The operation to transport Chinese laborers lasted for more than two months, during which time Li Mingyuan took out a large amount of seized silver dollars and a part of the gold in stock, and hired merchant ships at a price 1.5 times higher than the market price.

The profit of transporting Chinese laborers seems to be weak, but in fact, the profit of a boat from the Caribbean to Rio Gran do Sul is more than 200 percent, and the Rio Gran do Sul pays the cost of hiring merchant ships at 1.5 times the market price, and the profit margin of the fleets of various countries will only be higher.

After the First Industrial Revolution, the seafaring industry succeeded in the most lucrative and lucrative industries, from the early African triangular trade to the later plundering of the mineral resources of the colonies, European merchant ships going to sea were able to successfully make a round trip, and the profits obtained were often several times or even tenfold.

In the nineteenth century, in order to stabilize the colonial order and obtain more benefits from the colonies, Britain announced a ban on the slave trade, and later France, the United States, the Netherlands and other countries abolished slavery.

North and South America, the Caribbean region is rich in resources, sparsely populated, without the slave trade, mines and plantations are not abundant labor, in this situation, the independent American countries found an alternative way to deceive the Chinese to go to sea in the form of indentured labor, as the new main force of labor.

Nearly 100,000 Chinese laborers go to sea every year to promote the seafaring trade between South America and the mainland, and hundreds of coolies full of Chinese sail in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, transporting the Chinese laborers who have been defrauded from the mainland to every corner of the world.

In the process of sailing, a coolie ship is often loaded with three or four hundred Chinese laborers, they are crowded on the lower deck of the coolie, each shoulder-to-shoulder, there is no place to lie down and rest.

With the cramped space and poor living conditions, many Chinese laborers died on boats on the way and were then thrown overboard to become food for fish.

The Cuban Chinese workers who survived had experienced unimaginable hardships and hardships, and on the way back to Rio Gran do Sul, Li Mingyuan did not want them to suffer the torture of going to sea again.

At the same time, Li Mingyuan demanded that each merchant ship should not carry more than the standard number of Chinese workers, and that the Chinese workers on board should be guaranteed a place to rest.

It is impossible to provide a very good onboard environment for Chinese workers in the least amount of time possible, but the rest area of a one-person place, the diet and health of the Chinese workers on the boat must be basically guaranteed.

While in Rio Gran do Sul, Li Mingyuan was always concerned about the actions of transporting Chinese workers.

After the first batch of large-scale transport fleets returned with 25,000 Chinese laborers, in order to improve transportation efficiency, the ships hired from various countries no longer acted in a unified manner in the form of large fleets, but formed a small fleet of more than a dozen large and medium-sized ships, and once the number of Chinese laborers on board was sufficient, the small fleet set off immediately. The large-scale pirate forces entrenched in the Caribbean were exterminated by Chen Sen and others, and small-scale pirates posed no threat to the transport fleet carrying weapons, and the scattered small transport fleet sailing in the Caribbean Sea did not need to worry.

A large sum of money was spent in exchange for the safe arrival of most of the Chinese Cuban workers in Rio Gran do Sul, and a small number of Chinese workers stranded on the island of Cuba have also gathered in more than a dozen temporary settlements and will leave the island within the following month.

Most of the Brazilian soldiers were released, and their former construction work was entrusted to the Chinese workers who had arrived early.

In the Xinjing (Porto Alegre) area, Chinese-style wooden houses are neatly arranged outside the old city, and on the periphery of the wooden houses, a new wall more than two meters high surrounds the old city and the wooden houses.

Xinjing was the administrative and military center of Rio Gran do Sul, and the city built by the Brazilians was too small to accommodate the garrisons and retired soldiers who had gathered around Xinjing, so the new expansion of the city began soon after the arrival of Prussian experts.

The new city covers an area of about seven square kilometers, and is mainly planned as a residential area for ordinary people, an army garrison area, a government army station, and a light factory commercial block...... In the early days of the founding of the country, there were many places where a lot of money had to be invested, and the construction of the royal palace at this time outweighed the losses.

