"I also heard that the emperor is going to issue an edict to make his attitude clear to the nations." Yuan Shikai continued to break the news, in fact, I have heard of this, after all, Lafayette can't put the blame for provocation on his own neck. Although Lafayette was very arrogant at that time to single-handedly challenge the great powers, but this thing is not to be done, if she wants to continue to be at the helm of the broken ship of the Qing Dynasty, she has to find a scapegoat with enough weight. Emperor Guangxu's head is not big or small, and the top of this black pot is just right, and since the Hundred Days Restoration, the nephew and aunt have torn their faces. Therefore, the "Edict of Guilt and Guilt" is actually answering the question of who should bear the responsibility for the war between China and foreign countries. Aside from the flowery rhetoric, judging from the content alone, only the Boxers and those local bureaucrats, the army, and the ignorant princes and ministers and even the Guangxu Emperor should be the object of liquidation, and Lafayette is the deceived master, and in a word, Lafayette is "very stupid and naïve". In my opinion, the Qing court is just deceiving itself, the coalition forces have not coordinated the distribution of their own interests, and even the prerequisites for peace talks are probably far from each other.

"I am afraid that peace talks will not be easy, and Shaoquan Gong may not be able to convince other countries to believe in the sincerity of the imperial court's peace talks. There were many contradictions within the great powers, including Japan, Tsarist Russia, and other countries seeking short-term division of interests, Britain, France, and Germany seeking a balance of power, and the United States, Italy, and other countries hoping that the Qing Dynasty would maintain the status quo and expand market opening. The maximization of the interests of various countries in China determines the attitude of various countries towards the peace talks, and the running-in within them during this period is a difficult process, and the imperial court's desire for quick peace is probably wishful thinking. "I sat casually on the Taihu Lake stone under the willow tree, and Yuan Fatzi was also a little tired, but he maintained the posture of an official and refused to sit on the ground. Yuan Shikai frowned, weighing my analysis in his heart.

"According to Chen Xuan's analysis, I'm afraid that the imperial court will have some time. What do you think we should do? ”

"Ming Gong, you are in the limelight, you might as well be with the light and dust recently, and serve a good Lafayette. But your brothers should expand the army, should seize the power, I also in government affairs, try my best to provide convenience for the right army of Wuwei, the current Shandong repair institute is still fully equipped, the head is neat, Ming Gong may wish to take it to Baoding, at least to ensure the supply of arms and ammunition to the army. In addition, the military academy should also be expanded, and it could be merged with the Tianjin Military Academy, modeled after the Japanese army soldiers, and mainly train grassroots officers. The existing high-ranking officers take turns to go abroad for further study, which will not only broaden their horizons and improve their skills and tactics, but will also help Ming Gong to adjust personnel and rationally coordinate them, so as to prevent a situation in which there are many factions in the ranks. Yuan Datou listened to my opinion, quite agreed, patted me on the shoulder, dropped a sentence of "the future is terrible" and turned back to the mansion by himself, I understood that he was going to discuss my idea with his think tank, although he had a kind elder's face was very hateful, and he was actually more than 200 years older than me, so he didn't care about him (in fact, he didn't care about others).

In Shandong, the historical old Yuan also took advantage of the opportunity of reorganizing and training the army to organize and train a so-called vanguard of the Wuwei Right Army, although it was the foundation of the training, but there were also seven or eight thousand men and horses. However, now my chamber of commerce insurance group has replaced the original status of the vanguard of the Wuwei Right Army to a certain extent, so the Shandong training army still exists, but after a toss of the Boxer and Yuan Shikai's gradual elimination for more than a year, except for more than 2,000 people in Qingzhou training army, there are only three or two hundred in other places. Although Beiyang has always been a large and small soldier with a soldier to recruit people by himself, but Yuan Shikai also appreciated it, and a few days later ordered the whole province to train the army to drill Jinan Mansion, and left more than 500 strong and strong with a knife, and other officers and soldiers were dismissed, and each family looked for its own mother. Although my insurance regiment has not yet become a new army in the Qing Dynasty, but at present the insurance regiment has become a foregone conclusion, so the recruitment of recruits has been going on, the five detachment leaders have brought recruits, so taking advantage of the autumn harvest after the slack, a new round of recruitment work has begun, this recruitment will be relaxed to Shandong ten provinces and one state, outsiders can also sign up at the registration points in various counties, but the recruitment ratio of recruits is not high, and the last soldiers who have passed the initial examination to enter the recruit camp are only two or three out of ten. Other qualified soldiers are also registered, and they have received the benefits of the next exemption from inspection and a piece of Yingyang's travel expenses, and they can be regarded as alternate soldiers.

