1850 American Gold Tycoon.

Chapter 342 Rural California

The trip to Los Angeles made Lionel James and others more interested in California.

Before coming to California, August reported to them the situation in California, but the focus of August's report was San Francisco and Sacramento, two big cities that rose due to the gold rush.

As for Los Angeles, because there is really nothing worth reporting except for the massacre in 1850, August did not report the situation in Los Angeles to James and Lionel.

Before coming to Los Angeles, August thought that Liang Yao discovered oil fields in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Nevada, but never thought that Liang Yao would discover oil fields in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, which was developed later than San Francisco and Sacramento, has developed so well. Then, with the blessing of the gold industry and earlier development history, are San Francisco and Sacramento better developed?
Lionel and others are curious about San Francisco and Sacramento.

Passenger trains between Los Angeles and San Francisco stopped after six o'clock.

However, the suspension of passenger trains did not prevent Liang Yao from taking the train back to San Francisco. He drove the entire California Railway Company, and ordering a train was just a matter of a few words from him.

Although the passenger train between Los Angeles and San Francisco has been suspended, it does not mean that the train between the two places has fallen into a state of rest due to the coming of night.

At night, the Los Angeles train station is still very busy, and the freight trains between the two places are blowing loud whistles and spraying billowing black smoke to and fro between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Petrochemical products such as kerosene and asphalt in Los Angeles are transported to San Francisco, Sacramento, Carson, Reno and other settlements along the way through California's well-developed rail transportation network.

Machinery, tools, grain, vegetables, fruits, wood, cloth, luxury goods and other commodities from San Francisco and Sacramento were also imported into Los Angeles through the well-developed railway network.

The rapid rise of Los Angeles in just one year can be said to be due to the contribution of the railway.

"Light is a luxury for the dark night. Before I came to Los Angeles, I thought that only wealthy cities like London and Paris could light up all the street lights at night."

While waiting for the train at the train station, James looked at the street lights that illuminated the Los Angeles train station as bright as day and said with emotion.

The spacing between the street lights in Los Angeles is even smaller than that of the street lights on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

"As long as the output of kerosene increases, there will be more and more cities that never sleep in the future. For human beings, the light at night will no longer be a luxury. This is the power of civilization and industry."

Liang Yao said while staring down at the asphalt platform under his feet.

He is now living in the fastest growing and most changing era in human history.

The changes in human beings in the past thousand years are not as great as those in the past hundred years.

If a person living in 1800 travels to 1899, he will doubt whether he has arrived in a different world, because there are too many new things in 1899 that people in 1800 have not seen.

After a while, Liang Yao's private train slowly entered the platform. There is no arrogance in America. He owns a private train that is more luxurious than Fillmore's.

Everyone boarded the special train illuminated by kerosene lamps.

In the special train, there are sofas, beds, desks, bookshelves, cabinets, and dining tables.

Even if you don't get off the special train, you can live a very comfortable life on the special train.

"This train of yours is like a palace."

Rao is more picky about his personal life, and Leonard, who pursues quality, couldn't help but admire after boarding the special train.

The special train of the American gold tycoon who started with gold did not use any gold to decorate his special train, but the owner of the special train can feel rich, luxurious and not vulgar everywhere on the special train.

"Everyone, please go ahead. If you want supper and wine, just pull the bell on the seat, and a dedicated flight attendant will serve you." Liang Yao pointed to the brass bell hanging on the sofa and said.

This brass bell extends from the private rest compartment to the crew compartment and the kitchen. As long as it is pulled, the brass bell at the other end of the kitchen will ring.

After speaking, Liang Yao went to his lounge and fell asleep.

It was already eight o'clock in the morning when I woke up the next day, and the train was bathing in the morning sun and driving in the vast Central Valley.

Liang Yao got out of bed and took a sip of water, admiring the scenery along the way. Taking the train and admiring the scenery along the way is also a pleasant and comfortable enjoyment.

At first, the Central Valley that the train passed was relatively desolate, with few people and buildings, except for occasional Indians staring at the train in fear.

