Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 657 Both War and Development ([-])

May 1648, 1, sunny, Tieling Fort.

On a piece of wasteland in the outskirts, a few barbed wire fences were stretched sparsely, and all kinds of equipment and tools were piled up in a mess inside the barbed wire fences.The top was covered with tarpaulin to keep out the rain, and the bottom was raised to prevent the rain from soaking.Three or four workers-like men in uniforms were sitting together, communicating slowly in half-baked standard Chinese.

This is a part of the Northwest Special Steel Works factory area. According to the original plan, the factory building that was to be completed by the end of 1647 is still a half-assed project—because there is a shortage of building materials and manpower—not to mention the planned construction. The iron-making blast furnace that has been raised has only laid a foundation so far.

Shen Gang, the director of the factory, had already taken a few entourages to Dongfang County by car a month ago after being called over by the director of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau and scolded him. Now he is a frequent visitor to various departments of the central government, especially It is the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the Ministry of Civil Affairs. He has to go to ask for supplies and personnel almost every day.After begging for something, he went to the Ministry of Communications and the State Administration of Railways to fight hard, and quarreled with a group of heads of other departments who also came to ask for wagons.No way, the capacity is too tight.Even if it is a national key project like the Northwest Special Steel Plant, if you don't fight or grab it, don't expect to be able to transport all kinds of materials and personnel you urgently need back smoothly.

Now Ma Jia and Shen Gang have basically given up their hope of completing the construction of the blast furnace and starting commissioning production before the first half of the year. They have now lowered their expectations and only want to complete the construction of the plant before the end of this year and carry out several batches at the same time. The trial production is then carried out for research and analysis.With the deepening of the war, the materials and personnel originally promised to Tieling Fort by the Executive Committee and the Government Council have been greatly reduced. There is not enough capacity to ship these things back.

The Northwest Special Steel Works was so delayed!

After Shen Gang and others left, the current factory is temporarily taken over by Chen Kai, another deputy factory director of the time-traveling group.However, he himself was only in charge of personnel, finance and other work before, and did not understand technology or production construction. Therefore, the two department heads of the factory, Pierre and Hu Laosan, were also ordered to assist him in his work.Now some important materials in the factory, such as some machinery and equipment, have been stored in the built factory warehouse, but there are still quite a lot of mechanical parts, building materials, lubricants and other materials that can only be stored in the open air - at most, on the top Put on a layer of raincloth for simple protection.

It can be seen that while complaining loudly about the lack of supplies, the Northwest Special Steel Works hastily put the hard-won supplies in the wild, and even didn't even build a few warehouses. This organization is really chaotic enough, no wonder the vest Call Shen Gang over to scold and even question his ability to work.

Insufficient supplies and the construction of the factory lagged behind. In desperation, Majia could only order more than 200 workers in the factory to stay in the factory, and most of them were transferred to level the land and build the foundation.Anyway, it’s okay for everyone to be idle, so it’s better to repair the roadbed between Tielingbao, the terminal station of the Northwest Railway, and Chengshanbao, the penultimate station. The flattened soil should be flattened, the ground that should be compacted should be compacted, the drainage ditches that should be dug should be dug, and so on.

In fact, the biggest workload in building a railway is to build the roadbed. Once the roadbed is completed, the sleepers and rails are laid underneath, and the speed is still very fast.Therefore, everyone, taking advantage of the fact that there is nothing to do now, might as well prepare the preparatory work for the construction of the railway, so that the railway can be opened to traffic ahead of schedule.With the opening of the railway ahead of schedule, the Northwest Special Steel Works will be able to resume normal work ahead of schedule, so that everyone can also receive their normal wages ahead of schedule—instead of receiving a [-]% discount on basic wages like they are now.

You know, the price index in the country has long been terrible because of the war.According to the package of commodities (including food, cloth, transportation, fuel, housing, lighting, daily necessities and luxury goods) proposed by Qiang Quansheng, the current director of the State Administration of Precious Metals, in 1645, it has been determined according to the importance of each commodity to the common people. weighted calculation) price index table, the commodity price index has risen from 1645 in 100 (the base year) to 1647 last year (155) (the commodity price index in 1646 was 112).The price index has risen by half in two years, and this inflation rate is not generally fast.But fortunately, the increase in the expenses of food, clothing, housing and transportation, which are closely related to the daily life of ordinary people, has not risen as much as expected. The increase in prices is mainly reflected in luxury goods such as beef, fish, shrimp, poultry eggs, and tobacco, alcohol and sugar. So that there is no major turmoil in the hearts of the people in the country.

