"The military department's coastal defense yamen? Minister of Coastal Defense of the Ministry of War? Zhu Youxiao repeated, frowned, and did not directly answer Wei Bao's words.

Wei Bao was shocked in his heart, as he thought before, this Zhu Youxiao is really not a person who doesn't care about things at all, he just suffered a lot of setbacks, and he was afraid, and felt that hiding behind the scenes and letting Wei Zhongxian toss in front was far better than going into battle himself.

But when it comes to financial and military measures, Zhu Youxiao is very careful.

Zhu Youxiao didn't say anything, and Wei Bao didn't urge him, and continued to do his own carpentry work, as if he hadn't said anything just now.

The two of them seemed to have nothing to say for a while.

Zhu Youxiao has an account in his heart, Wei Bao's current official position is a bachelor in the Hanlin Academy, a scholar in the cabinet, a secretary in the cabinet, a secretary in the Metropolitan Inspection Academy, and a Dali Temple Zuo Sicheng.

Although there are four titles, the first two are fictitious civil officials and have no power, just to facilitate access to the palace, while the latter two are civil officials with real power, but they are both judicial yamen, just supervising hundreds of officials, checking the law, and they are Beijing officials, which are easy to control.

However, Wei Bao took the initiative to ask for the establishment of the military department coastal defense yamen, which involves many things, first of all, the sea route will be opened, which will break the Ming Dynasty's consistent maritime ban strategy, and secondly, the addition of a military department yamen, which also means that there will be an extra force. Wei Bao said that he paid for it, but how could the army of the imperial court let a private person pay for it? In that case, in the end, this army is your Wei Bao's army, or the army of the Ming Dynasty?

Zhu Youxiao is playful, can't stand setbacks, and has no political talent, but he is not stupid, a royal person, his genes are generally excellent, and he must not be said to be not smart.

"Wei Aiqing, I will consider the matter of setting up the coastal defense yamen of the military department. The stakes are too high to be hastily decided, and must be referred to the Cabinet for deliberation. Zhu Youxiao said: "And, in my opinion, it's difficult!" Daming has always relied on Cao Yun, and the sudden opening of the sea involved the interests of many people, for fear of causing chaos. ”

Wei Bao probably expected that the emperor would say this, and he was not in a hurry, he was afraid that you would not speak, and he was not afraid that you would resist!

There is still a difference between the resistance of opening and the resistance of not speaking, as long as you are willing to speak, it proves that you have thought about it, not refuse to think about it.

The Ming government tended to maintain a rigid bureaucracy in the foreground, with adjustments and controls in the background.

Although the Ming court had to make some reforms due to the actual situation, at the same time it tried its best to maintain the bureaucratic system that had been set up, and even did not hesitate to compromise the functions of officials to solve this purpose.

Thus, although some temporary institutions were added by exception, the Ming court never managed to make regular adjustments to the government institutions, and always continued to maintain the superficial bureaucracy.

There are problems such as unclear responsibilities, broken duties, double sets of central government agencies, and overlapping institutions.

The duties of the post of Governor of Caoyun are not clearly defined, and those who hold them have the opportunity to show their personal characteristics.

Since there are many kinds of responsibilities in this position, it requires the incumbent's talent to be comprehensive and be able to give full play to his creativity.

Facts have proved that the people who hold this post are, on the whole, some energetic, determined, and decisive officials.

In the original history, of the more than 80 Caoyun governors of the Ming Dynasty, 32 later became cabinet members.

The current governor of Caoyun is actually concurrently held by Feng Quan.

This record is noteworthy considering that cabinet positions in the Ming Dynasty were often monopolized by powerful figures for long periods of time.

The Ming government set up a checkpoint in Qingjiangpu, which was responsible for collecting taxes and building ships.

The original excise tax, levied in kind, included timber, bamboo, cast iron, lime, hemp, coal, and tung oil.

For other items, the Huai'an government is responsible for collecting toll taxes.

The officials at the checkpoint were appointed by the Huai'an prefect as the chief representative and clerk, Lang Zhong of the Qingjiangpu Branch of the Ministry of Industry was appointed as an adjutant, and Shanyang County dispatched guards and handymen. There are more than 100 employees in total.

