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Chapter 137 is in full swing (Silver League update 2)

Three years in Jingyang have passed in chaos, and in a blink of an eye, Hong Tao has ushered in the fourth year of his pro-government. If you want to talk about what he has done, there are indeed a lot. Everbright's actions include the "Telling Order" and the "New Disaster Relief Law", and also The number of bachelors in the cabinet has been increased, and there is a strong tendency to work hard to get rid of the old and usher in the new.

But three years have passed, and when I look at it, I am still doing the same thing from the court to the local government, and it seems that I have done nothing, or that I have been working for a long time without any results, which is equivalent to doing it in vain.

Li Chengliang of Liaodong fought with the Mongolians and Jurchens for three days and a small fight for five days. They won and lost each other. They were so tossing that there was no sign of peace at all.The Burmese state was not idle either. Although Chen Yongbin managed to maintain the situation by trying to comfort him, long-term peace and stability were also far away.

Natural disasters in the north of the Yangtze River continued, with cold winters, floods in summer, droughts in spring and autumn, and more and more provinces were affected. The resulting small-scale hunger riots started one after another.The troops of the local guards were exhausted and suppressed everywhere, and they had no time to relax.

Taicang is still empty, the expenditure is still huge, the garrison is still weak, and the sea frontier is still unrest.The weather is not going smoothly, and internal and external troubles are gradually emerging. The huge empire seems to be getting old and declining step by step, and no one has a good way to stop this trend.

"Bang, bang, bang..." Tianjin Wei, along the Haihe River, three huge waterwheels rotate slowly, turning the wild and unruly power of nature into something controllable through the transmission shaft and simple gear transmission system. This drove the thousand-jin hammer to fly up and down, beating the red iron ingots like dough, and splashing sparks.

The Imperial Manor, which was originally located on the high ground, has been completely changed. The farmland, fruit trees and flowerbeds have all been leveled, and deep trenches have been dug out. Steel bars are tied into nets and laid in them. After pouring mud, it solidifies in less than an hour, and then is covered with wet grass. The curtain covered it for ten or two days, and its hardness was comparable to a bluestone strip. When a steel drill was hit on it, sparks would erupt.

This special mud is called concrete by Director Xu of the Ministry of Industry who is responsible for supervising the work here. It contains crushed cobblestones, clay, limestone fired from Xishan and slag from the ironmaking workshop along the Yongding River.

Except for limestone, which needs to be fired in a kiln and then ground into fine powder with a steel mill, several other ingredients are readily available and can be found everywhere, even as iron-making waste.

However, after the emperor's guidance and less than a year of experimentation, these useless stones, gravels, and scraps turned out to be an extremely miraculous building material.

With concrete, large buildings that used to need to be quarried in the mountains and then carefully carved by stonemason hammers and chisels, which took several years to complete, now only use one-tenth of the manpower to complete everything from slotting to capping. Just a few months.

The sturdiness is even better, and the shape is no longer limited by stone and wood. The foundation and walls can be made into whatever the steel mesh can be woven into.

The hydraulic forging hammer and hydraulic press are located in the reinforced concrete factory building, which is spacious, bright and weatherproof. The most important thing is that there is no need to worry about water leakage.From the walls to the beams, they are either concrete or steel frames. There is basically no need for wood, and there is nothing to set them on fire.

If you want to rely on traditional construction techniques to build such a tall factory, not to mention whether wood of sufficient size is expensive, it will take more than half a year to transport it from outside the customs or Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, and then dry it in the shade for a year or two before it can be used. In terms of time, Can't afford the delay.

"Your Majesty is truly a god descending to earth!"

Seeing the forging hammer flying up and down and listening to the deafening noise, Xu Guangqi laughed so hard that he couldn't close his mouth. He didn't mind the noise at all. He just felt that the future was extremely good and bright.With these big guys, coupled with various lathes in the nearby factory, the steel that was once very difficult to forge and process no longer needs to be forged manually. After it is heated to red, it is put under the forging hammer to make it round or square. square.

Beat the rough shape and then use a lathe to refine it.In front of the hard and sharp turning tool, the steel seems to be enchanted, carving is as easy as a radish flower, and the precision is even more precise.

Although some craftsmen can do this by hand, there is no guarantee of consistency. There will definitely be considerable differences between what is made today and what is made tomorrow.If several craftsmen from different regions are allowed to work together, the errors will be even greater.

But lathes do not have this problem. As long as the operation is correct, the objects processed over a long period of time will be almost identical.When several lathes are placed in the hands of different craftsmen, as long as they strictly follow the process and drawings, the artifacts produced will be exactly the same and can completely replace each other.

For a certain item, a skilled craftsman may make it better than a lathe through experience and craftsmanship, but when the number increases, there is nothing people can do. The emperor called this production model the industrial age.

He said that the factory in the future will be as big as a city, with tens of thousands of workers, rows of factories, and various machine tools. It can produce a variety of items, including weapons, with output hundreds of times that of labor, and costs will be reduced by dozens of times.

When I first heard this statement, I didn't quite believe it. Unless it was a god using magic, how could it be cheap and fast?Since ancient times, only slow work can produce fine work. This is the truth!
But when I came to this wasteland with the emperor's drawings in mind, my previous understanding was overturned day by day.It turns out that blacksmithing can be so easy!Processing can be so easy!

With the assistance of machines, the production of a steel knife is dozens of times faster, the labor required is reduced several times, and the cost is naturally reduced.The higher the production quantity, the wider the gap becomes.

"Teacher, Governor Yuan's ship is here!" Just as Xu Guangqi was staring at the forging hammer admiring it like a son or daughter, a low voice came from behind.

"Liangfu, how many times have I told you that I am not your teacher, so please don't treat me like this anymore." Xu Guangqi was a little irritated by the broken scenery. He frowned and turned to correct the slip of the tongue of the official behind him.

"The students' horizons have been greatly broadened in these six months, and they have learned more than they have in the previous 30 years. How could they have done this if it weren't for the teachings of their mentors?" The official standing behind Xu Guangqi, holding a telescope in his hand, is Yu Hengqing, the man who took the imperial examination last year and is currently at the Ministry of Works. Wang Zheng, the head of the official department.

Although he passed the examinations and palace examinations based on his ability, he always believed that meeting Xu Guangqi was the turning point in his life.Because here I came into contact with strange books and things that I had never heard of or seen in the past 30 years. After reading it, I suddenly became enlightened. How can this be considered a mentor?

"Didn't I tell you before, those books and drawings belong to someone else, I am just teaching them on behalf of you!"

It was a headache for Xu Guangqi to meet such a stubborn person. They were only a few years apart, and they were both directors of the Ministry of Industry. They really didn't teach seriously, so how could they be qualified to be someone else's master?
(End of this chapter)