Mingde is also relatively experienced, so the iron mine is still under construction there. He has already had people build the first blast furnace and the first preheating air steelmaking furnace for supporting the steel plant, and started trial production on a small scale. The two-pronged approach is to debug the production line while mining, so as to save time wasted in the future.

After the blast furnace was built, some ore mined by the local method was obtained first, and it was matched with the coal mines pulled from Guangde and Huzhou, and several furnaces were tested directly.

Tongling in Chizhou also transported the expanded copper ore to Ma’anshan. In the future, the metallurgical plant here will add some copper smelting production lines in addition to steel smelting, making full use of the local convenient transportation and sufficient fuel distribution.

The water network in the south of the Yangtze River is crisscrossed. The copper ore in Tongling can be directly along the Yangtze River. It takes [-] miles of the Yangtze River to reach Ma'anshan, and the cost of water transportation is very low.

Coal mines in Changxing, Guangde and other places can directly enter Taihu Lake, go to Yixing, Changzhou Prefecture, and Lishui in Liyang, and enter the Yangtze River from Dangtu County via Shijiu Lake and Gaochun Lake.

In this regard, Ma'anshan's location advantage is much better than the Daye Iron Mine in Huguang.The coal needed by Daye still needs to be transported by land.

On the third day after Zhu Shuren arrived, he got the first batch of samples of iron and copper smelting in Ma'anshan. He inspected them himself, and asked the accompanying professionals to inspect the quality, and soon found some problems that needed to be debugged.

After repeated confirmation, Song Mingde reported anxiously: "My lord, the grade of iron ore here is not low, and the output is larger than that in Daye, so it is easier to dig large-scale in the open pit.

It's a pity that the quality of the smelted iron is still slightly worse than that of Daye, and the sulfur content is still slightly higher. The lower officials will consult the family uncle and Fang Futai, and also invite wise people to refer to it and try to solve it as soon as possible. "

From Song Mingde's reply, it can also be seen that he has grown a lot in the past few years.Originally, he only had some practical experience in engineering, but he was extremely lacking in theoretical foundation.

He has practiced in Daye for several years, occasionally listened to Zhu Shuren's high-level advice, and learned theories from Fang Yizhi. Now he can even draw such superficial chemical conclusions as "the poor quality of iron ore is due to the high sulfur content".

Zhu Shuren is quite satisfied with this progress. Hearing that the problem of sulfur content is not easy to solve, he first asked in a normal way: "Daye uses the method of first making coke, and then using coke to make steel. This method can't be solved if it is transplanted. Is it?"

Song Mingde quickly replied: "Part of it can be solved, but firstly, coke is expensive and the quantity is small, and it is mostly used for refining steel. It is not practical to rely on a large amount of coke when refining crude iron.

Secondly, not only the iron ore in Ma'anshan contains a lot of sulfur, but also the coal mine in Changxing Guangde also contains a lot of sulfur, and direct charring often produces defective products. "

Zhu Shuren didn't know much about metallurgy and chemical engineering. His previous life was at the level of high school physics and chemistry. After pondering over and over again, combined with the poor experience of his later life, and the problems described by Song Mingde, after a long time of thinking, he finally got a little clue. .

"Let's take some iron ore and coal to have a look. Have you shipped some iron ore from Daye for comparison?" Zhu Shuren decided not to make decisions with his head. Without research, he has no right to speak.

Song Mingde has the idea of ​​scientific comparison and analysis. As expected, he had someone transport several ships of iron ore from Daye, and even coal and coke from Daye. Zhu Shuren looked at it.

Song Mingde's preparation was also to try to refine Daye's ore in Ma'anshan, and to make a comparison with the local ore smelted locally to reduce variables——

Because if the Daye ore arrives in Ma'anshan and is smelted with coal from Ma'anshan, and there is a problem in the end, it can be speculated that there is a problem with the environment in Ma'anshan or the quality of the coal mine.