All tax receipts and account books at the checkpoint are issued by the Governor of Caoyun and are under his strict supervision.

Although the Ming bureaucracy was strictly divided into several parts.

There was clearly an unbridgeable gap between the civilian and military systems, between the Beijing officials and the local officials, and between the ministers of Shangshu and the officials on special missions of the imperial court.

The lower bureaucracy, on the other hand, has shown enough adaptability to keep its parts running.

Officials from various opposing systems were able to organize.

In the early years of the Ming Dynasty's rule, the total amount of taxes in the country was close to 29.5 million stones.

12 million stone is at the disposal of the local government as official salaries, administrative expenses, pensions and pensions, relief expenses, government school fees, and local grain storage fees.

Another 8 million stones, mainly collected in North China, were used as military rations for the troops stationed on the Northwest Front.

The remaining less than 10 million stone of tax grain was spent by the central government, of which 1.2 million stone was given to Nanjing, and the total income of Beijing was about 8.2 million stone.

Stability is a significant feature of the operation of the water transport system. It basically reflects the Ming court's efforts to fix the revenues and expenditures of the state treasury according to a predetermined plan.

The 380,000 hereditary military households in the early Ming Dynasty dropped to 50,000 in the early 16th century due to the large number of military households fleeing.

The "dissolution" system leads to poverty and bankruptcy, and the tax grain must be transported by taxpayers to its destination.

Forced to buy necessities such as tea, salt, and textile materials from other regions, and unable to find a way to balance trade and increase income, the Northwest had a massive outflow of silver, leading to a general depression in the region in the ensuing period.

In the early days, because the frontline areas had to pay taxes on grain, the salt merchants had their own land in the border areas.

In 1492, the Ming court announced that the payment would be made in silver, and the salt merchants sold their land from the northern regions and left.

The Ming Dynasty's inability to mobilize local resources to serve its purposes led to an overall weakening of its rule.

The reason for the failure of the Ming court originated from the blind implementation of the general plan formulated by the founder of the Ming dynasty.

Once a precedent is established, they are unwilling and powerless to change it, even if it is not reasonable.

In the later period of the reign of the Ming Dynasty, although many deficiencies in the ancestral system had been discovered, the Ming court did not take any measures to improve them.

At the same time, there does not appear to be any other alternative system to replace it.

Zhang Juzheng has eliminated many malpractices, but Zhang Juzheng's reign was not long, only less than ten years, Zhang Juzheng died, and all recovered, and even intensified.

So the ship of Daming has been pushing in a bad direction.

Under the influence of the eunuchs' urging, the emperor usually ordered tribute of new varieties in addition to the old ones.

Theoretically, the newly added goods should be deducted from the land tax borne by the supplying regions, but in practice, the Ming court often "ignored" the deductions, and the regions concerned had to pay tribute without compensation.

Moreover, once the precedent is set, unless it is revoked, the prefecture and county concerned must maintain and continue.

The Ming court turned into a behemoth with a bloody mouth open, quickly engulfing the country's additional production.

The Zongren Mansion it set up is a "canteen" for thousands of people.

To a certain extent, the Ming court also became a distribution center for consumer goods. Distribute various supplies to aristocratic families and government officials.

In this way, the Ming government further abolished the purchasing power of the top level of the state, and there was little opportunity and room for the development of private business.

The bureaucracy of the Ming Dynasty was opposed to changing the country's image as an agricultural power and was unwilling to carry out any development experiments; This situation can show that the political and ideological concepts of their time lacked originality.

The Cao Yun system and its subsidiary institutions, which were set up in the early 15th century, are still solutions to problems and have a certain degree of rationality, despite their shortcomings.

But in the 16th century, the system was rigid and many of its settings became noticeably outdated.

By the end of the century and the early 17th century, Ming officials were clearly behind the times.

The rupture between the ideology and reality of their management of the country can no longer be resolved by technical remedies.

The fundamental reason is that their minds are not alive and have become ossified.

It was not until the discovery of fire that human beings began to enter the stage of cooked food, and salt entered human life as a condiment, which was actually a relatively late thing.

