At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 368: War Economy and the Great Han Dynasty’s Powerful Handicraft Industry
After watching the artillery and mortar demonstrations, Han Xin and his team said that they needed lighter but more powerful mortars.

Han Xin even said: "The weight of the artillery is still too heavy. It is difficult to fight behind the cavalry, and it is even more of a burden when chasing the Huns in the desert.

As for the ability of artillery to break through the enemy formation, our heavy cavalry and armored cavalry can do it. Artillery is not very valuable. In comparison, mortars that can be pulled by a horse are more suitable for the battle in Mobei."

Xu Fan could only increase the production of mortars.

May 8
Xu Fan led Han Xin and the other two to the rail carriage factory in Chang'an City.

Then Han Xin and others saw an extremely shocking scene: the chassis of a carriage was moving slowly on an assembly line, and the craftsmen were busy installing the carriage parts one by one.

In less than half an incense stick of time, a baggage carriage appeared before them. To Han Xin and his men, this scene was not much different from a myth or legend.

Han Xin and the other two looked at each other. It had been such a short time since they last returned to Chang'an, yet there had been great changes in the talents of the city.

Xu Fan said: "Now Jiuyuan County and Yanmen County have a total of 2200 baggage carts. If we want to bear the consumption of 10 cavalry in Mobei, we need baggage carts. The court calculates that 3 baggage carts are needed to maintain the food supply of the army in Mobei."

For this purpose, the court has ordered baggage wagons from carriage workshops all over the country. The Chang'an Railway Carriage Factory alone has ordered 6000 baggage wagons. All of them will be delivered to the north before August."

"The baggage carts in Chang'an will be equipped with rail wheels first to transport the materials to Jiuyuan County. Once in Jiuyuan County, they will be replaced with ordinary wheels. This will save a huge amount of transportation costs."

Xu Fan is now somewhat glad that he built the Changan Rail Carriage Factory. At the same time, he promoted the method of producing carriages on assembly lines, which increased the Han Dynasty's carriage production efficiency by more than ten times.

Without these assembly line carriage factories, it would have been almost impossible for the Han Dynasty to meet the demand for 3 supply carts. It could only requisition supply carts from the public, which would have required clearing out all kinds of vehicles in the north in order to meet military needs.

Doing so did meet military needs, but these carriages were the red blood cells of the Han Dynasty. Without them, the economy would be blocked, which would cause great damage to the civilian economy.

Not to mention that the economy of the entire Han Dynasty will be severely damaged, the Hebei region, which has just started to show some signs of improvement, will definitely be hit hard.

The amount of money needed to fight a great battle in Mobei was extremely outrageous. Food, cloth, salt, and the court's money flowed out like water.

In April, the Han court spent 4 gold to purchase various strategic materials.

In May, 5 kilograms of gold had already been spent at the beginning.

While the Han court was spending money like water, looking down from the sky, one could see long lines of carriages heading from Guanzhong, Heluo, and Hebei to the border counties of the Han Dynasty. Various military supplies filled the granaries at the border.

The war economy put the entire Han Dynasty into an unprecedented economic boom, and even the price of grain in the Central Plains of Hebei rose to an unprecedented level of fifty coins per stone.

Although the Han Dynasty's imperial court was under great pressure, the farmers in the Heluo River and the workshop owners in the Han Dynasty felt the boom of the war economy for the first time.

For the first time, they discovered that the war not only did not bring them a heavy burden, but instead brought them wealth, which was extremely contrary to their three views.

But in this economic boom, everyone is working hard to get rich, and few people can notice this.

Of course, the common people of the Han Dynasty did not feel the pressure of the war, but the pressure on the Han Dynasty court was extremely great. Transporting tens of millions of dan of grain and other supplies to the border of the Han Dynasty was not a difficult task for the Han Dynasty court, but it cost too much money.

The real difficulty is transporting millions of shi of grain to the desert, which is a life-threatening task. The latter is even more difficult than the former.

Feudal dynasties could still store tens of millions of shi of grain on the edge of the desert with a grit of teeth, but for many feudal dynasties, transporting millions of shi of grain to the desert 3000 miles away was something they could not do even at the cost of their lives. Even the Han Dynasty found it very difficult to do so.

