After sending off the courier who had come to ask for his weapon, Chris knew that he needed to develop his weaponry more urgently.

He has been building up his industrial base for a long time, and now it's time to test his strength.

So, on the tenth day of the Messenger's departure, Chris convened a plenary meeting to discuss the next stage of development.

At the meeting, Chris first asked Gullo about the popularization of education, because he clearly knew that if you want to develop industry systematically, the reserve of talents is a problem that must be paid attention to.

Before, the model of staying up late and working overtime alone to make weapons and equipment alone like Chris could not support a large-scale war.

Hearing Collins' question, Gullo lifted the glasses on the bridge of his nose and said: "According to the development needs, we have built 30 primary schools and 9 junior high schools, and with the use of the movable type printing technology you provided, we have produced a large number of textbooks and distributed them to all students for free. ”

"It only takes a year for us to train a lot of talent, and then the factory will have enough talent to use." As he spoke, he pushed a report to Chris: "We bought a lot of teenagers from the neighborhood and trained them very well. ”

"It's really capricious to be rich......" Hearing that even the population of this world can be collected with gold coins, and it expands like an open hanging, Chris feels that being rich is really a very pleasant thing.

In fact, there are many more problems that can be solved with money. In order to support its own industrialization, the city of Serris purchased large quantities of industrial raw materials from the three surrounding regions, but basically did not export anything of value.

Gullo imported a large amount of cotton and stone from the Arrant Empire, which was used to support the textile industry and the production of some explosives, and the stone was used entirely in the infrastructure of the entire Duchy of Irranhill.

At Chris's request, the gravel was stockpiled for future use in the laying of the railway embankment, and the entire strip of stone was used in the construction of the factory building. Almost at all costs, countless factories have risen from the ground, and many have not even had time to install machinery, so they can only be measured and vacant in place.

Investments like this are everywhere in the vicinity of Serris City, but there are also projects that are profitable. For example, the two cement factories that have just been built are the busiest factories at present, and the manual cement manufacturing has been going on day and night, and the cement produced is simply not enough.

Everything procured was used for the construction of Ellan Hill, and nothing was wasted. The products of the cement factory and the stone are used to build buildings, and the minerals are used to smelt into metal - the quality of life of the common people in the entire principality is improving at a rate that is visible to the naked eye, and the hundreds of thousands of gold coins brought by Desel are also disappearing at a speed that is visible to the naked eye.

"I'm desperately trying to buy food." Tired and almost shedding, Dines reported tiredly: "Our population has at least doubled in the last two months...... There is definitely not enough food in reserve, so we must prepare in advance. ”

His report proves how money is running out: food procurement is definitely a major direction, and in order to feed the growing population, food can only be ensured by procurement. This is by no means a one-shot deal, as the population of the Duchy of Ellandhill is bound to be even larger next year.

It is almost an endless cycle to gather the population because there is a shortage of people, and to provide sufficient food because of the need to gather the population. Most of the time, in order to allow the surrounding civilians to immigrate to the territory of Elanhill, Chris will also order food subsidies for all residents.

Now he has enough manpower and enough soldiers, but the pressure is transferred to Deans, who manages the population and civil affairs, and this middle-aged man is so busy that he doesn't even have time to sleep.

The situation on Steed's side is not much better: "I only came back from the Higgs Kingdom yesterday...... The oil over there...... Uh, no, it's the price of oil that has gone up by fifty percent. The biggest problem is that the output of this thing is not that large. We have the money, and we can't buy much in stock. ”

Although there was the consumption of alchemy in this era, in most cases, fire oil was only a weapon used to defend the city, so the production was also small and the demand was not large. Now Chris is consuming a lot of oil and planning to reserve more, which is a bit of a tough man.

The bare-headed Mr. Stred had bought almost all the oil in the Higgs Kingdom, but he hadn't been able to meet Chris's request—not even a fraction of it.

Because the number of purchases and the number of products sold are too much, the current situation of Alan Hill is that what is sold has plummeted, and what has been bought has skyrocketed. In order to seize the speed of development, such an annoying thing, the Duchy of Irlanhill can only pinch its nose and admit it.

"The construction of the factory is very fast! After all, most of Ellenshill's expenses are piled up on the industry I am responsible for. Smith, who was already the best engineer in the city, spoke.