Rejected the proposal to build a royal palace, Li Mingyuan continued to live in the castle left by the Brazilians, while Liu Pu, Sun Bin and others set up their residences near the castle so that they could report to Li Mingyuan on state affairs.

On the construction site outside the wooden house, about 10,000 Chinese workers who had arrived earlier were carrying cement and bricks to build the city wall.

The cement and brick factories were built at the foot of a hill more than ten miles away, and were built by Chinese workers under the guidance of Prussian experts.

Some of the more than 10,000 Chinese laborers were responsible for transporting bricks and cement from more than ten miles away, and some were responsible for mixing cement and building city walls. The division of labor between the two parts of the Chinese labor is clear, and the vast construction site is full of orderly labor scenes.

Li Mingyuan wore an ordinary black military uniform, and Sun Bin and others came to the construction site to check.

In the center of the construction site is a cement pile of more than 20 square meters, and more than a dozen Chinese workers are mixing lime with shovels while splashing water.

Li Mingyuan walked to the cement pile and found that more than a dozen Chinese workers were working on the cement with bare feet, and immediately stopped: "Cement is corrosive, everyone wear shoes, don't mix cement barefoot." ”

As soon as the words fell, the eyes of more than a dozen Chinese workers who were working gathered on Li Mingyuan and his party, wearing military uniforms and many guards around them, and the Chinese workers regarded Li Mingyuan as a national defense force officer.

"My lord, the government gave each of us a pair of cloth shoes, the cloth shoes are all new, we don't want to break the cloth shoes, so we just mix cement lime with bare feet."

A man in a white turban explained.

Cement is corrosive, cloth shoes are easy to damage when stepped on in cement slurry, Li Mingyuan understands this truth, but watching the Chinese workers work barefoot in order to save a pair of shoes, he has some bad feelings in his heart.

"Building the city wall is not something that can be completed in a short time, always working barefoot is very harmful to your body, so let's ask the factory to make a batch of waterproof rubber shoes for you, and you don't have to worry about your feet being corroded by 3 cement when you wear rubber shoes to work in the future."

"Shizi, what are galoshes, why haven't you heard of it?" The factories that the Prussians helped to set up were textile factories, garment factories, and cloth and shoe factories, but there were no connected factories. Therefore, Sun Bin felt strange and puzzled.

"No galoshes? Brazil is the origin of rubber, and the rubber extracted from rubber trees can be used to make a variety of basic industrial products such as rubber shoes and tires. ”

Li Mingyuan was surprised at first, and then thought slowly, only to understand the crux of the matter, Brazilians in order to monopolize the interests of rubber production, prohibiting the flow of rubber seeds to other countries, at this time rubber is only available in Brazil, other countries want to obtain rubber raw materials, can only buy from Brazil, and later in 1876, British businessmen secretly brought out thousands of rubber tree seeds from Brazil and transferred them to the Malay Peninsula to break the monopoly of Brazilians on rubber.

The source of rubber raw materials is limited, and machinery such as automobiles is still in the exploration stage, so European countries have not developed a systematic rubber industry chain, and rubber shoes have not been put into large-scale industrial production.

In 1839, Goodyear, an American, invented the vulcanization method of rubber, which solved the problem of raw rubber becoming sticky and brittle, so that rubber had high elasticity and toughness, and rubber really entered the stage of industrial use. As a result, natural rubber has become an important industrial raw material, and the demand for rubber has increased dramatically.

The production process of rubber shoes is simple, and the elasticity problem of rubber was solved by Goodyear 30 years ago, and only the problem of raw materials is left to hinder the mass production of rubber shoes.

The rubber monopoly is in the hands of Brazilians, and European countries want to obtain a large amount of rubber raw materials with high costs, and cannot form large-scale industrial production, but these problems happen to be advantages in Li Mingyuan's eyes, Rio Gran do Sul and Santa Catarina are in Brazil, and the local environment is suitable for the growth of rubber trees, and he does not believe that there are no rubber trees on the 430,000 square kilometers of land.