Xu Fan was a little impressed by Emperor Wu for being able to do this.

When one hundred thousand cavalrymen went to Mobei, the monthly consumption of grain and grass by the soldiers alone exceeded 20 dan. War horses generally eat six times more than humans, so one hundred thousand war horses would consume 6 million dan of grain. Not to mention that there is no shortage of pasture in the desert. When fighting, where is the time to cut pasture for the war horses? Not to mention that during wartime, the consumption of war horses is already high. It will be fine if you feed them with grass for a short period of time, but if you feed a horse with grass, it will die immediately.

Therefore, the Han army consumed more than 140 million shi of food and fodder every month when they went to the desert.

And all this food had to be transported about three thousand miles from the Han border to the front line.

One of the Han Dynasty's baggage carts was modified to be made of steel, cylindrical bearings were used on the wheels, and key parts were modified to be made of steel. The maximum load capacity of the Han Dynasty's baggage cart was 30 dan (1800 jin).

This was the largest and heaviest baggage cart in history, but even with such a large baggage cart, 3 baggage carts could only transport 90 dan of grain in one trip, so each baggage cart of the Han Dynasty had to make two trips in a month to meet the military needs of the front line.

Even with Xu Fan as a plug-in, it was still difficult for the Han Dynasty to transport food to the Mobei front 3000 miles away.

It is really hard to imagine how Emperor Wu maintained an army of 100,000 in Mobei.

Well, Xu Fan also knew that it was clearly recorded in the Records of the Grand Historian that Emperor Wu used the state-run salt and iron, the White Deer Currency, and the Gao Min Order to extort money from all over the world. All classes of the Han Dynasty were cruelly exploited by Emperor Wu, and the Han Dynasty's sixty years of accumulation were consumed in this war.

For this reason, Sima Qian specially recorded a biography of cruel officials, telling how these cruel officials exploited the people of the country. The number of cruel officials during Emperor Wu's reign was equal to the number of all the cruel officials in later generations combined.

Ji Xin remembered that a baggage cart used to cost more than 5 coins. The automatic cart in front of him was bigger and stronger than their previous ones, so he thought the price would not be too low, possibly 6 to coins.

He worriedly said, "Basket carts are expensive. Does the court have enough money to order so many at once?"

Xu Fan smiled and said, "You don't know the capacity of large-scale industrial production. Although the current baggage carts have a larger carrying capacity and better quality, they are cheaper. The cost of this baggage cart is not as high as 5000 or 6000 as you imagined. It is not even over . The cost price is only over . The court bought it for coins, so they still made a little profit."

"6000 coins?" Han Xin and others said in disbelief.

In their mind, a 6000-coin cart was just a two-wheeled ox cart.

These sturdy and beautiful baggage wagons must be worth more than 6000 coins!
Xu Fan said: "It's 6000 coins. It takes half an incense stick of time to make a carriage, and it takes half a year to ride in a carriage. The price is of course different."

"So you don't have to worry about the high cost of baggage wagons. 3 baggage wagons only cost 2 gold."

"How could the price be so low?" Lu Chen muttered to himself.

This price had already shattered his three views. The two-wheeled carriage he rode in the Lu State also cost 3 yuan, and it was not much more exquisite than the ox cart of the Han Dynasty, but this was a carriage made by his own craftsmen, and he had to endure the bumps and bumps to use it.

Xu Fan smiled and said, "This is the benefit brought by standardization. The assembly line can increase production capacity by dozens of times. You all know that."

Lu Chen and others nodded. They knew that the most advanced assembly line in the Han Dynasty was the long arrow production line, which directly reduced the price of long arrows to one tenth of the original price.

Other forces were reluctant to shoot even three arrows during battle, but the Han army often fired arrows like a rainstorm, making the tyrannical Qin army dare not raise their heads.

When the Han Dynasty was first established, it was able to maintain strong combat effectiveness, and these cheap long arrows were the biggest contributor.

Xu Fan said: "Manufacturing a carriage is similar to manufacturing common things. As long as the parts of the carriage are standardized, the rest is a matter of quick assembly. Moreover, because the parts are standardized, the production price is even lower." "That's why you can see the baggage carriages that can be produced quickly and at a low price."