Holding a report on industrial progress, he said to Chris: "We built ten blast furnaces and started smelting steel with new timers, which increased efficiency dozens of times. The pass rate of steel has been satisfactory, and there are no problems in the production of new 75 mm caliber infantry guns. ”

"However, there are some things that are not satisfactory." He pointed to a line in the document and complained to Chris: "The amount of copper is seriously insufficient, we have smelted 1 million copper coins, but we still can't keep up with the rate of copper consumption. ”

A sufficient amount of copper can be said to be a calcium tablet of modern industry, and a large number of problems that cannot be solved by early industry are solved by using copper's good metal properties. This metal is also conductive against the sky, making it the best choice for wire and telephone lines.

"The matter of copper can only be solved by increasing procurement." Chris said with some depression: "In addition, find a way to use iron as an alternative." ”

During World War II, Germany was also a country with a serious shortage of copper. At a time when they were stretched thin, the Germans had to make even bullet casings from iron. Although the bullet case made of iron is not as good as the copper bullet case in terms of pumping performance, it is better to have a bullet than no bullet, right?

Therefore, under the premise that he couldn't think of any better way, Chris could only lower the requirements for use first, and let the factory start mass production of iron bullet shells first. Anyway, the soldiers on the front line should understand the problem of occasionally getting stuck - or that sentence, it's better than nothing, isn't it?

Glancing at Vagron, Chris raised his hand to signal that he didn't need to talk about the training in the army. Because he only went to see it yesterday, and the situation in the barracks was not ideal: "I'll talk to you alone about your problem later!" ”

"Yes!" Wagron reluctantly gave up his plan to expose his family scandal, and recently invested not a lot of money in military training, but there was too little talent in the army, and he could only barely make the training last.

Because the focus of Elanhill's construction has not been on the army recently, everyone has no intention of asking Waglong to report on it. Soon after him, Gullo went on to talk about the most important issue of education.

Moving a society towards industrialization is not an easy task, and in practice, it is much more complicated than Chris thought.

Even though he has countless books and knowledge to guide concrete actions, the accumulation of a large amount of work is still a daunting project.

Now, the original Seris periphery, including the Arrant in the south, the earthen fort in the north, and the Higgs kingdom in the west, have all benefited from the unruly development of the Duchy of Ellandhill. They earned a lot of gold from Irlanhill, which for a time made the border region prosperous.

But who would have thought that Ellen Hill, who has been burdened with too many unreasonable contradictions, has made up his mind from the beginning to use a war to transfer all the contradictions in the country, open the market, and complete a gorgeous transformation!

As long as the defeated countries can be made to pay for their own development, this illogical leapfrog development can be established. Alan Hill will be able to erase the scourge and get another brief chance to develop.

Of course, if it continues like this, Iran Hill will still expand and attack the next neighbor - like a glutton, and it will not stop until it eats all its neighbors.

"The next thing we need to do is to set up the arsenal as soon as possible! Whatever it takes! We're all going to prepare for a war! Chris looked at his henchmen and spoke.

He clasped his hands in front of his chest, and pondered his decision at this moment: "If we sit and eat like this, we will only collapse." ”

"Yes, I just made a statistic that if we can't get a huge sum of 300,000 gold coins within half a year, we will be insolvent...... It's time to declare bankruptcy. Deser is sensitive to this aspect, and it was he who reminded Chris before the meeting to be aware of the lack of funds.

If you slowly digest it internally and develop other new industries, it is not impossible for the Duchy of Irlanhill to digest its own industrial achievements. But that would only slow down your own development and waste valuable time.

Including Chris, Deser and Deans and others know that they seem to have a more irresponsible, or better option, - war!

The reason is simple: if wars can be won, why not use wars to solve problems? From the perspective of being able to win, the war brings attractive benefits!

As long as the war can be won, Elanhill can expand its territory, have a larger population, offset some of its debts, and reduce the pressure in the direction of the border......

All of this is very tempting in front of you. For the first time, Chris experienced the mood of those war maniacs: this kind of gamble, which can be roughly judged to win or lose after careful calculation, is too much to want to bet.

Unlike the others, Chris has a lot of bets and huge wins. Whether it's Desel or Chris, they don't even think about losing the war - they don't even need to think about it, because if they lose the war, they will definitely not live to see it.