If there is still a problem with the coal from Daye, then it can be further determined that there are problems with the geographical environment of Ma'anshan, such as air, water, pollution, etc.

In this way, iron ore, fuel, environment, and the three groups of variables are combined in pairs to set up a control group. A total of eight groups of controlled experiments can be done, and each group can be dichotomized to troubleshoot problems.With the blessing of such scientific thinking, it is much more reliable than the random experiments of the ancients.

No matter what the final result is, this scientific investigation method is first of all worthy of affirmation.

With Song Mingde's early comparison and investigation, Zhu Shuren's thinking became much clearer, and combined with the superficial chemical knowledge of later generations and common sense from the Internet, he quickly got some inspiration:
"It seems that this Ma'anshan iron ore and coal mine contain a lot of sulfur, but it should mostly exist in the form of 'iron sulfide', that is, pyrite impurities. Iron ore itself is mixed with pyrite, and coal also has pyrite. iron ore.

Before the ore is smelted, the ore here needs to be crushed more finely than Daye. The finer the grinding, the easier it is to sieve out the impurities.

I don’t know if the density method can be screened, but even if it can, the cost is estimated to be uneconomical. This is mass production, not gold mining—it’s better to think about using magnetic separation.Pyrite in iron ore may not be sieved, but pyrite powder in coal mines can definitely be magnetically separated. "

The common sense of "magnetic separation and screening of impurities" can basically be thought of by intellectuals who are not too liberal arts, but it is enough to watch more videos on station B or Douyin popular science.

Iron sulfide retains relatively strong ferromagnetism, which is easier to be adsorbed by magnets than iron oxide and iron tetroxide, and easier to be adsorbed than non-magnetic coal.

It’s just that there was no electricity in ancient times, so there was no electromagnet. Natural magnetic materials were used to sieve ore. The materials are difficult to assemble, and magnets are not absolute permanent magnets. After a long time, the magnetic consumption is too large, and artificial supplements are required.

Thinking of this, Zhu Shuren also generally understood why the coal mines in Ma’anshan were not mined until the late Qing Dynasty in history. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that alternators and power stations were gradually popularized. At that time, the first batch of power plants were built in China. , You can also use industrial grade electromagnets.

Ma'anshan has much more and better mineral resources than Daye, but before there was no magnetic screening, the output here was large, but the quality of the products was not as good as Daye.

After thinking about this point, Zhu Shuren also knew that in the future, the positioning of Ma'anshan will firstly be a base with a large quantity and full management, and low-quality steel that can be mass-produced on a large scale.However, the main iron production here is still used for the needs of tools and people's livelihood, as a replacement for the low-end civilian steel in Daye.

After replacing Daye's production capacity, Daye can concentrate its production capacity on weapons-grade steel.

As for the magnetic separation and high-end routes in Ma'anshan, it's not impossible to climb the technology.As long as the total investment cost is controllable, it is good for technology verification.
Maybe Zhu Shuren points out the idea of ​​"magnetic separation", and then predicts the guiding ideology of "changing magnetism to generate electricity, and changing electricity to generate magnetism", which will enable Chinese scientists to become the father of human electricity in the future, and put forward the prototype of electromagnetic induction theory first .

Of course, it is only a prototype. In history, Faraday proposed the theory of electromagnetic induction, and it took nearly a hundred years of development for humans to actually produce industrial-grade generators.

Even if Zhu Shuren came up with an idea by chance, he probably won’t see a generator in his lifetime, or at most, he will see an unreliable toy-grade product in a laboratory. It will never be industrialized, and the industrial foundation is too poor. .

Song Mingde wrote down Prince E's instructions one by one, and immediately went to arrange the purchase of natural magnets, conduct ore dressing experiments, and then re-smelt the coal and iron that sifted out pyrite impurities as much as possible.