Now that the actual envoy of the Sprinkle family has arrived, I should focus more on planning Shandong's industry and agriculture. Shandong is hilly and rich in mineral deposits. According to the investigation at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Shandong has more than a dozen kinds of mineral deposits such as coal, iron, gold, silver, copper, lead, antimony, sulphur, diamond, and magnet, among which coal and iron reserves are particularly abundant. Before modern times, the soil method was mostly used for mining, and there was not much profit. Under the regulation of Meng Boss, Zhongxing Mine is now operating basically normal, and it is not a problem to make a profit of 200,000 taels this year. In addition to the Zhongxing Coal Mine, in 1888, Zhang Yao, the governor of Shandong, hired foreign miners to explore and open a coal mine in Sujiadi, Zichuan. The mine uses a machine to pump water, and the output is more than that of ordinary kilns. In 1891, the plant expanded its facilities and hired foreign miners to take charge of mining. But the coal mine production is very sluggish, in August of the same year, Zhang Yao died of illness, the mine was at a standstill because no one presided over and the loss was huge, but now the Zichuan mine was also taken over by Lejia, borrowed a big shopkeeper from Meng Luochuan, and soon transplanted the full set of business models of Zhongxing mine, it seems that at the end of the year Zichuan mine came back to life is not a problem, plus the annexation of dozens of kilns in the surrounding Boshan, Zhongxing Zichuan two mining areas, a year of coal production of no less than 200,000 tons, now the supply of Shandong's industrial and mining is more than enough, so through the canal south to supply Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Through the Jiaoji Railway to Qingdao, the market layout of sales to Japan and Southeast Asia has also begun to be raised.

In the history of the three ups and downs of Zhaoyuan gold mining king Guangdong billionaire Li Zongdai also rushed to Jinan at the beginning of the year, at the meeting of the Chamber of Commerce and Wang Guangzu hit it off, I this political envoy is naturally strong support, Lao Du Niang printed a set of mining gold panning equipment drawings suitable for Zhaoyuan gold ore quality, in addition to part of the power equipment handed over to Lihe foreign company from Britain and Germany to procure, other equipment are my standard machinery products, completely help him get rid of the dependence on foreign companies to provide equipment and maintenance, The local tyrants around the mining area also handed over to Yang Shihai's recruit team to go to a long-distance training, first salute and then soldier, all the inferior gentry who do not open their eyes, one by one according to the crime of the last boxer remnant, it is not a problem to raid the family and exterminate the clan, as a result, Li Zongdai and Wang Guangzu originally agreed to give me two percent of the dry shares, I asked Yang Shihai to directly hand over the seized gold and silver, and it became a real share. Speaking of which, it is still the arrogance of the officials of the Qing Dynasty, and the power of life and death is shaken in their hands, and even the temporary workers who are looking for a city manager are saved.

Shandong Chamber of Commerce in my and Mengjia, Miao family demonstration role, have invested in the construction of factories, with Meng Luochuan, Miao Xing Village experience and Du Niang's scientific planning, these 100 factories have been opened in Jinan, Tai'an, Caozhou, Yizhou, Yanzhou where the transportation is convenient, now the political envoy in hand, the Chamber of Commerce in the local is more unimpeded. It turned out that the conservative business idea of "how much money to do how much business" in Jinan Mansion was spurned by the elites of the Chamber of Commerce, and the financing platform within the Chamber of Commerce alone flowed hundreds of thousands of taels of silver at any time