Until the Xia Dynasty, salt was a luxury limited to the aristocracy. In the Shang Dynasty, salt was only known to people, and people even used salt to treat diseases, "nourishing the veins with salt".

After a week, salt has become a necessity of people's lives, "no salt is swollen".

Salt is the core ingredient of cooking, and the Book of Han calls it "the general of the eaters".

In traditional agrarian societies, although most of the means of production and subsistence were self-sufficient, salt had to be obtained from the outside world, unlike grain, which could be produced as long as there was land and water.

For more than 2,000 years of Chinese history, table salt was important to individuals, but even more so to empires.

In other words, imperial finances are built on the tip of everyone's tongue.

At the time of the Xia Shang dynasty, China had not yet fully entered the national phase.

As a result, salt, as an important special commodity, triggered a series of political changes.

The nobles, who relied on the people's support, quickly discovered this treasure, so Zhou Tianzi began to set up salt officials.

The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period as China's golden age, the political, economic and cultural are all precocious, with the popularization of salt, the source of salt is becoming more and more extensive, with the Kunshan and Tongguan as the boundary, the east is dominated by sea salt, the west is dominated by rock salt and pond salt, and the south is mostly soil salt.

Zigong, Sichuan is famous for its well salt, and Jiangnan is even named after Yancheng.

Against the backdrop of competition among nations, salt-producing regions and countries have made a fortune on this natural resource.

At the same time, some merchants also relied on salt to get rich, such as Yidun, who relied on selling salt from Hedongchi and became the first generation of rich salt merchants in the Spring and Autumn Period.

In the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, the rise of Legalism, Guan Zhong, who put forward the idea of "benefiting a hole", took the lead in implementing an official monopoly on salt in Qi State, opening a precedent for salt finance in Chinese history for more than 2,000 years.

"Measure its weight, calculate its win, the people get seven, and the king gets three."

The monopoly power of the government has extended from politics to the economic field, the ability to absorb finance has been greatly enhanced, and the huge financial benefits have achieved the multiple effects of a rich country and a weak people suppressing business.

It is said in "Guanzi Sea King Chapter" that the state levies a house tax, and people will destroy the house; A tree tax is levied, and people will cut down trees; Six animal taxes, people would kill livestock; A population tax will be levied, and people will refuse to have children.

Only when the state has a monopoly on salt can the people not escape. As a result, salt is the most desirable tax tool.

Everyone can't do without salt, which determines that no one can escape taxes.

After Guan Zhong's salt official camp "Guanshanhai" plan was released, the price of salt in Qi soared to dozens of times that of other countries.

Under the salt monopoly system, the production, sale, and pricing of salt were all carried out by the government, which led to the degradation of its commodity attributes.

No matter how expensive salt is, people still have to eat salt, and the wealth of the people quickly flows into Qi Huangong's treasury through the medium of salt.

Sima Qian commented in the "Historical Records": "Qi Huan used the strategy of managing the middle, the power of the importance of the power, the industry of the mountains and the sea, and became famous for the princes of the dynasty and the use of the Qi of the mere Qi. ”

From the beginning of the Qi Kingdom, salt became the foundation of national rule, and the salt profit in the Qin period was 20 times that of ancient times. It is a miracle in human history that a huge empire, for the next 2,000 years, relied on the small daily condiments necessary for the general public.

In the third year of the Han Yuan Hunt (120 B.C.), Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty officially implemented the monopoly policy of salt and iron, "cage the world's salt and iron", and the government recruited the people to fry the salt, and the salt was officially collected, transported and sold.

There are a total of 36 salt officials in 27 counties, mainly distributed in the coastal, northwest and southwest salt-producing areas. Sang Hongyang has successively served as the chief farmer Zhongcheng, the great farmer, the imperial historian and other important positions, in charge of the world's financial power for more than 40 years, is the main planner of the national policy of salt and iron.

In February of the sixth year of the first century (81 B.C.), under the auspices of Emperor Zhao of the Han Dynasty, more than 60 folk intellectuals from all over the country rushed to debate with the imperial historian Sang Hongyang on the salt and iron official camp, which was the famous salt and iron conference.

This salt and iron conference was actually a debate between Legalism and Confucianism, and the result was that the chicken and duck talked about it, and no result was reached, and the only gain was the "Salt and Iron Treatise" as a record of the meeting.