However, if the workers of the Northwest Special Steel Plant receive a salary that is only 7.5% off the normal salary (25 yuan) for a long time, it is still a very painful thing.Last year, due to the severe inflation in the country, the minimum monthly wages of industry and agriculture in the East Coast Republic of China increased by [-]% to five yuan after the application of the Government Affairs Council and the approval of the Executive Committee; —Because almost all of them are state-owned enterprises, the implementation of wage regulations is relatively high.

The 7.5% discount of [-] yuan is one line higher than those construction workers and brick kiln workers (mostly new immigrants) who are paid the minimum wage. What do steel mill workers think.Therefore, at this moment, they are sincerely looking forward to the early start of the special steel plant, so when the superiors asked them to collectively build the railway, they did not have much resistance - after all, there is a five cents a day salary for the railway repair. And it also includes food and drink, which is not without a small supplement for them whose wage income has dropped sharply.

In addition to the well-known Northwest Special Steel Works in the industrial system, Tieling Fort also has a relatively low-key external - or deliberately blocked news - but internally (mainly the Government Administration Council and the Ministry of Finance) also entrusted quite a few people The expected gold mine - Tieling Gold Mine.The gold mine is located in the southern outskirts of the later Corrales mining area. Since Wang Dali discovered the first gold vein in the middle of 46 years, the prospectors stationed here on the east coast have discovered several other veins one after another over the past year. Not huge, but a very gratifying achievement nonetheless.

In the 19th century, the Uruguayans took 60 years to mine this gold mine, and at the beginning of the 21st century, they discovered new veins nearby after exploration, with an annual output of several tons of gold. The resources are still quite rich, enough for people on the east coast to mine for a long time.

Since the beginning of last year, a working group jointly composed of the State Administration of Precious Metals, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Geology and the Ministry of Internal Affairs has been secretly stationed here.In February, the Ministry of Internal Affairs even sent a large number of policemen to securely seal off the area with barbed wire. After that, some prisoners who should have been exiled to overseas colonies were also sent here, and began to live in several Trial mining of gold deposits on the vein.

Local gold mining is divided into two parts.One of them is to wash placer gold from nearby rivers and streams, that is, send people to stir the river bottom mud with one side along the direction of water flow, and then screen out the placer gold particles mixed in the river bottom mud through a mesh sieve.Of course, this is not without some technical content. For example, you first need to build slopes to facilitate the flow of river bottom sediment along the water flow and so on.The collected placer gold is generally not of high purity, and needs to be purified by amalgam method. The fineness of the purified gold is generally above [-]%, and a few with high purity may exceed [-]%.At this time, more than [-]% of the fineness of gold will be sent to the Chemical Institute of the Academy of Natural Sciences for final refining to further improve the fineness.

In addition to the placer gold in the river, the main gold mining method in the Tieling Gold Mine is of course mining from the ore.These convict miners dig tunnels and mine ores within the range selected by the prospectors. After the mined ores are crushed with steam or hydraulic breakers, impurities such as quartz stone and pyrite are manually removed. Then collect the remaining gold-bearing ore and continue crushing and grinding to make it into powder.

The broken and ground gold powder is rinsed under water for more than ten times with a mesh sieve, and most of the impurities are removed.At this time, the remaining gold-containing ore powder can be reacted and refined through the amalgam method. Of course, the extracted gold needs to be taken to the Academy of Natural Sciences for the final step of refining just like the river sand gold.

As of the end of last year, after overcoming many difficulties such as lack of manpower, equipment, and gunpowder, the Tieling Gold Mine still produced about 200 kilograms of gold throughout the year, worth more than [-] Dongan dollars.It is believed that as the Government Administration Council continues to invest more manpower and equipment here, the output of Tieling Gold Mine will have a big leap in the next few years.

After the gold was refined in the Chemical Institute of the Academy of Natural Sciences, it was then loaded and transported by heavily armed police from the Ministry of the Interior to the Army No. [-] Prison next to the Dingyuan Army Academy.The army's No. [-] prison is full of all kinds of diehards, and the security is extremely strict. It is very suitable for the gold reserves on the east coast to be placed here.

These mined and refined golds, together with the gold obtained from trade, the gold sent back from the Far East, and the dog's head gold sent back to the central government from South Africa, together constitute the gold reserves of the East Coast Republic of China.After these gold reserves reach a certain amount, the State Administration of Precious Metals can officially abolish the silver "yuan" and replace it with gold "yuan", that is, implement the gold standard system.

The current depreciation rate of silver is too exaggerated, and Spain's "quantitative easing" (silver mining) will continue for 200 years, which has brought huge inflationary pressure to the whole world.The sooner the gold standard system is implemented, the national economy will naturally benefit one day earlier.

(End of this chapter)