Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 624 War Catalysis ([-])

On September 1647, 9, the director of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau, Ma Jia, who had just finished the East Coast Lantern Festival, went on a non-stop inspection tour of the five settlements under his jurisdiction, Tieling, Chengshan, Hejin, Meiluo, and Baichiya.These five settlements are scattered in a vast area of ​​tens of thousands of square kilometers. The vest and the secretary, entourage, guards and others first rode in a carriage, and then simply rode directly, and arrived at the end of this inspection on October 20. One destination - Baichiya Fortress.

The settlement of Baichiyabao has been established for almost two years. At first, there were only a few hundred military households from the Baichiya Thousand Households Office in Shandong, Daming. Now the population has reached about 2000 after several supplements, of which the Ming people accounted for about 40%, almost all men.The remaining half of the population comes from the three regions of Greece, Bulgaria, and Moldavia, and most (about 80%) are women.

The agricultural conditions in Baichiyabao are very average, because it was originally a barren meadow. Even after the clearing, there are still a lot of grass seeds left in the farmland, which leads to excessive competition for wheat and wheat seedlings in the field, and the yield is slightly inferior to that in the north. .Another is that, similar to the entire south of the east coast, although there is abundant rainfall (annual rainfall of 1000 mm), there is still a lack of large-scale surface runoff, and the rainwater that falls cannot be used.In the season with less rainfall, not only is it difficult to irrigate the fields, but it is also inconvenient for people and animals to drink water.

There is only one way to solve this problem, and that is to organize a large number of people to build small rural reservoirs, and at the same time dig irrigation canals. It is best to dig westward all the way to the Heihe (inner Luohe) basin, and use the first-level steam pumping station to drain the Heihe Abundant water resources are brought to Baichiya to irrigate the nearby farmland.

Organizing farmers to build water conservancy facilities is a big project, and it is definitely not enough to rely on the labor force of Baichiyabao alone.Moreover, the township government has just recently organized [-] adult men to go to La Plata to serve in labor, so the labor force is even more scarce.Although it is the slack season in late winter and early spring, for the farmers in the new settlements under the East Coast Republic, they will always have endless things to do.Such as opening up wasteland, such as digging rivers and repairing canals, such as building bridges and paving roads, such as military training, etc. In short, you don't want to be idle for a moment.

"A considerable part of the local labor force has been transferred to the La Plata battlefield to serve as soldiers, and the remaining labor force has also been bound to the construction site of the Northwest Railway. The construction period stipulated by the above is relatively tight, and now even women and children I was mobilized to the construction site. When I went to the village to investigate yesterday, apart from a few patrolling militiamen, there were only some hunting dogs running around in the whole village, as if this place has been so desolate from the beginning." Kang Tan, the secretary of the waistcoat With a notebook under his arm and a leather bag in his hand, he introduced it to the vest as he walked.

The Northwest Railway he was talking about had just repaired tens of kilometers from Canyon Fort to Baichiya Fort a few days ago, and the roaring train was finally able to directly pull a large amount of heavy materials and equipment over here. ——In fact, this is also the case. Just yesterday, a train with 8 carriages (including a tender) brought a lot of construction equipment and 30 tons of wheat to Baichiyabao Railway Station at a speed of 40 kilometers per hour. , a large number of daily necessities.From now on, the horse convoy transporting supplies to Fort Merlot will be much easier. They can comfortably rest and wait in the Hundred-foot Cliff Fort, and then transport the supplies brought by the train back to Merlot. Save at least two-thirds compared to a year ago.

"The train is indeed a powerful tool for developing inland areas." The vest said approvingly, "Without trains, it would be a torture to pull these steel, tools, food, and even personnel hundreds of kilometers away with those heavy freight wagons alone. The cost of transportation can skyrocket. And more importantly, because the frontline battlefield has absorbed too many young and middle-aged labor force, the vast rural areas with relatively abundant labor resources are now in a tight situation, as evidenced by the unmanned transportation of a large amount of material accumulation. Ah. Fortunately, we still have the help of trains. Now the trains (8 carriages) departing from Xiayihebao have 6 carriages carrying goods and 1 carriage carrying passengers. One train is dispatched every three days, and it will easily transfer dozens of tons The materials are transported to the designated destination. Well, the Southern Vehicle Factory in Meilin County needs to increase production. Now there is only one locomotive here in Xiayihebao, which is not enough. With the strength of the parts we are producing now, three The frequency of one train per day is still too high, and once the locomotive is damaged, there is no spare replacement, so it is better to apply for another one from the superior."