The idea of free economy put forward by the Confucian scholars is the same as the commercial ideas embodied in Sima Qian's "Historical Records: The Biography of the Goods and Colonies", which is completely in line with Adam Smith's theory of free market and small government more than 1,800 years later.

During the period of the Three Kingdoms, Wei, Shu and Wu struggled politically, militarily and economically, and salt was almost regarded as the lifeline of the country. ”

After the two Jin Dynasty, the salt monopoly system was further strengthened, and the "Jin Order" contained: "All people are not allowed to cook salt privately, and the offender shall be sentenced to four years of imprisonment, and the chief official shall be sentenced to two years of age." ”

The Tang Dynasty's salt income reached "one-half or at least two-fifths of the total real income of the central government."

In order to raise military funds to suppress the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty established the Salt Law. 榷 means single-plank bridge.

All the salt produced by salt farmers is purchased at a low price, and then sold to the people at a high price.

Implement a strict salt administration system of civil system, official collection, official transportation, and official sales, and strictly prohibit private cooking and smuggling, and violators will be punished with capital punishment for one pound and one tael.

After the implementation of the Salt Law, the price of salt rose by an astonishing 36 times, reaching 370 yuan per bucket, and the government could obtain 120 times the excess profit.

At the beginning of Liu Yan's tenure as salt and iron envoy in the Tang Dynasty, the annual income of the salt class was 400,000 guan, and the world's financial revenue during the calendar year was 12 million guan, and the salt profit accounted for most of it and was half of the national income.

Even after the Anshi Rebellion was pacified, the salt law continued, and other prices were falling, and only the price of salt rose against the market.

The Song Empire was the richest man in the world at that time, and the salt profit contributed the most.

During the Qingli period, there were more than 7.15 million salt classes.

In the Southern Song Dynasty government finances, "the profit of the sea accounts for half of it".

Under the salt finance, "salt money" and "jiaozi" appeared in the Northern Song Dynasty.

As a kind of credit note, salt money is "salt with money".

For the Southern Song Dynasty court, all expenses, including military expenses, were taken from salt money, so there was a saying at the time that "the south crosses the country and relies on salt money".

"Jiaozi" was jointly issued by 16 salt merchants in Sichuan, and one Jiaozi became the world's earliest banknote.

The maximum amount of salt in the Yuan Dynasty was more than 7.66 million ingots, and seven-eight out of ten of the fiscal expenditure depended on salt profits.

The salt administration of the Yuan Dynasty was more harsh and strict, "the country's wealth, salt profits are prosperous", "the country's assets, its benefits are as extensive as salt".

The military expenditure of the Ming Dynasty has been high, "the national wealth, the so-called salt law is half of the income, cover the annual income, up to four million, half of the people's endowment, half of which is taken from the salt pod."

The government of the Ming Dynasty borrowed from the salt banknotes of the Song Dynasty and used "salt introduction" to control the monopoly of salt. For every 200 stone of grain that a merchant transports to the border pass, the official will give a quotation ticket, with which the merchant can exchange salt for sale in Lianghuai or Hedong, and the difference in price is the merchant's profit.

Since Liu Yan founded the on-site monopoly system of civil system, official revenue, official sale, commercial transportation and commercial sales, it was used for 855 years, and it was not replaced by the commercial monopoly system of civil system, commercial income, commercial transportation and commercial sales in the Wanli era of the Ming Dynasty.

Since then, the era of red-roofed businessmen who have been supervising business and selling power for more than 300 years has also begun.

The Qing Dynasty implemented official supervision and commercial management, that is, the state only sold a limited number of licenses, and did not directly buy and sell salt.

Under the complete monopoly system, the difference between the purchase price and the sales price of salt in the Qianlong era was 3-4 times, and the annual profit rate was as high as 194.1%.

In the Qing Dynasty, the monopoly of salt merchants was much more serious than that of the Ming Dynasty.

Relying on the concession of table salt, the salt merchants were completely different from ordinary merchants and had a much closer relationship with the imperial court and the government.

