Selling a house will not make the country strong, and increasing its strength still depends on honest efforts.

With the help of agricultural taxes, profits from the sale of surplus grain, and various white slips that do not need to be cashed out for the time being, the autonomous government has obtained nearly 450 million yuan of capital in agriculture alone, which is a surplus concentrated in almost the entire northeast, far exceeding the total income of the central government in the same period, except for the customs customs! With money, the industrial breakthrough conceived by Zhang Hanqing kicked off.

The first thing is the manufacture of tractors---- which are the first choice for all industrial construction. With it, it is possible for an agricultural population to cultivate more land. There is still more than twice as much land to be developed in the far northeast than the land that has been reclaimed now, and once it becomes a reality, think about what a fortune it will be! And the manufacture of the tractor does not seem to be very difficult today, and the conditions of that time also made it possible to manufacture and use it on a large scale.

Since ancient times, there have been many people who have tried to use mechanical force instead of human and animal power for farming. However, it was not until the 19th century, when Europe entered the age of the steam engine, that the birth of power-based agricultural machinery became possible. In the thirties of the 19th century, the use of steam vehicles to haul agricultural machinery and implements for field work began to be studied. But the steam engine tractor that could be built at that time (the predecessor of the steam tractor) was like a water locomotive, which, even if it did not sink into the field, would have compacted the soil and could not be cultivated at all. In 1851, Faras and Smith in England used the steam engine for the first time to achieve mechanical farming of fields. Some saw this as the beginning of agricultural mechanization, but at the time they did so by placing a steam engine in the field and pulling the ploughshares that were ploughing in the fields far away with wire ropes.

Later, with the progress of steam engine manufacturing technology, a miniaturized steam engine appeared, which was installed on the chassis of the vehicle to drive the wheels to drive, so that it could drive from the ground into the field to directly pull agricultural machinery, which gave birth to the tractor, the first steam-powered tractor was invented in 1856 and 1873 respectively by Alabarte of France and R. C. Palveen of Illinois, USA. The tractors of the time were similar to the earlier steam engine cars, but with more horsepower and slower travel speeds.

In 1889, the Chadah Engine Company of Chicago, USA, manufactured the world's first agricultural tractor ---- the "Baga" tractor using gasoline internal combustion engines. Because the internal combustion engine is relatively lightweight, easy to operate, and has high work efficiency, its emergence has laid the foundation for the popularization and application of tractors. At the beginning of the 20th century, countries such as Sweden, Germany, Hungary and the United Kingdom manufactured tractors powered by diesel internal combustion engines almost simultaneously, and during the First World War, due to the war, the shortage of labor and the increase in the price of agricultural products promoted the development of tractors for farmland.

Between 1910 and 1920, there was a fierce competition between the steam engine and the tractor powered by the internal combustion engine, and the latter showed greater superiority and gradually phased out the former. Today's tractors all use diesel internal combustion engines.

Zhang Hanqing was the first person in China to rule out such a controversy. Although in this era, due to the difficulties of oil extraction in China, most skilled workers believed that the development of internal combustion engine-powered tractors would be more expensive. But when he copied the first tractor, he said in a prophetic tone that the use of diesel engines in the future was the development trend of tractors, and the reality of oil shortages would soon be overcome.

Therefore, Xue Guangsen, who produced China's first domestic diesel engine, was invited to Northeast China with a lot of money and became the originator and master of various types of diesel engine research.

Xue Guangsen, born in Longjiang, Shunde in the fourth year of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1865). At the age of 17, he went to Hong Kong to work in a shipyard and learned excellent mechanical skills. Xue took the opportunity of overhauling the machinery of the British oil tanker "Qinglong" anchored in the Pearl River, tried to completely disassemble the diesel engine on the ship, drew drawings, measured data, and after repeated tests and improvements, in 1915 he successfully developed China's first domestically produced diesel engine, which was soon put into production in batches, causing the surprise of foreign industrialists.

Although the diesel engine was developed, it could not be effectively applied in China at that time. Therefore, Xue Guangsen's research can only entertain himself, which is a huge distress for real scientists.

And the prospect described to him by the young marshal of the Northeast made him unable not to be moved: a tractor factory with an annual output of more than 100,000 units, the prospect of wide application, and a good thing for the benefit of the country and the people. So he came to Mukden with thick drawings.

Zhang Hanqing led the investment, and under the leadership of Xue Guangsen, Fengtian No. 1 Diesel Engine Factory was successfully established. Soon, a batch of tractor heads with 40 horsepower successfully left the factory, and after testing, the operation was stable and the performance was excellent, which made the first contribution to the mass production of tractors.

