The wind blows from the South Sea

Chapter 83 The fiery Tieshan Town

According to the current equipment installation progress, in more than half a month, around the end of June, the steelmaking plant will be able to conduct trial production of blast furnace ignition.

Preliminary estimate

The normal operation of the steel plant requires about 2,700 to 3,000 people, including the blast furnace workshop, ironmaking workshop, steelmaking workshop, casting workshop, rolling workshop, ore powder yard and livestock farm, etc., literally large enterprise.

Relying on this modern blast furnace steelmaking enterprise, a series of downstream enterprises such as iron pot factories, anchor chain factories, agricultural tool factories, iron wire and steel cable factories, etc. can also be developed to form a complete steel product chain.

Its competitiveness is definitely not comparable to that of small private iron-making workshops.

nowadays

The suppression team led by Wu Siwen is going deep into several indigenous tribes to the west of Yanwang City, carrying out devastating and continuous attacks on the area, and continuously sending the captive indigenous male population to the Landa Mountain Mine.

So far, there have been more than 3700 people.

Chen Yong is also leading the armed forces in Tianjia Town to carry out military attacks on the few surrounding indigenous tribes that are acting treacherously and in secret, and ruthlessly eradicate them.

Together with these indigenous prisoners of war and hard labor prisoners from other sources, the iron ore mine located in the deepest part of the upper reaches of the valley has a labor force of more than 6300 people, which can meet the current demand for iron ore mining.

Most of the residents in Tieshan Town are Chinese immigrants and military families who were recruited to go to Surabaya City. Many Chinese families who had just arrived at Surabaya Port brought their families with them. After being recruited, they went directly to the Landoshan Mine. In Tieshan Town, Settled down.

Each household can get 3 to 4 points of land according to its population. The plots are all numbered and lined up along both sides of the street.

60 silver coins seemed like a lot, but after they could be used to purchase major building materials such as property deeds, land, and wood, there was basically not much left.

The cross street is 26 meters wide, separated by a green belt in the middle. Deep ditches were dug on both sides of the road, and complete drainage channels were built with bricks and stones. The sewage flows directly to the Hulu River not far away on one side.

As long as every household is able to work, children of several years old are doing whatever they can. Thousands of people are working tirelessly to build their homes. There is a construction boom everywhere.

Nanyang Bank has also been set up on Cross Street. These families who are recruiting workers can borrow a sum of no more than 60 silver coins from Nanyang Bank with a preferential interest rate of 6.5% by virtue of their status as steel factory workers.

Depending on the location, the land deed for a house costs between 12 and 20 silver coins. The one with a better location is more expensive, the one with a bigger one is more expensive, and the one with a more remote location is cheaper.

According to plan

Cross Street in Tieshan Town is the main thoroughfare. The two-story masonry building of Nanyang Daily Necessities Store is neat and tall. In addition, there is a post office, patrol room, teahouse, restaurant, and a two-story bluestone building developed and built by Nanyang Company. Shops for rent.

The land on both sides of the cross street is more expensive, with a house costing forty or fifty silver coins. It is stipulated that it must be built into two floors, and the upper and lower floors can be made of wood or stone.

The cross street is paved with large pieces of bluestone, which looks neat and grand, completely different from those dusty dirt streets.

Most people built wooden houses, and some directly built masonry houses, accounting for about 1/3. This shows that many Chinese families are quite powerful.

For example, if I worked on building a house for this family for five days and did not need to be paid, I would get a five-day work note.

When my family built a house, one day's work for a strong laborer was counted as one day's work. The family had to pay back five days' work, and the work slips could be exchanged for money in the market.

As for other residential streets, the requirements are much lower, as long as they are built into bungalows.

Before the factory was officially operational, these Chinese immigrants who moved to Tieshan Town early could save some food and capital by working for other people.

At the beginning, they helped each other build houses in small groups. They borrowed the required wood directly from the lumber factory and built their own homes.

Generally speaking

Working-class families need to spend money to buy land to build houses, while military families can get it for free, which is a particularly enviable benefit.

Chinese immigrants used their talents and talents to form small construction teams to help others build houses using their clans and township parties as links. What they got was a "work record".

These are the workers of the steel plant in the future, and they will pay 6.5% interest on the credit, which will be paid off slowly in the future.

For the excess, the interest rate reaches 11%.

When Feng Guohui arrived, the two to three square kilometers of land in Tieshan Town was full of bustling construction scenes.

An ordinary male laborer only needs to work for one and a half months to save enough "work notes" to build a house for his family.

After the wood for building the house was ready, five or six guys helped to build the house. In about a week, the wooden house was basically completed.

The rest is just some trivial carving work.

Today's Tieshan is under vigorous construction. Except for the beautiful stone paving on the cross street, the rest are dirt roads.

But this does not affect the enthusiasm of Chinese immigrants for construction in the slightest. Tieshan Town is undergoing changes visible to the naked eye every day, and is undergoing rapid expansion and construction.

Wander in it

You can see the cheerful smile on the sweat-covered face of every worker, and the shining eyes of hope, which is a very exaggerating look of happiness.