On the one hand, Yangzhou salt merchants became rich with patents, and on the other hand, from the emperor to the salt affairs and local officials, all took the salt merchants as their profits and competed to divide the fertilizer, resulting in the cost of salt becoming higher and more expensive.

The reform movement of the late Qing Dynasty once attempted to reform the salt bureaucracy, but was met with resolute resistance from the vested interests of officials and businessmen until the fall of the Qing Dynasty. The history is known as "the accumulation of disadvantages of monopoly and the end of the Qing Dynasty".

Whoever is in power will be the first to stretch out his hand to Caoyun and salt and iron! Especially salt.

That's why Zhu Youxiao was so cautious and didn't answer Wei Bao's question immediately.

But Wei Bao is now eager to reach out to Caoyun to break this monopoly, so as to carry out shipping and sea trade.

The Qing Dynasty was monopolized by salt merchants and the iron officials of the imperial court, and the Ming Dynasty was the governor of Caoyun who actually controlled the salt and iron.

The iron and steel industry is the basic industry of a society, and the industrial development history of modern countries in the world shows that with steel, there can be machines, and there is the rapid development of the entire industry and the national economy.

In the Ming Dynasty, the production of iron smelting and steelmaking developed to a very high level, with a large scale, a large output, and a high technology, surpassing any dynasty in China's history, and ranking in the forefront of all countries in the world.

In this process, the private sector of iron smelting has continued to grow and develop, while the state-owned enterprises have been decreasing.

Judging from the "Ming Shilu", the policy in the early Ming Dynasty was that the state had a small amount of iron in stock, and if it was urgently needed to use iron, it would open a furnace to smelt iron in the designated iron mining areas, and if the amount of iron in stock was enough to be used, the government-run iron smelting would be stopped, and the people would be allowed to mine and smelt in these mining areas on their own, and the state would levy iron taxes according to the proportion of one-fifteenth.

Outside the designated mining areas, sometimes officials suggested the establishment of state-run iron smelting, but Zhu Yuanzhang severely reprimanded them, and even exiled the officials who made the suggestions overseas.

In May of the fifteenth year of Hongwu, Wang Yundao, an official of Guangping Mansion, said that Linshui Town, Cizhou produced iron, and that one million catties of iron could be collected here a year in the Yuan Dynasty, and Zhu Yuanzhang was advised to handle it as usual.

As a result, Zhu Yuanzhang replied: I have heard that there are no virtuous people in the world, and I have not heard that there are no benefits in the world. And the benefit is not in the officials, but in the people. If the people get their benefits, the benefits will be beneficial to the officials; If the government monopolizes its profits, the source of profits will be blocked and the people will be harmed. Today, there are still many iron smelters, there is no shortage of military supplies, and the people's livelihood has been decided. If this is restored, it will be disturbed again, and it will want to drive thousands of thousands of families into iron smelting. The rod and the like are overseas.

Wang Yundao kindly proposed to increase the country's revenue, but the result was "the rod and the like overseas".

In areas like Linshui Town, Cizhou, the people will inevitably mine iron for profit, and the Ming government seems to have not only not opened an iron smelting office, but also did not collect iron classes.

In the 25th year of Hongwu, there was a large-scale national furnace smelting, and in September of the 28th year of Hongwu, the "Ming Shilu" recorded: "The furnace smelting has been continued everywhere, and it has been three years now, and the inner library has seen more than 37,430,000 catties of iron storage." The iron stored in the warehouse has been ordered to stop iron smelting in various places, so that the people can mine and smelt themselves. The annual loss course is divided into two out of every 30 points. ”

More than 37.43 million catties of iron were stored in the three years of the furnace, which should be the result of the original quota of iron handed over by various localities plus the amount of iron smelting minus consumption. Less than two and a half years later, the official reported that the iron in the stock was not enough, and applied for a new furnace, and Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the furnace to be temporarily opened for one year: "The minister of the Ministry of Industry said: The iron smelting everywhere has been lived in for a long time, and the iron stored in the inner warehouse is limited, and the construction cost is very large, and I am afraid that it will not be enough for many years." The order was to temporarily open the furnace for one year, and still live again. ”

From the above, it can be seen that the production of iron by the government in the early Ming Dynasty was completely determined by the needs of the government, and when needed, it was smelted in a designated iron smelting station, and stopped when it was not needed. The scale of private iron production has always been large.