There are two types of tractors: wheeled and tracked. The earliest tractors used iron wheels, which were not only bulky and prone to getting bogged down, but also often crushed the roots of plants. In the development of wheeled tractors, at first people widened the steel wheels, increased the landing area, reduced pressure, but the effect was not good, and later came up with the method of adding a layer of rubber protective layer to the steel wheel, after the birth of car tires, people have used solid and pneumatic tires for tractors. But car tires are not completely suitable for tractors, one is that the grooves of car tires are too shallow. Second, people find that the tractor has better driving performance on soft ground when the tire is insufficient.

This problem has plagued the industry for many years, and Zhang Hanqing "first" proposed a large-size high-pattern, low-pressure pneumatic rubber tire---- which was not produced by the Filsdown Tire and Rubber Company in the United States until 1932. Later evaluations were that it greatly improved the driving and towing performance of wheeled tractors, and it was the first tire that was truly suitable for agricultural tractors.

Because tires cannot be manufactured by the current industrial capacity of Northeast China, the French Michelin (now translated as Michelin) Company, which invented the detachable pneumatic rubber tires, built the Fengtian No. 1 Tire Factory with its automobile tire technology under the heavy investment of the Northeast Autonomous Government, specializing in the production of high-spun low-pressure pneumatic rubber tires proposed by Zhang Hanqing, as a supporting factory for tractor tires.

The French brothers André and Édouard Michelin's Michelin Company influenced the world when they invented a detachable pneumatic rubber tire for automobiles in 1892. Puncture accidents, which used to be handled only by specialized repairmen, can now be repaired in a quarter of an hour. However, at that time, rubber tires made for tractors were still being explored, and no company or individual in the world dared to put this unknown theory into practice at great expense. But Zhang Hanqing was full of confidence that such tires can provide a suitable support for the development of tractors, and promised to immediately give an initial investment of not less than 5 million yuan---- to know that at this time every penny of the autonomous government is not easy to come by, 5 million yuan in France at that time is not a small number, with a love for new technology, Eduard Michelin personally guided the construction of the first tire factory in Fengtian, and successfully made the first batch of such tires, Zhang Hanqing personally named "Han" brand. First, this is to emphasize the first great invention of the Chinese in industrial society, and the second is perhaps taken from Zhang Hanqing's "Han" character, of course, this is just speculation when later generations study the history of this era.

As early as the birth of the steam car in the 30s of the 19th century, some people conceived the "track" made of wood and rubber for the car wheels, so that the heavy steam car could walk on the soft ground, but the early track performance and use effect was not good, until 1901 in the United States Lombard in the development of forestry traction vehicles, the first practical effect of the crawler was invented. Three years later, Holt, a California engineer, applied Lombard's invention to design and build the "7" steam tractor, the world's first tracked tractor. On November 24, 1904, the first tests of this tractor were carried out, and later it was put into mass production. In 1906, Holt's tractor-making company produced the world's first tracked tractor powered by a gasoline internal combustion engine, which began mass production the following year, and was the most successful tractor of its time, and became a reference for the development of the world's first tank in Britain a few years later.

Taking into account the topography of the Northeast, both tracked and wheeled tractors have been fully developed. This is because in addition to the busy agricultural season, the tractor can replace livestock and become the main power of the farm, and in peacetime, it can be used as an important alternative to civil mechanized transportation.

The successful use of tractors has made Northeast China the first region in China to move towards mechanization. With it, the progress of the Northeast Frontier is getting faster and faster, and it also makes the construction of the "Great Northern Wilderness" possible a few years later. As part of the industrial development of the upper modern history, China's tractor industry did not lag behind foreigners for the first time.

Compared with foreign countries, by the end of the 40s of this century, large-scale use was carried out in North America, Western Europe and Australia; Since then, tractors have been popularized and used in Eastern Europe, Asia, South America and Africa, and Northeast China has been valued and developed on a large scale 20 years ahead of schedule, which cannot but be said to be a revolution of no small scale.

Not only the manufacture of tractors, but also the supporting tires, engines, gears, bearings, rubber and other technologies have also been improved accordingly, which have laid a solid foundation for the industrialization of Northeast China, and its long-term benefits are obvious.

In Zhang Hanqing's conception, realizing that every household in the countryside has a tractor is a necessary prerequisite for realizing agricultural modernization. In Jilin, especially in Heilongjiang, in the southeast and northeast, due to the extreme lack of population, the average land per person can reach as much as 100 acres. It is unthinkable to rely on manpower to cultivate such a vast land, and this is also one of the root causes of the backwardness of agricultural construction in Northeast China for many years. The productivity of cultivating the land in the northeast is about the same as that of Kannai, so what is the use of having more land? It is estimated that this is one of the reasons why the Qing government during the Manchu Dynasty had no feeling that the land in the Far East was swallowed by the Russian whale.

Seeing the superiority of the tractor in farming, the common people also sincerely like this black smoke, a guy is worth ten middle-aged laborers, but its price is not beyond the reach of ordinary people's family financial resources, and they can only sigh.