Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1140 Southwest (eight)

No matter how turbulent the external situation is, in the midsummer of 1657, the depths of the grassland on the east bank are still shrouded in a bustling construction: the railway is stretching hard on the endless grassland, and the bitter Italian and German road builders Using their own flesh and blood to "sacrifice" for the completion of this long steel bar dragon - 291 kilometers of the railway has been completed so far, the investment has exceeded 800 million bank lire, and more than a thousand laborers have been killed or injured (including There are many Congolese black slaves bought by the Japanese from New Courland), and there are countless people who fled. In short, this railway has become an out-and-out "blood road".

"The **** people are already a little bit hard to get off." Yang ****, director of the State Railway Administration, stood in front of the newly built Xipingbao (near the small village of San Gregorio later) railway station, with an indescribable expression He said in a tone of voice: "The railway has only been repaired for 291 kilometers, but the funds have already cost 800 million yuan, which has exceeded their previous expectations. In addition, the annual revenue of the Grassland Railway Company last year was only 13 yuan. Excluding costs, the total profit of grass iron in the past few years is only a little over 6 yuan, and we have to share dividends with us, which is far from enough to make up for the capital investment of the **** people, so they are now a little hesitant about whether to continue to invest funds ——If you don’t continue to invest, you may not be able to get back the money you invested earlier, but if you continue to invest, God knows how much money will be spent in the future, **** people are really entangled now.”

"Director, it's too inefficient and costly for **** people to repair the railway." Chen Hao, the second generation in charge of on-site technical support, said, "It took six years to repair 291 kilometers—well, Excluding the 40 kilometers of the Xianing section that we have repaired before the start of construction, we only repair 41 kilometers per year on average, with an average cost of 8 yuan per kilometer, almost twice as much as ours... **** people repair like this It’s no wonder that the railways don’t lose money, and I doubt whether they have the courage to persevere.”

"We must give them encouragement and let them persevere. Isn't it just money? At worst, the financial subsidy of 10 yuan per year will be increased, and a part of the section opening award and project completion award will be given in advance. In short, it is to let them persevere. "*** Yang smiled, walked on the platform of the railway station covered with stone slabs, looked at the clear sky in the distance, and said: "Of course they are very likely to persevere. 4000 million lire is not a small amount of money, and it would be a loss if it is not recovered. After all, according to the agreement signed at the beginning, the precondition for activating our railway repurchase clause is that the railway is completely open to traffic, so that they can pay 6000 million lire Sell ​​the price to us, otherwise there will be no negotiation. Just for this 6000 million lire, the **** people will bite their teeth and finish the repair of this railway."

Chen Hao nodded when he heard the words, and then asked in a low voice: "Director, do you want to tell the Public Security Bureau to tighten their grip and stop letting those Italians and Germans on the construction site escape too much? **** The ** people have transported a full 200 old mainland laborers here to build the railway over the years, and spent nearly 130 million bank lire for this. However, according to incomplete statistics, at least a quarter of these people have fled to the The development of the Wujiang area, the **** people have been troubled by this. Shall we help them, first curb the speed of the laborers fleeing, and let them finish the railway. Seeing that this railway is still there More than [-] kilometers have been completely completed, and there is such a big break in the middle, it is not a big deal.”

The Southwest Railway has been under construction for five or six years. According to the speed of the Communist Party, it will take at least three years to complete the construction, and the total cost is likely to be 700 million lire, even if they activate the repurchase The terms were sold to the East Bank government for 6000 million lire, and there was almost no profit-well, counting the subsidies, rewards, railway profits, etc. given by the East Bank in the past few years, it was evened out to nine years, **** The annual income of ** people will probably not exceed 2%, which is just two or three times the income of their investment in domestic annuities and bonds, which naturally cannot satisfy them.

"That's how it should be." Grandpa Yang said, "Don't let them feel cold. Letting them build this railway was a pitfall. Now give them more subsidies so that they won't lose so much." It’s ugly, and it’s what it should be. Although the total cost of this railway is a bit high, the problem is that we didn’t have the ability to complete the railway at the time. Isn’t it just spending some money? It can be solved with money , That’s not a problem! What’s more, the workers transported by the **** people will be our people in the future, which is equivalent to spending money to buy out the contracts of some of the workers, which is not a loss.”