After the cessation of official metallurgy, most of the iron-smelting craftsmen will not change their careers, but they will change from serving the state to seeking personal profits, and the amount of iron produced should not decline, and will even increase under the drive of profits.

Since the amount of private iron production is not within the scope of the Ming government's statistics, 18.47 million catties is closer to the sum of the quota figures allocated to various places in a certain period of time, and the iron class outside of this is in the form of nothing, so it is difficult to get a truly accurate estimate.

After the Xuande of the Ming Dynasty, the number of iron courses on the official books increased greatly, mainly due to the low efficiency of government-run iron smelting and gradually abolished, and the iron courses that were originally levied by the form of official compensation may be more in the form of ordinary iron courses.

So this increase in iron class numbers is not only an increase in production, but also a result of a change in statistical methods.

The growth of iron production after Xuande is too amazing, and the comparison between the iron class figures in some places and the iron production quota figures in the early Ming Dynasty can illustrate some problems: the number of private iron classes in Yangcheng County, Shanxi Province in the fifth year of Tianshun is 560,000 catties, which is converted into an iron output of about 8 million catties; The quota given to Shanxi during the Hongwu period was 1146917 catties, and the private iron output of Yangcheng County alone was more than seven times the quota of Shanxi Province during the Hongwu period; In the 10th year of Jiajing, the output of private iron in Guangdong Province converted according to tax and silver was 27.64 million catties, which was about 1.5 times that of the total national quota of 18.47 million catties in the early Ming Dynasty, and Guangdong Province alone exceeded 50% of the country.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Guangdong's quota was 1896641 catties, accounting for about one-tenth of the national proportion, assuming that the proportion of private iron production in the Jiajing period was similar, then the national private iron output at this time should be 269.23 million catties, which is about 160,000 tons of output. This is on the same level as the total European steel production of 140,000 to 180,000 tons at the beginning of the 18th century.

However, no matter how it is calculated, "the steel output of the Ming Dynasty reached the highest level in the history of the feudal dynasties", "the steel output in the middle and late Ming Dynasty not only created the highest level in the history of our country, but also occupied the first place in the world".

The scale and technology of private iron smelting in the Ming Dynasty not only made great progress compared with the previous generation, but also was the most advanced level in the world at that time.

Foshan Town, Guangdong Province developed into an iron-smelting and casting center during the Chenghua and Hongzhi years, forming a typical industrialized city, with more than 20,000 or 30,000 workers in various smelting and casting, while the largest government-run Zunhua Iron Factory had only 2,500 people at the most.

There are as many as five or seven hundred people in one furnace of Longxi iron-smelting blast furnace in Zhangzhou, Fujian. During the Wanli period, Wenyu Mountain, Xia County, Shanxi Province, gathered six or seven thousand iron ore miners. In the west of Jizhou, nearly 10,000 people gathered in iron mining and iron smelting during the Jiajing period.

The bottle furnace used by the people in the late Ming Dynasty is larger than the official furnace, and it can produce 3,600 catties of iron in one day and night, and can produce more than 6,000 catties of iron per day.

Piston blowers have been used in folk ironmaking, and the structure and function are consistent with modern blower equipment.

European technology in this area lagged far behind the Ming Dynasty, the relatively rudimentary triangular wooden bellows were only invented in the 16th century, the rectangular wooden bellows were delayed, and as for the blower that used pistons to push and compress air, "this was already in the late 18th century".

The tandem smelting process of raw and wrought iron invented in the Ming Dynasty greatly improved the production efficiency, and in addition, coal iron smelting was also promoted to a greater extent.

Song Yingxing said in "Heavenly Creations": "Where the furnace uses charcoal for blazing iron, coal ranks seventeen, and charcoal ranks thirteen" The earthen blast furnace has also been greatly improved, and the iron-smelting furnace and the iron-frying furnace can be used in series.

Fang Yizhi said in "Physics Knowledge": "Where the iron furnace is made of salt and mud, it is not fried as pig iron when it comes out of the furnace, and it is left in the square pond when it melts, and it is cooked when it is sprinkled with dry mud and stirred with a willow stick." ”

This iron-smelting technology reduces the process of re-melting wrought iron, shortens the time of frying wrought iron, and reduces costs, which is an important achievement in the history of iron smelting.