When the vest said this, a train was slowly entering the station in the distance, puffing out black smoke.This is a standard train with 8 carriages, and it has pulled 30 tons of flour, 20 tons of coal, 10 tons of cement and a large number of people.

"This is a group of Spanish prisoners brought over by the Ministry of the Interior." Seeing that the vest looked at the train without saying a word, Kang Tan immediately explained in a low voice: "We captured a large number of Spaniards, Guaranis, The total number of Gauchos and Kelandi captives has even reached more than [-]. These captives have been assigned to various mining areas and construction sites for forced labor, and we have divided them into [-]. Those who are currently getting off the bus These are the Guarani people who will participate in the construction of the Baichiya-Melo railway line under the guard of the police."

It is also the first time for prisoners to take a train to participate in labor reform, but it is also doomed that these Guarani people will never go back alive. After all, the people on the east coast are not willing to let Europeans know about trains The existence of artifacts—although now those Europeans in the Old World have vaguely heard some gossip about trains, just as they have heard legends about steam engines.

"The railway needs to be repaired well, but as one of the most important by-products of the railway - the cable telegraph seems to be out of the question in the short term." With his hands in the outer pockets of his fur coat, he looked at the open fields in the distance, slightly He said with some sadness: "You also know that people from the Academy of Natural Sciences have been studying wired telegraphs for several years, but they have obtained limited gains in the past few years, and in addition, the manpower is often transferred to do other things. They haven't come up with any practical designs yet."

In fact, Ma Jia’s words are considered polite. The Academy of Natural Sciences currently governs the Institute of Chemistry, Physics, Mechanical Power, Mathematics, and Metallurgy. Surprisingly last.Although the Department of Electricity under the Institute of Physics ranks very high in the Institute of Physics, but the investment in the entire Institute of Physics is limited, so no matter in terms of technical strength or financial strength, it cannot compare with popular scientific research institutions such as the Coal Chemical Industry Division of the Institute of Chemistry. .This has nothing to do with ability, but only with the country's strategic choice. After all, with the physique of the East Coast people, it is absolutely impossible to develop in an all-round way.

Therefore, under such circumstances, the three or five technicians from the Electrical Department of the Institute of Physics have only manufactured some simple electrical instruments and produced some primitive batteries at the same time.When they do these things, they basically start with the simplest ones, because each of them has five or six students, so they must teach and verify one by one from the simple electrical principles.

These students are all high school students who have signed non-disclosure contracts-this is a remarkable high-achieving student on the East Coast. After six years of basic education, they are now entering the only high school in the country-the Academy of Natural Sciences Affiliated Middle School - assigned to tutors to learn more in-depth knowledge.

After several years of studying while doing experiments, this group of students has done a lot of experiments under the leadership of their instructors, and they have a relatively rich knowledge of electrical concepts and simple theoretical knowledge such as Coulomb's law.After that, they went a step further, using crude materials to make some simple electrical measuring instruments, and also made a few simple volt batteries.

However, the simple early battery of the Volt battery (voltage will drop with time) is not destined to satisfy everyone's appetite.Since 1646, everyone has started to study storage batteries (that is, rechargeable and reusable batteries) using limited conditions.The principle of the battery is naturally the famous lead-acid battery, because the instructors certainly know that the battery design using lead as the electrode and sulfuric acid as the electrolyte is more reliable than others, so everyone started to tackle key problems based on this design as a template .It’s just that due to limited materials and other reasons, qualified lead-acid batteries have not yet been produced. Once a breakthrough is made in this area, I believe it will definitely be a huge breakthrough for the east coast’s electricity and the possible future development of the telegraph industry. .

"I don't know when this war will end. Now a large number of strong men have been transferred from the six coastal counties in China. There is a shortage of people everywhere in agricultural production, transportation, mining and logging, and construction sites. It will not work if this continues." Vest habitually I lit a pipe for myself, and said: "Take the country's most important key project in the past two years - the Tieling Special Steel Base. The number of heavy freight wagons used to transport materials to us has decreased by 20%. We are still a key project , it’s all like this, and you can imagine what else it looks like. The only way to alleviate this situation is to speed up the construction of railways and roads, which requires a lot of manpower, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem for us There are so many Clandis and Guaranis in La Plata, why don't they take captives to build the railway? Every day they say there is a shortage of manpower, why don't they find a way to get more Guaranis while this war is in progress Overhaul the railway? Baichiya to Merlot, Merlot to Hejin, Hejin to Chengshan, Chengshan to Tieling, the mileage of this railway is long! Grandma is a bear, I will report to the above, the railway construction must be accelerated, this is a breakthrough The best way to tie the shackles on us!"

(End of this chapter)