This scene was also expected by Liang Yao. The Central Valley covers an area of ​​nearly 5 square kilometers, and the current population of the entire state of California is less than one million. It is still a state of vast land and sparsely populated, and the population density is still very small.

There is still great potential for development in the Central Valley.

However, as the distance from San Francisco got closer, the number of farms and villages along the way gradually increased.

The rural areas in California are basically distributed along the railway lines. Every time the railway is repaired to a new place, rural areas of different sizes are often formed along the way.

Outside the train window, local farmers and their employees rode horses and drove carriages to work in wheat and rice fields.

In addition to farmland, Liang Yao also saw many vineyards, orchards, and stretches of vegetable fields along the way.

The orchards and vegetable fields with such a large area are obviously not planted by local farmers for their own food, but commercially planted.

Most of these vegetables and fruits are brought to the city for sale, except for a small part that they keep for themselves.

Every village has a train station, and every train station has farmers waiting at the train station with agricultural products, and they are going to pull the agricultural products to the farmers who sell them in the city.

Due to California's vast land and sparse population, the per capita arable land area is inherently large, coupled with the state government's support policy for agriculture, there are basically no self-cultivation farmers in California.

These people who look like farmers, whether they are Chinese, Mexican or other ethnicities, are essentially not farmers.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call them farmers.

As for the Qing Dynasty's traditional land annexation, Liang Yao was not worried about such things happening in California.

At present, there are still a large number of wasteland swamps waiting to be developed in California. The cost and risk of developing new land are lower than directly merging other people's land.

Furthermore, farmers in California are not farmers in the Qing Dynasty, nor are they sheep at the mercy of others.

Allowing citizens to hold firearms is a clause written into the Constitution of the United States. As a part of the United States, California should naturally follow the Constitution of the United States.

That is to say, all the big and small farmers in California have old firearms. If the big farmers insist on annexing the land of the small farmers, they will not only face legal risks, but also face danger to their lives.After all, everyone is equal in front of peanuts. If a rabbit is cornered, it will bite someone, let alone someone with a gun.

The reason why land mergers occur is that in agricultural production, land is the most important means of production.

In California's agricultural production, the most important means of production is not land, but people.

When people become more important means of production than land in agricultural production, "land merger" will exist in another form.

What the exploiting class has to consider is not how to occupy more land, but how to account for the more important means of production of the land, that is, people.

The typical representative of this model of "land annexation" is the serfdom that is currently widespread in the Russian Empire.

There is no shortage of land in Russia, which is vast and sparsely populated, so the Russian landlord Lao Cai did not want to annex the land of the peasants, but to find ways to turn the yeoman into his slaves, so that they and their descendants will become his slaves. Generations serve themselves.

Of course, the same is true in the slave states in the southern United States. "Black slaves" are more important means of production than land.

In the mid-19th century, the United States was the second largest power in the number of slaves after the Russian Empire.

In Virginia, a black slave can exchange at least [-] acres of cultivated land.In Texas, where the population density is lower, a black slave can exchange more land.

Liang Yao wanted to prevent, and should prevent, serfs from appearing in California, lest California develop into a southern slave state.

While he was thinking, suddenly there was a black shadow, a dark shadow flashed past the window.

Black person?nigger?
Liang Yao's heart skipped a beat. He opened the car window and poked his head out to look behind him. Sure enough, he saw a black man mixed in with a group of people.

Black people in California, or at this point in time, don't bode well.Liang Yao frowned.

He does not want so-called abolitionists and slaveholders to appear in California. California does not have the historical burden of slavery, so there is no need to get involved in it.

Getting involved in the political vortex of slavery and abolition did nothing but slow down California.

The train was getting closer and closer to San Francisco, and the villages on both sides of the track were getting bigger and bigger. The sounds of cattle and sheep penetrated the roar of the steam engine and reached Liang Yao's ears.

Liang Yao followed the sound, and it was the sound of the livestock in the pasture.

It's just that now he has no intention of admiring the beautiful scenery around him. When he can see a black man along the way, it means that there are already a group of black people in California.

This is a very difficult problem for the present and the future.

(End of this chapter)