The smelting method of Suzhou steel invented in the Ming Dynasty is a new development of steel smelting technology, and Zhou Zhihong, a modern smelting expert, said: "There is no similar invention in foreign countries, and it is obviously a creative invention." The whole process is suitable for modern metallurgical principles, and a method of iron oxidation is created without a crucible to separate the slag iron and become a relatively pure tool steel. This is the crystallization of the wisdom of advanced steelmakers in ancient China. ”

Pig iron pouring technology is also a unique creation of the Ming Dynasty, Yang Kuan's "History of the Development of Ancient Chinese Iron Smelting Technology": In the Ming Dynasty, when forging the blades of tools and weapons, the method of pig iron pouring was adopted, so that the blades had a surface layer of steel structure.

Pig iron rinsing technology is used to make the original production tools with wrought iron or low carbon steel as the body, and there is a layer of rubbing layer of a certain thickness on the surface, including carburizing layer and pig iron cladding layer. The carburized layer has the properties of high carbon steel, which meets the requirements of hard surface, internal flexibility and wear resistance.

In the Ming Dynasty, the method of pouring and clamping several wrought iron flakes with pig iron was a step forward from the previous method of pouring coiled wrought iron bars with pig iron before the Song Dynasty.

In the late Ming Dynasty, the smelting method of Suzhou steel took another step forward.

After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the pig iron leaching technology was the development of the smelting method of Suzhou steel, which played a great role in improving the performance of production tools.

The steelmaking technology of the Ming Dynasty was far ahead of the world at that time.

It was not until the 18th century that Europe invented the method of making steel by placing wrought iron and pig iron in crucibles.

Therefore, Wei Bao's world will look for high-level iron-smelting talents from all over the Ming Dynasty, just using the technology of this era, Wei Bao believes that it is not a dream to create a battle cruiser that can go to the sea.

Of course, due to technical limitations, the service life of such large warships may not be very long.

In the 20 th century, the level of warship manufacturing was purely the military discipline of developed countries, and they could often serve for 20 to 30 years, and after being decommissioned, they could be used for 20 or 30 years, and there were many warships that survived for more than half a century.

In this era, President Wei is already very satisfied with the construction of a warship that has been in service for five years and has survived for more than ten years.

"Your Majesty is worried about harming vested interests and creating great chaos." Wei Bao said: "Weichen can guarantee that if all the shipping is handed over to Weichen, the income of the imperial court will increase significantly!" Not only that, no matter what chaos happens, Weichen has the ability to solve problems for His Majesty. Weichen can try his best to ensure the stability of the Ming Dynasty and sweep away internal and external troubles one by one. ”

Bragging when it's time to brag.

What's more, Wei Bao doesn't feel like he's bragging right now.

"Well, well, we'll see after a while. Let's not talk about it yet. Zhu Youxiao flinched.

Wei Bao saw that he couldn't urge anymore, nodded yes, and concentrated on accompanying the emperor to do carpentry work.

Wei Bao knew that the emperor had no confidence in himself!

If you want to show your loyalty to the emperor and not lose to Wei Zhongxian, and your ability surpasses Wei Zhongxian, and you are not more difficult to control than Wei Zhongxian, the emperor should reuse himself.

Perhaps, there is one more more, and Wei Zhongxian can't be allowed to kill himself!

Wei Bao felt that even if the emperor reused himself, he would not kick out Wei Zhongxian, Wei Zhongxian should be as stable as Mount Tai before the death of Emperor Zhu Youxiao of the Apocalypse, so he must not break with Wei Zhongxian casually.

Back at the mansion, Wu Xuexia, Wang Qiuya, Princess Zhenming, Xiong Xin'er, and Yang Xue were all waiting for him to come back.

Xiong Xin'er's brother Xiong Zhaoqi and several of Yang Xue's brothers went home, but the two of them stayed in Wei Bao's mansion of their own volition.

Wei Bao asked them to go back first, there was no need to stay with him in order to save their father, but the second daughter seemed to be determined to follow Wei Bao.

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