To be honest, the average construction cost of 2 yuan per kilometer for the Southwest Railway is relatively high, almost twice as much as that built by people on the east coast.However, considering that a considerable part of the money has returned to the people on the east coast through the purchase of cement, bricks, rails, wood, stone, fuel, food, etc., this cost should be reduced by a large part; If the laborers from the Old Continent that the ***** people have tried their best to transport are also included-these people will be able to create wealth for the East Coast for many years in the future-the cost can be reduced even more, not to mention the cost they paid to transport these laborers back then. A considerable number of ships have been ordered in the three major shipyards on the east coast, which is also an income.

Therefore, the construction cost of the Southwest Railway is far from as high as imagined, and it can be reduced to 1-6 million per kilometer.Considering that this was started in an era when there was a shortage of road construction workers on the east bank (my own road construction army was repairing the double track of the Northwest Railway and the Ome Railway) and was unable to build more railways at the same time, this is even more precious ——Aside from other things, as the East Bank and Spain negotiated a "loan-for-land" (commonly known) agreement, the East Bank exported a large amount of grain to the Old Continent, and many towns along the Southwest Railway were originally developed from pioneer farms. The grain output is huge, and the construction of the railway naturally enables the grain that was originally deep in the inland grassland to be transported to the seaport cheaply by train, which is of great economic significance.

"The latest statistics from the Immigration Department in July this year show that the total population of the country has reached 72 people, which is growing rapidly." Mrs. Yang looked at a team of railway workers who were repairing the tracks in front of him, and said: " A considerable part of them will be allocated to open up wasteland along the Southwest Railway. There are about 9 people, and some will be allocated to new and old settlements. The executive committee is quite determined to develop the food, fruit and vegetables here. In fact, there is no way. The scale of our industry is not large enough, and the number of employed people is limited. With so many new people added every year, what else can we do if we don’t go to farm..."

It is said that there are currently two county-level administrative units in the eastern section of the Southwest Railway, namely Taoyuan County (10849 people) with five townships under its jurisdiction, and Minghe County (10806 people) with four townships under its jurisdiction.In 1655, the fiscal revenue (referring to the tax revenue belonging to the county government) of the two clinkingly poor agricultural counties was only 7 yuan, and the other was only 6 yuan. They could hardly do anything.After the county government pays all the salaries of county employees, the remaining money is enough to carry out health and epidemic prevention, disease control and other publicity in the county. It can't even promote elementary school education within the county. The degree of financial distress It was appalling.

However, with the prevalence of grain export trade in the past two years, the fiscal revenue of the two counties has grown rapidly, maintaining an increase rate of 20% almost every year, which made the county officials feel a little relieved.With the increase in grain exports, the operating income of the Southwest Railway will naturally rise accordingly—although it is not possible to say how many years the cost will be recovered, but at least the annual maintenance costs and personnel wages have been earned, and some of the extra profits can be used on the railway. Start erecting some telegraph poles and building several telegraph rooms along the line to prepare for the full rollout of wired telegraphs in the future (of course, this can only be implemented after "driving out" the Communists).

And now that the railway has been built, it is naturally a great waste to discard it.At least compared to setting up new settlements in the hilly area of ​​the Duck Lake Basin in the north, the cost of relocating people along the Southwest Railway is greatly reduced and the speed is also greatly accelerated, because they have low cost and high efficiency in transporting construction materials and personnel.Especially the former, when the whole train pulls a lot of building materials such as cement, lime, bricks, wood, etc., the construction of a new settlement will become much easier.

No, the Executive Committee has already ordered the establishment of a new county in the west of Minghe County—in addition to Xiping Fort, there are several new settlements around it, namely Guangling Fort near the later city of Trinidad. , located in the southeast of Guanglingbao, Dahua Township near the small town of Dasarandi in later generations, Dalong Township near the small village of Ismail Cordinas in later generations, and Dade near the city of San Jose de Maio in later generations Township.At present, the total number of these five settlements is only 7000 people, and there is no output yet. However, it is believed that driven by the Southwest Railway, this area that connects Caijiazhai Township to the west and Shengli Township, Minghe County to the east is very large. It will soon develop and become another important agricultural county.

Due to the addition of many war refugees from Poland and Lithuania this year, many of them were assigned to the Southwest Railway. In addition, there were many Catholic settlers from Italy and Spain in the local area. Therefore, the towns along the railway The religious atmosphere gradually became stronger.Some pious believers built several simple Catholic churches by themselves after appealing to the authorities to no avail, and then used them as gathering places for surrounding believers. This undoubtedly violated the taboo of the East Coast government...

(End of this chapter)