Speaking of it, the Han Dynasty's carriage industry was saved by this wave of military orders. Xu Fan standardized the parts and handed over the assembly line production to other carriage factories.

The efficiency of the Han Dynasty's carriage production suddenly increased by more than ten times. Such a rapid increase in carriage productivity led to the rapid saturation of the Han Dynasty's carriage market. In the case of market saturation, in order to compete for the market, the current businessmen made the same choice as the businessmen 2000 years later, that is, to engage in brutal price wars and kill a group of peers so that they can dominate the market.

In order to survive, all the horse farms, big and small, showed their talents. The small carriage farms produced wheelbarrows and oxcarts that the big carriage factories looked down upon. There were even some smart bosses who opened up a new blue ocean market and produced children's cars and toy chariots.

The Han Dynasty had unified the world for five years, and the Central Plains had also enjoyed five years of peace. The peaceful environment, sufficient food, and an easy-to-make-money job market made everyone full of hope for the future. Almost every family had two or three children in the past two years. They could afford to have and raise them, which led to a population boom in various counties.

The first wave of baby boomers are already five or six years old. They grew up in a good environment, and equal distribution of land has created a group of middle-class people who are rich and willing to spend money on their children.

Therefore, on the streets of Chang'an City, you could often see children riding a children's car, or a dozen children using their toy chariots to form a chariot formation and play a war game.

Small car manufacturers can find other ways or even change their careers, but large car manufacturers can only engage in brutal price wars.

Since standardized production became popular in the Han Dynasty, the average price of a horse-drawn carriage in the entire Han Dynasty has rapidly dropped from 1 coins to only around coins.

In the Guanzhong and Heluo regions, where productivity was most developed, the price of a horse-drawn carriage even fell below 1.

Such a brutal price war caused more than half of the Han Dynasty's carriage workshops to go bankrupt, and there were no carriage workshops left in many counties and prefectures.

Of course, this also brought a huge benefit, because the price of horse-drawn carriages was reduced by more than half and the market increased by two times.

However, this growth is far from enough to meet the speed of increasing productivity, so they had to continue the price war.

However, the imperial court had placed an order for 3 baggage wagons, and there were 3 more orders to come. This huge order gave the carriage workshops of the world a temporary respite.

Then Xu Fan took them to see the military food production workshop, which used sugar, salt, cheese, fried flour, cooking oil, peanuts, in short, all kinds of high-sugar and high-calorie foods, which were fried and then compressed into blocks.

"This is the reserve military rations that the court has prepared for you. You can eat some temporarily when you run out of food."

Han Xin picked up a biscuit that looked like a brick, took a bite, and then said with shining eyes: "If all soldiers can produce food like this, our army's combat effectiveness can be increased by 50%."

Ji Xin and Lu Chen also picked up a biscuit and bit off a hole in it.

"Is this a new delicacy created by the imperial court? It's too extravagant! I can taste the flavors of sugar, peanuts, and cheese here."

None of these things are cheap, no wonder Lu Chen said they are too luxurious.

Xu Fan said helplessly: "Each soldier should bring 4 kilograms of these biscuits as a backup. They can only be eaten when food is scarce or to replenish energy before a battle."

To be honest, Xu Fan would like to use these compressed biscuits as military rations to transport to the front line. Just based on their energy density, they can reduce food consumption by half.

When Xu Fan first developed this kind of compressed biscuits, he also had this idea in mind, but unfortunately this idea was shattered because his Han Dynasty was too poor and could not afford to support hundreds of thousands of soldiers who ate compressed biscuits. A pound of compressed biscuits cost more than twenty coins, which seemed not expensive, but was enough to buy half a stone of grain in the Central Plains.

Soldiers can still bear to eat a few kilograms of meat, but if they really eat it as food rations, even with cheats, they will go bankrupt.

Finally, Xu Fan led the three to a garment factory, which was a factory that specialized in making military uniforms for soldiers.

There were no ready-made garment factories in this era because there was no demand. The poor bought cloth and gave it to their wives to make clothes. The slightly wealthier ones would find tailors to make clothes for them. The nobles would simply hire a craftsman who could make clothes.