Rubber production, processing and production technology has matured, with the acceleration of industrialization into the city, in the next 100 years, rubber is an important and indispensable industrial raw material. There are at least ten years left before the rubber is transferred to other regions and a large area of plantations is formed, and Rio Gran do Sul just takes advantage of the time lag before the rubber outflow to develop the rubber industry on a large scale, and use the first-mover advantage to establish the dominant position of the rubber industry, so that even if the rubber seeds are obtained by other countries in advance, it will take several years to form large-scale planting to meet the needs of industrial production.

Inadvertently inspecting the construction site allowed Li Mingyuan to discover a new industry that could bring huge returns to Rio Grande do Sul, and after a hasty chat with the Chinese workers on the construction site, Li Mingyuan returned to his residence and immediately arranged for people to investigate the distribution of rubber in Rio Gran do Sul.

Soon after, the people who searched for the rubber situation were sent back with the news that Li Mingyuan wanted, and there were thousands of wild rubber trees scattered in the jungle west of Xinjing, and the soldiers sent to other places also brought back the news of the discovery of rubber trees.

In a wooded area west of Xinjing, Li Mingyuan, Liu Pu, Sun Bin and others walked through the path opened by the soldiers, bypassed the bushes that dotted them, and came to the bottom of a tall rubber tree.

"Shizi, this is the rubber tree you sent someone to find?"

Sun Bin looked at the more than 30-meter-tall tree in front of him, and felt that it was no different from the Sumu, Kumu and other trees all over the area.

"Come, see what this is?"

Li Mingyuan took out the dagger he was carrying, and gently made a cut in the rubber tree, and then a stream of milky white mucus immediately flowed out of the wound of the tree.

Sun Bin dipped his hand in a smear of lotion in his hand, and was just about to put it in his mouth to try it, but was stopped by Li Mingyuan,

"The liquid rubber is toxic, although it is not fatal, but it will cause abdominal pain for a few days after ingestion."

The milky white liquid was like coconut water, Sun Bin didn't expect it to be poisonous, so he hurriedly took away the finger that was put on his lips and sneered: "Thank you Shizi for reminding me." ”

"It's okay, just be careful in the future." Li Mingyuan waved his hand, then circled around the rubber trees around him, returning to his original position.

"The lifespan of the rubber tree is about 60 years, and the age of this rubber tree is about 20 years, which is the vigorous period for producing rubber sap, and there is a nearby forest, there are about 300 rubber trees in total, and there are more than 130 trees that are more than 20 years old."

Li Mingyuan introduced with some joy: "Brazilians will only cut rubber liquid from wild rubber trees, not only the amount of access is limited, but also will lead to a lot of waste, we can't learn from Brazilians, rubber trees are a cash cow, we must make good use of it." ”

"Shizi, we haven't touched rubber trees before, will our own people cause harm to the tree?"

Liu Pu asked.

"Don't worry, the environment and soil of Rio Gran do Sul are suitable for the survival of rubber trees, so let the brothers be careful, move the rubber tree seedlings on the opened up wasteland, and then water them regularly, and the seedlings can survive."

In addition to some special requirements for the living environment, rubber trees are similar to ordinary trees in terms of transplant planting, and do not require extra manual care.

When Brazilians obtain the molten rubber, most of them cut down the trees directly with an axe, and after several fellings, most of the rubber trees will die due to serious destruction, or the trees will be damaged, and the production of the rubber will be seriously reduced.

The Brazilian harvested the molten rubber as a way to fish for the fish, and Li Mingyuan did not do it, but adopted a more efficient method to obtain sufficient amount of molten rubber without jeopardizing the survival of the rubber trees.

This method was invented in 1887 by a botanical garden owner in Singapore, and repeated cutting on the original cut to obtain rubber liquid, without harming the formation tissue area of the rubber tree, so that a rubber tree can provide rubber liquid for decades.