Of course, even if Liu Wei is close to Gao Pragmatic, he is actually not a refuge at the moment, and Gao Pragmatic will not need Liu Ling in the short term, it can only be said that he will have a good relationship in advance, and in the future, the title of Gao Pragmatic Gold List will enter the court, and it will be good to say these things when he has a certain status.

The move that Gao Pragmatic really cares about and is already doing at the moment to cultivate power is actually an inconspicuous "deal". He had a big business plan, and the soap business he was doing now was just a small gadget worth mentioning, just a means to earn his first pot of gold at that time. However, now that he has unexpectedly harvested Bailixia, a hen that can already lay golden eggs, Gao Pragmatic has some plans that are slightly advanced.

Of course, the advance of the return does not mean that we have to run to build a shipyard and build sea ships now. Meals have to be eaten one bite at a time, things like shipbuilding are still far away, a hundred years later, the cost of building a capital warship by the British is converted into hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, even if the Ming shipbuilding is cheaper than the British, it is obviously not high and pragmatic and can afford it now.

Gao is now planning to do coal business. This business is not at all conspicuous in Daming, because the transportation is inconvenient in these years, the profit from coal trading is very meager, and the market is mediocre - it is just a poor family that can't afford to buy charcoal in winter to use it to make a fire, and it is not even suitable for cooking.

Why is this happening? As long as you think about some relatively backward rural areas in the previous life, you will know that those rural people would rather go out to chop firewood and cook by themselves than use coal, for two reasons: first, no one cares about cutting firewood in these years, as long as you go to the "wild mountain" farther away, the cost is basically zero, and you can save money; The second is that the coal fuel in these years is very primitive, the combustion efficiency is very low, and the waste is very large, although the price is not expensive, but because there is no honeycomb coal as a sharp weapon, it is still not very cost-effective to use.

In the current Jingshi, the poorest people cut wood and burned it dry; If the conditions are slightly better, they buy coal to burn in order to save trouble; It's better to find a woodcutter to buy firewood; The upper class only burned charcoal.

In this way, it is clear that there are not many serious coal burners. If there is no market, there are naturally not many people willing to do this business, and the profits are naturally difficult to come by, so it is inconspicuous.

Therefore, Gao Pragmatic felt that with the surplus money that Bailixia could currently provide, he could do this business.

However, Gao Pragmatism naturally does not go to great lengths to engage in coal for this reason alone. Coal played a lot of roles in later generations, but the current level of development is too low to be used in many ways, but there is a very key point that is the root of his insistence on opening coal mines: coking and iron smelting.

The Mentougou coal mine does not quite meet the needs of high pragmatism, but it can be used to train a group of miners in advance, which is very important. Gao Pragmatic is not some kind of god crosser, he asks himself if he has the ability to recruit a random group of people to do all the things that he can provide in his head.

His work experience in his previous life told him that even if it is an inconspicuous job, there will be a "professionalism", and if you get a few Jinshi masters to sweep the streets, they may not be able to win the uncle Wang who is in his sixties next door. Of course, this is especially true of coal mining, this work is a very professional type of work in later generations, and the danger is quite high, not just any cat or dog can do it.

In addition, Gao Pragmatism has an ulterior purpose: in history, whenever the miners revolted, the trouble was not small, because these people lived in a bad environment, all of them did hard work, and coal mining made them have to pay attention to cooperation - this is simply the best soldier seedling!

There are many Yiwu miners in the Qi family's army, right? There are many miners in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's starting army, "old brothers in Guangxi", right? Even the Kumamoto Division, which was always pulled out to fight as a pioneer in Japan in a certain era, was based on miners.

Why is the miners so strong in forming an army?

One is that the body is strong, and those who are not healthy cannot work as miners; the second is to be accustomed to organization and discipline, and those who go down the well without rules die early; The third is that in ancient times, going down the well once was equivalent to facing life and death, and it was even more trivial to not be afraid of fighting when going down the well; Fourth, the miners trust each other's lives, which is equivalent to the soldiers of later generations who know that "don't care about your back, trust your comrades".

Although Gao Shishi did not intend to usurp the throne, in view of the great cause he was about to do, the danger was too great, and there must be an unusually reliable force under his hands. This force must be inconspicuous in peacetime, because it may be bad if it is eye-catching, but it must be able to fight when called upon at critical moments.

Miners are good! Especially for miners who have participated in training!

Name? We're afraid that no thieves will target us, so we usually train as a militia.

Organization? Oh yes, we call it the Workers' Mine Guard, which means that if anyone dares to rob us and steal our jobs, we will fuck us!

Very good, with the thinking of the Ming people, there is no problem at all.

Which family can't pull a team of family members who can fight? Which hundred-year-old clan doesn't have its own dock fort village? Similarly, if you open such a large private mine, there will be no regular army of the imperial court to help you guard it, who will cry if you are robbed? Of course I have to guard my own fields, I am willing to let my miners take on an extra job, and the salary is paid by me, what is in the way of your court? Have they robbed their homes and bullied the market? Since you don't, you have so much nonsense!

After training enough professional miners, the coal mine that Gao pragmatic really likes will begin to prepare to take it.

Open Luan Coal Mine!

This does not need to be introduced, but only one key point is mentioned: Kailuan Coal Mine is rich in bituminous coal, of which a considerable part can be used for coking.

In view of the huge reserves of Kailuan Coal Mine, this "quite a part", even if Gao Shishi has developed coking, blast furnace and other technologies, and all the iron and steel smelting in the world have been changed to coke, its supply to the current Ming Dynasty is more than enough.

Although the eight characters have not been skimmed yet, this kind of prospect is cool to think about.

How many things he will do in the future will be related to this iron smelting and steelmaking? If you always use charcoal to make steel, not to mention the huge waste, just that pitiful output will make Gao pragmatic roll his eyes. As for saying that a liberal arts student can't make a really high-tech good blast furnace, that's true, but when he was a child, he was also a person who always listened to the elders talk about the local steelmaking back then, and he could still do his best to get some low-tech steelmaking, a little more environmental pollution, and a little less productive efficiency.

Therefore, when Gao Shishi returned to Beijing this time, in addition to being busy preparing for the "performance" to be held in the palace in two days, he also sent people to Qi Jiguang and Wu Dui.

Why Qi Jiguang and Wu Dui? Because Qi Jiguang is the chief soldier of Jizhen, Kailuan is within his garrison, and at the same time, Gao Pragmatic also plans to use a small thing to test Qi Jiguang's attitude towards Gao Gong; As for Wu Dui, he is the "deputy envoy of the Tuntian Water Conservancy and Coastal Defense Garrison of Yongping Dao", and Kailuan is his direct jurisdiction!