The Han army was unwilling to do so. Each soldier had more than a dozen sets of uniforms for all seasons, from inside to outside. Considering the number of soldiers in the Han army, it would take neither time nor efficiency for tailors to sew all these clothes by hand. The Han court also could not afford such high tailoring fees.

Thus, this workshop was born, with hundreds of female workers. The clothes to be made were divided into categories, and finally they were sewed into clothes according to the assembly line method. There are five such garment workshops in Dahan, and the one in Guanzhong is the largest, capable of producing 5 pieces of various clothes every year.

Xu Fan took out a green dress and asked Han Xin to put it on, put a hat on his head and a pair of cotton shoes on his feet.

Before long, Han Xin was sweating profusely.

"Is this made of cotton?" Ji Xin and Lu Chen said in surprise while touching the cotton coat.

You should know that cotton cloth is a new thing that has only appeared in the past two years, and its price is extremely high. At the beginning, it was more expensive than gold. Although the price has dropped a bit in the past two years, the price of each piece of cotton cloth is still more than 5000 coins.

Xu Fan said: "This is a cotton hat, a military coat and cotton shoes. They will be the winter three-piece suits of our Han army. The court will prepare 12 sets of cotton clothes and transport them to the front line. Remember, after the snow falls, these cotton clothes will be distributed to the soldiers in the army. At the same time, prepare to withdraw. If you can't find the main force of the Xiongnu, then you should focus on saving the lives of your own soldiers."

"How much money did the court spend? I feel like 100 million gold is not enough?" Ji Xin sighed.

The emperor loved his soldiers like his own sons, and that had not changed at all. However, this was a bit too extravagant. If this three-piece cotton coat was sold outside at a price of ten thousand coins, I'm afraid someone would buy it. Yet the emperor made 12 sets just to keep the soldiers warm.

Xu Fan said: "The price of cotton-padded clothes is not as expensive as you think. They are all grown by the imperial court. It's just that things are rare and expensive. A set of three cotton-padded clothes like this only costs thousands of coins."

Although Xu Fan's Han Dynasty was still in the feudal dynasty period, many technology trees had already broken through the shackles of handicrafts, such as the carriage industry, cloth industry, and steel industry, not to mention the grain planting industry, which was the Han Dynasty's strength (the foreigners in the feudal era were really not good at growing grain. Their harvests were worse than ours. They could only barely catch up with the potatoes they got, and finally surpassed us by relying on the Industrial Revolution.)
At this time, many industries in the Han Dynasty had already reached the level of the First Industrial Revolution in terms of technological level, except for a steam engine.

Thanks to the developed handicraft industry, the Han Dynasty spent much less money on various war supplies than other feudal dynasties. This enabled Xu Fan to spend more money on the soldiers themselves rather than on a huge and useless logistics and transportation system.

"I brought you frontline generals to see these because I wanted to tell you that the court has made sufficient preparations for this war. You don't need to take risks, and you must not waste the lives of soldiers recklessly. If you can't conquer Mobei this time, you can fight again next time. As the Son of Heaven, I may not be very capable in other aspects, but I am good at making money."

"promise!"

Xu Fan was not worried about the combat effectiveness of the Han army soldiers, as they had a full set of armor, sufficient logistics, experienced commanders, and a complete military system.

The Huns, whose weapons and equipment were still at the Bronze Age and whose politics and military were still at the tribal alliance stage, were no match for the Han Dynasty.

What Xu Fan was most worried about was that Han Xin and his men would not return until they captured Maodun. A large number of soldiers did not fall on the battlefield, but instead fell in the cold wind.

In the historical battle of Mobei, Wei Qing and his men had only 1 soldiers killed in direct battle, but the number of soldiers lost due to other reasons was as high as to . The historical records were not clear, so it was naturally difficult for Xu Fan to understand the inside story.

But judging by the current war situation, it was already winter when Wei Qing and his men returned. The Han army was not adequately prepared for winter clothing, and a large number of soldiers fell after the victory.

Xu Fan doesn't want to repeat such a thing again.

(End of this chapter)