Those places in northern and southern Lubei are no longer a backwater. In the first half of the year, the Boxer Rebellion swept away all the local tyrants and inferior gentry, and those who were either attacked by the boxers broke through the village and slaughtered all the people, or simply joined the boxers and bandits and became senior brothers, anyway, they just died early and died late, and from the perspective of appeasement of the locality, the boxers and bandits were also considered to have contributed to me. The harvest in the field makes the boxers toss not lightly, and the landlord with a bright eye and a bright heart will no longer stick to an acre and three points of land, and also want to learn from the bigwigs of the Chamber of Commerce to invest in industry, suffering from the lack of technology and market, so I invited Miao Boss and the Chamber of Commerce in Shanxi Xingju into the ticket number of Josh Shengqiao Lao Er organized a Shandong Chamber of Commerce Investment Society, my account room Lao Wu's apprentice is basically out of the teacher, now Lao Wu is no longer necessary to rely on the scene every day, so Lao Wu was also sent by me to the investment cooperative, three people jointly in charge of investment and financing matters, In fact, it is to use the way of high-interest deposits, with the credibility of the chamber of commerce as a guarantee, to operate those who are not good at management but want to invest in the silver ingots in the cellar of the landlords, those who are willing to run the business, according to the industry and regional investment advantages are respectively formed a joint investment group, that is, the popular local government in later generations of small sampans bundled into a large aircraft carrier, but now Lafayette did not put the "chicken fart" on the weight index of the official assessment, so I will not pursue the big and complete, on the contrary, it is completely adapted to local conditions, different measures from person to person. For example, silk reeling textile and other economies of scale enterprises in Dongchang and Caozhou Mansion set up two large-scale cotton spinning enterprises, "Qi Su Textile" and "Lu Min Weaving", invested in the standard factory self-produced and purchased from the British 20 spinning machines, 60 looms, 100 ginning machines, 10 spring machines, all of a sudden more than the scale of all private textile mills in southern Jiangsu, become the largest production base of domestic fabric, because of the rise in cotton purchase prices, one acre of land can grow cotton more than double the income than growing grain, Moreover, the field work was much less than wheat, so soon the saline-alkali land near Caozhou and Dongchang was replanted with cotton, and even the surrounding prefectures and counties such as Cangzhou, Xingtai, Handan and Anyang, Henan Province also joined the cotton planting team, and the long-staple cotton of India and Egypt on the plains of North China could be seen everywhere for a time.

The chamber of commerce is also full of talents, such as Zhang Keliang, a small merchant born in 1865 in Chaizhuang Village, Shouguang County, Shandong Province, in a small landlord family. Due to his wealthy family, he opened Xingshunfu business in Yangjiaogou when he was young, dealing in shrimp paste and other seafood. Over the years, he transported sea goods to Jinan through Xiaoqing River for distribution, gradually accumulated some funds, and joined the Chamber of Commerce for the second time. In the Chamber of Commerce, he opened his eyes, rented two plots of land in the south of Jinger Weisan and Jingsan Road, built a building as a storefront, and still took "Xingshunfu" as the name, mainly engaged in seafood, but also involved in oil extraction, grain, timber, pickles, machine manufacturing and other fields. Zhang Keliang foresaw that with the development of Jinan Prefecture, the population of Jinan City is increasing, and the demand for grain and oil is increasing. Due to the accurate entry point of the market, the business of Xingshunfu Oil Mill is getting bigger and bigger, and now it is crushing 10 to 15 tons a day. If it weren't for Boss Cheng opening a shop in Daguanyuan and an oil mill by the Xiaoqing River, he might not be able to keep the second place in Jinan's grain and oil market (the top spot is, of course, the Miao family).

Zhang Keliang saw that my machinery factory was very profitable, and he built the Xingshunfu Iron Works next to the oil mill on the second and third roads of Jingerwei Road, and hired a German Baischoff as a draftsman, although this iron factory did not have technicians and engineers, and a few skilled craftsmen could make boilers, engines, and other equipment according to the drawings of the Germans. In this way, a few years later, Zhang Keliang bought 30 acres of land in the west of Guanzhanying to build Huaqing Flour Mill, with 80,000 taels of silver in start-up capital alone. Huaqing Flour Mill built a factory and warehouse, and purchased a flour machine from the United States, which was officially completed and put into operation in 1807. In order to facilitate transportation, Zhang Keliang negotiated with the Jinpu Railway Bureau to build a railway fork road directly to the warehouse of Huaqing Flour Mill. Bags of flour are directly loaded onto trains from the warehouse of Huaqing Flour Mill and sold all over the country, and the Huantai Miao family is called the double wall of Jinan's grain and oil market.

In addition to this, the "Xing Shun Fu" firm also deals in timber. Zhang Keliang sent people to the northeast to purchase timber, which was transported by sea to Yangjiaogou and then transported from Xiaoqing River to Jinan for sale. Catching up with the Jinan Prefecture under my management, the construction market is naturally very hot, and the demand for timber is also very large, and Zhang Keliang has made another profit. After more than ten years of development, Zhang Keliang has become one of the influential bigwigs in the Chamber of Commerce.