industrial lord

Chapter 544: Serious Shortage of People
"I'm exhausted." This time it was Frederick's turn to run to Psyche's office to complain, "They plan to disinfect the entire city with chlorine once a month."

Frederick had just finished his government affairs when scholars from all walks of life flocked to him upon hearing the news, promoting various research applications that had been shot down by Psyche.

After taking a sip of happy water, Frederick continued to complain: "Someone wants to build a traveling cannon. They dig a cannon barrel in the mountain like digging a mine. The cannon shell is the crew cabin. When it reaches the highest point, it opens a parachute to achieve the purpose of long-distance travel."

"This is just the first phase of the project. The ultimate goal is to travel to the moon during a full moon."

Psyche was used to this kind of thing and said, "You'll get used to it. He originally wanted to go to the sun, but was greeted by the church."

Frederick felt a little stomachache. This thing looked like nothing if it wasn't weighed, but it weighed more than a thousand pounds once it was weighed.

In the teachings of the Church of Light, the sun is generally regarded as the gateway to the Kingdom of God, and one can only pass through it when summoned by the God of Light.

You want to go there now, which, at best, means you are throwing yourself into God's arms. If he wants to kill you, he will ask you whether you want to cause trouble and close the door.

Psyche continued, "Be careful when you go to the Holy City this time. The debate over the Cyclops is not over yet. Last winter, someone at the observatory wrote a paper on the sunspot cycle, and there was another argument over there."

Frederick, who had not been very interested in astronomy in the past, asked about the situation out of curiosity.

After the invention of the telescope, many people used it to observe the sun. Some of them used oil lamps or candles to blacken the glass and use it as a filter. Some observed it when the fog or the thickness of the clouds in the sky was appropriate. Others projected the sun onto white paper or wooden boards in a dark room.

Sunspots were thus observed, and the priests of the Church of Light scratched their heads countless times before finally digging out records from old papers of a large number of black shadows that had appeared on the sun's surface. At the time, they said that this was the devil attacking the sun.

"The sunspot cycle of this sun is about 7 years," Psyche told Frederick, "and it reached its peak last year in 1035."

"There's a pharmacist named Schwabe at the pharmaceutical factory whose hobby is astronomy. As long as the weather permits, he observes the sun every ten days, hoping to find an undiscovered star."

"He wrote down the results of each observation and was able to find the stars passing between the sun and the earth by the changes in the positions of the black spots."

"Last year, when he was recording the number of sunspots, he suddenly remembered the records from a few years ago, so he made a table and a graph and found a pattern in the number of sunspots. The years 1021 and 1028 were the maximum values ​​in a cycle."

"Finally, he checked the records of sunspots observed with the naked eye in the past and calculated that the sunspot cycle is seven years and one month."

"The Church of Light couldn't explain this, so they started arguing."

Since its inception, religion has used gods and monsters to explain phenomena that people cannot understand. As science and technology developed, people had more things to explain, which naturally came into conflict with religion.

This is only a superficial conflict. There is also a deeper struggle between the secular regime and theocracy, which may lead to war.

On the surface, Frederick did not care much about religious affairs. He mainly approved a piece of land to build a seminary and an unprecedented cathedral, which was enough to serve as a shield.

What he did secretly was to fragment the Church of Light organization within the Principality.

The church is hierarchical, with small chapels in the community, larger churches in the city, and even larger churches at the state level, and general administrative departments.

In the name of the cathedral, Frederick restricted the expansion of churches in states and cities, encouraged the development of chapels within communities, and had the grassroots priests of the chapels take the lead in mutual assistance among believers in the community.

There are only a limited number of large churches in a place, but the number of subordinate chapels has increased dramatically, which has led to management chaos, objectively weakened the connection between the grassroots and the upper level, and limited the power of the upper level.

Now Frederick has not yet figured out the ultimate goal of church reform, so he can only take it slow and take one step at a time.

He frowned slightly and said, "Look, scientific development has begun to conflict with the church. Such conflicts are increasing, and sooner or later it will cause the Holy City to make a big move."

Psyche said indifferently, "Don't worry too much. The church is now corrupt and chaotic, with factions forming and scheming against each other. Otherwise, they would have killed you when you were translating the Holy Scripture."

"Just let them continue to mess around and not focus their attention on the outside." Frederick pinched his chin and said, "Then I'll go and see if there's any way to make them fight each other."

"But the only solution is that they divide the cake among themselves and no one is happy, so we have to make a new cake."

"Let's not talk about this anymore. Today I want to ask you, where are the bauxite mines in the southern continent?"

Psyche said, "Go west out of the inland sea, follow the coastline of the southern continent on the ocean, and head east from the bow of the ship. It's about 6,000 to 7,000 kilometers."

Frederick did some calculations in his mind and felt a little toothache.

According to the plan of the Duchy of Bavaria, the railway from Weissenburg to the Kingdom of Sardinia is about one thousand kilometers long, with a port at the end.

From this port, it is about two thousand kilometers to the exit to the inland sea.

In the end, the one-way trip was almost 10,000 kilometers.

"It's difficult." Frederick finally shook his head. "It seems that it will take many years before I have enough strength to reach that far."

"After the first World Expo, many factories were expanded and recently put into production. There is a shortage of manpower everywhere. I have to recruit some people from the second-line troops to form the 4th Division."

"The progress of farmland reclamation is much slower than expected. Being a worker makes more money than being a farmer, so many young people have left."

"Last year's census showed a population of 192 million, of which 7 were permanent residents working, doing business or studying, and another 5 to 6 were migrants."

"The short-term labor shortage alone is about 100,000, and in the long run, it won't be a problem to hire another million people."

"However, population is an important resource, and many places have tightened their population outflow."

Frederick was a little annoyed. Recently, the industrial and agricultural departments had been complaining to him about the shortage of labor, as if he could create a human being by pulling out his hair and blowing on it.

Therefore, it is impossible to go to a place thousands of miles away to mine bauxite because there are not so many people.

Psyche was helpless and spread her hands, saying, "There is nothing I can do."

"The baby boom in Wessen started in 1028. At that time, you had already become famous in the Battle of the Elbe. Due to improved seeds and fertilizers, grain production increased rapidly, so people felt safe and had more children."

"You won't be able to start enjoying this demographic dividend until 12 years later, in 1048 at the earliest."

"Three new states will join in 1034, and the baby boom is not expected to start until this year or the year after, let alone the year after next."

"I can only offer a suggestion. Try to look for them in mountainous areas with harsh environments. If you can fool them, you'll win."

"These people are definitely not suitable for working in factories, but they can still open up wasteland and farm."

The Principality of Wessen has a heavy task of land reclamation. They don't care about environmental protection until they have enough food. Except for mountainous areas, water sources and river protection areas, all reclaimed places must be reclaimed.

The current area of ​​the Duchy of Wessen is 34000 square kilometers, and about 29000 square kilometers of land will be planned as agricultural land, including 13000 square kilometers of forest, 10400 square kilometers of farmland, and 5600 square kilometers of pasture.

Judging from this data, there is a huge gap in the agricultural population alone.

Frederick thought about it and said, "This is a direction. I will try it if I have a chance."

(End of this chapter)