What brought them such a bright mood was the policy of Nanyang Company. After recruiting into the steel company for a three-month internship period, those with outstanding performance could sign a long-term employment contract.

As long as the contract is signed, each worker starts from one silver coin per month, and may increase depending on the length of employment and job experience.

As long as one person in a family hires a worker, it can basically be said that they have no worries about food and clothing, and it only takes seventy or eighty years to save some food. After the loan is repaid, the house becomes the property of the family and can be passed down to future generations. . If a family has two or three able-bodied workers, it can repay the bank loan in just two or three years.

Compared to the days when I had nothing to eat and couldn't see the future or hope, I don't know how many times better.

In the hearts of these Chinese immigrants, Master Feng is their great benefactor!

Among the millions of Chinese descendants living in Southeast Asia, only a handful of families are truly outstanding, and the vast majority are poor and low-class people.

After hundreds of years of reproduction, this number is quite astonishing.

in the original history

Due to war, local conditions and poor living conditions, the growth of the overseas Chinese population is very slow, even far behind the growth rate of the indigenous population.

The most important difference is that the local indigenous people have land and can make a living in any way.

Chinese immigrants in the East Indies were not allowed to do so. They were restricted by the strict colonial policies of the Dutch whites, who prohibited them from obtaining land property rights and were tightly restricted in towns.

In such a typical agricultural society, the number of people that business activities can support is extremely limited.

This is why as soon as the news of Surabaya City's unrestricted expansion of recruitment came out, Chinese immigrants from all over Southeast Asia and other parts of Java Island flocked in. In early June, the number had reached more than 6 people per week.

Throughout the month, the number of immigrants is expected to exceed 5000.

This is a quite astonishing number. If this immigration boom continues, the population of Surabaya City may increase by half in just one year.

The Nanyang Company took the lead in the construction of the Landoshan mine and the new port project. Countless Chinese immigrant families found their place in it, and hundreds of merchants found new business opportunities, forming a rolling construction boom.

The Hu family, which started out as a shipping company, has experienced great development during this period. The number of ships owned by the family has rapidly expanded from the original 11 to 19. This is just a microcosm of the construction boom.

Vigorous investment generates more social needs, which in turn stimulates business development and drives the prosperity of the entire city and surrounding areas.

After the Nanyang Company swallowed up the property of the Qiao family and hundreds of white plantation owners, it was like taking an aphrodisiac, and the scale and power of the industry expanded.

Feng Guohui distributed nearly half of the white mansions to his meritorious officials, but most of the colonists' manor lands were under his name.

This made Feng Guohui the largest landowner in the entire Surabaya City and even in East Java. The land covers the prosperous Surabaya City, Yanwang City and surrounding towns, with a total area of ​​33 acres, and an annual income of more than 240 million silver coins.

The number of labor tenants totals more than 16.3, accounting for almost a third of the total population in East Java.

If the industry that Nanyang Company is now vigorously developing is added, the number of people will be even greater.

All this huge wealth is based on the Nanyang Company's rapidly growing military power.

Statistics for mid-June

The number of directly affiliated armed forces has reached 5488, of which 3207 are new recruits. After more than two months of closed and concentrated military training, they have shown their military qualities.

Such a large-scale military expansion is the largest since the establishment of the Nanyang Company.

What will follow will inevitably be the reorganization of military forces. The strength lost by each battalion in the battle will be replenished, the equipment will be further improved, and the organization will be further expanded.

The Nanyang Company led by Feng Guohui has never looked back on the road of separatist warlords. Now it is collecting military songs, customizing military uniforms and military caps, establishing gunpowder factories and ordnance workshops, and improving the militarized governance structure.

He himself knows it too

The conflict with the white Dutch colonists has become irreconcilable. The two sides have a life-and-death feud, and sooner or later there will be a day when weapons will turn on each other.

Therefore, Nanyang Company has been actively preparing for this.

The core is the Landoshan Mine. In view of the superior geographical conditions here, a large amount of manpower and material resources are being used to fortify the entrance to the valley, forming a military defense system that is difficult to conquer.

The second is the new port and the Seven-Star Fortress, plus the artillery position set up on Madura Island across the Surabaya Strait, which can form a blockade of the strait.

The most likely land attack by the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies is from the West Java area with Batavia and Bandung as the core, from west to east.

Therefore, the current campaign of the Yanwang City Militia led by Wu Siwen to clear up the indigenous tribes in the west of the city can be seen as clearing the battlefield in advance to warm up for the next fierce battle.

While making military preparations, Feng Guohui implemented a strict information blockade on the Landoshan Mine, and all construction personnel were only allowed in but not out.

Anyone who leaves must have a pass document approved by a senior officer above the battalion commander, stating the identity of the leaver, destination, why, how many days he will be away, whether he will return on time to cancel his leave, etc.

And create files for audit and review.

It is precisely because of various powerful measures that most people in Surabaya City are unaware of the earth-shaking changes that are taking place in Landashan Square.

I only know that many Chinese immigrants were recruited into the mountains. As for where exactly they went, I don’t know.

(End of this chapter)