The coal used to produce coke can also be pulverized and slightly magnetically screened later.If the magnetic force is weaker, then more efforts should be made in crushing, which can also make up for it to a certain extent-the lighter the debris that needs to be magnetically adsorbed, the smaller the screening magnetic force required, and it is not a big problem if the magnet is weak.

For a while, Song Mingde arranged several preparations, and at the same time organized more migrant workers to build dams to raise the water level at the estuary where Dangtu water enters the Yangtze River, as well as where the water flows from Shijiu Lake and Gaochun Lake upstream.
Then build a large number of giant stone mills driven by waterwheels, and the coal that will be used for steelmaking in the future will be crushed thoroughly under these waterwheel stones, and then magnetically screened again.

While building a large number of hydraulic pulverizers, he prepared magnetic materials by himself, and also wrote a letter to Daye in the rear to ask Song Yingxing and Fang Yizhi for technical guidance.

Needless to say, Song Yingxing and others are indeed much higher level than Song Mingde.However, in ten days, Wuchang sent a reply,
Song Yingxing also taught his nephew in the letter that he was not careful in reading, and he hadn't even read the method of artificially manufacturing magnets mentioned in the "Wu Jing Zong Yao" written by the people of the Song Dynasty: "The thin steel sheet is hot-forged and then cooled rapidly to form a paramagnetic field."

Moreover, Song Yingxing went a step further, explaining some of his own thoughts on artificial magnets to his nephew in detail. In this way, at least the supply of magnetic materials will not be interrupted. It is nothing more than a little more fuel consumption in the manufacturing process. , the cost is a bit higher, which is regarded as a hole card.

And once mass production, continuous trial and error, mature technology and sum up experience, the cost will always come down slowly.

The progress of industrial science and technology is not the result of mass production and accumulation of resources and experience. Losing now does not mean losing in the future. There must be someone who suffers from industrial mass production and is the first mover.

Zhu Shuren has no objection to the waste of resources, but requires that all the experience gained from the waste of resources should be summarized as complete as possible. It cannot be a self-preserved unique skill, and in the end, after a generation of craftsmen passed away, the experience in their minds disappeared.It must be written into a book, and even if it is not made public, he must first collect it.

As a result, the Ma'anshan Iron Mine and Iron Works have finally been on the right track under the multi-pronged construction, and a bumper harvest in both output and quality is just around the corner.

Build a large number of hydraulic pulverizers, purchase a large number of magnetite ore dressings, explore a large number of artificial magnetic materials, and finally use higher-quality refined ore and refined coke to further produce high-quality steel. Every hand must be hard.

The total amount of money that will be spent is estimated to be at least in the order of millions, and the exact number of millions can be stopped, and it is not yet counted.

But Zhu Shuren even paid the price of the truce. The court did not have to fight in the past two years, and the money saved was used to lay the industrial foundation first. The cost of making weapons in the future will also be greatly reduced. It will definitely be a good deal in the long run.

Finally, considering that Ma'anshan is relatively remote, it is a rural mining area after all, and Dangtu County next to it is too small, so it is difficult to attract high-end talents.Zhu Shuren felt that in order to better coordinate scientific research, it is better to set up a research institution in Yingtianfu next door.

To this end, he allocated several 10 taels of silver and ordered to set up a "Magnetism Research Institute" in Jiangning Town, the southwestern suburb of Nanjing. Zhu Shuren was afraid that it would shock the world, so he didn't mention electricity for the time being, and only said that he was concentrating on research. magnetic.

The initial research direction was nothing more than how to use heating/quenching to produce artificial magnets more efficiently and with less energy consumption, based on the ideas in "Wu Jing Zong Yao" and "Tian Gong Kai Wu".

As for whether people in the research institute will tinker with magnets and discover electricity in the future, that will be a long time away.

The person in charge of the research institute will naturally have the official-level treatment of the sixth-rank director of the Ministry of Industry. In the future, the technical talents from Wuchang Daye can be gradually diverted to develop more directions. The research institute in the town is being organized as a veteran science and engineering university in China in the future.

(End of this chapter)