Time flew by, and it was late January 1631. After more than three months of hard work, the banks of the Dayu River have now undergone great changes. The first is the industrial area on the south bank, lined with chimneys. Brick kilns, cement kilns, lime kilns, and wood drying kilns provided a steady stream of supplies for the crossers, and beautiful, sturdy brick buildings were built in the lumber yards and lime mines.

The construction of simple wooden houses in the North Shore area has been stopped, and all the about 300 houses that have been built have been allocated to the Crossing Crowd, temporarily for two people. Since the stable production of building materials, the traversers no longer look down on this kind of wooden house with a simple structure, and leaky air and water. In response to public opinion, the Executive Committee began to look for a new site to concentrate on the construction of brick houses. The original residential area will be demolished after the new housing is built, and the land will be used for commercial construction.

The original creek wetland was the only source of irrigation and domestic water for the traversers, and the Executive Committee has decided to convert it into a small reservoir. In addition, there is the construction of the dredging road, the dredging of the Dayu River, the construction of a new bridge across the river, etc., in short, everything seems to be so prosperous.

The highway has been completed ahead of schedule, and the construction army of up to 160 people has left a small number of people to carry out the finishing work, and most of them have been idle. In view of the fact that these strong laborers, who had been used as cattle for a long time, took full care of their emotions, and all of them took a few days off and gave each of them 120 points.

The point is a concept proposed by Finance Commissioner Tang Yuan to the Executive Committee. According to Tang Yuan, the 568 modern people who crossed over here are men and women, old and young, and have different personalities and abilities. If we said that everyone was in the stage of self-help in production a while ago, and we worked together, we may not have the time to think of anything else.

But now the traversal has initially gained a firm foothold, and life has gradually settled down. Since the rationing system is implemented, everyone has about the same amount of food and clothing. Then the question arises, some people will wonder why he does some light work all day long, and I am not mining, building roads, or moving bricks, and there is no benefit at all. There will definitely be people who think this way, maybe he won't say it directly for the time being, but the reaction is that the person at work begins to consciously slack off, which will be contagious to others, and the impact is very bad.

To this end, Tangyuan proposes to implement a point system. Double points are awarded to traversers who do heavy physical work, technical work, and high-risk work to increase their motivation to work. After all, you can't give them money, and at this stage, those gold and silver coins are extremely important "foreign exchange" resources, and they are expected to be used to buy materials urgently needed for production and life from the outside world. Moreover, even if you send money, you can't use it. At present, what is practiced by the crossing is a big pot of rice and rationing, there is no commodity market at all, and there is nowhere to spend money.

As for how to use the points, it really made the executive committee waste a lot of brains. After all, this is an internal credit currency that crosses the public, and it has to have a discount function, simply put, it is to be able to exchange things.

Initially, there was an offer to exchange the item. However, at this stage, there are very few materials produced by the traversal, and most of them are building materials and the like. This thing can't be eaten or worn, and it's useless to ask for it, and it is estimated that no one will exchange points for these things.

Then someone asked if it was possible to exchange land. This involves the issue of land ownership, and at present there is no unity of mind in this regard, so we have to put it on hold for the time being.

Finally, it is still Tangyuan's suggestion: the next batch of brick and tile houses to be allocated will be given priority to those with high points; For some positions, under the same conditions, the higher points are preferred. In addition, the points can also be exchanged for food provided for a fee: at the moment some dried fish, alcohol. When the goods are abundant in the future, the scope of exchange will be gradually expanded.

Everyone thought about it, and this was the only way to do it at present, so the point system was established.

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On January 30, the construction army, which had been resting for five days, went out again.

After the activities of Xiao Bailang and Wang Tiehammer, the Executive Committee finally agreed to find a solution to the problem of the grounding of several ships, including Yunsheng No. 1, which had been delayed for several months.

The plan initially approved by the Executive Committee is mainly divided into several steps: 1. Dam upstream and downstream of the stranding of several ships; 2. Excavate the tributaries to drain the water from the upstream dam; 3. Organize manpower dredging and dredging of rivers. The draft of Yunsheng No. 1 is about 4-4.2 meters, and the stranded section of the river is a shallow water depth of less than 3.5 meters, so the stranding is about 0.5-0.7 meters. Fortunately, the amount of work is not particularly huge.

This time, the Executive Committee mobilized a record 200 people. The first day's work was to dig a drainage canal, which could be bagged and thrown into the river to build a dam. The 150-metre-long diversion canal took a week to complete, while two dams, more than 100 metres apart, upstream and downstream, were already on full scale.

"The levees still need to be compacted." Shao Shude, as the former construction contractor, was also duty-bound to take on the role of construction commander at this time. "Don't mention the dams downstream, we must do a good job upstream. This time we are not building a one-time embankment, the Executive Committee has decided that this embankment upstream will be built into a concrete embankment in the future. As you know, the river is slow and difficult to use. Comrades from the industrial sector have already raised the question of whether it is possible to build a permanent embankment so that we can use the hydraulic resources here to build a hydraulic mill, a hydraulic hammer, and so on. ”

"Commissioner Shao, the dam is easy to deal with. The key question is how to build this waterway? Liu Dafa glanced at Shao Shude and asked in a low voice. This kid is now a squad leader in the construction team, but he still has that cautious temper.

"I've thought about the aqueduct and I'm going to build a few large brick culverts inside the embankment." Shao Shude replied, "In this way, it will also be convenient to build a new sluice gate in the future." ”

After looking at the embankment, Shao Shude personally went down to the river again. The water in the river has already been drained, and it is an unexpected surprise that a lot of fish and shrimp have been caught in the process of drainage. After a few days of sun exposure, the riverbed has dried out a lot. The construction team placed a large number of mats made of planks or reeds on the riverbed, so that people could not easily sink on them.

The construction team of nearly 200 people was divided into several sections and began dredging and dredging at the same time. After careful observation and estimation by Shao Shude, a person can only dig 2-3 cubic meters of silt a day, which is not very fast. According to the plan of the Executive Committee, the water depth of the river must be dredged to 5 meters, which means that it must continue to dig about 1.5 meters from the existing foundation. According to rough calculations, the total earthwork of the project is about 5,000 cubic meters, and it takes more than ten days to fight through the crowd.

Sighed softly. Shao Shude stopped talking, and simply took a shovel to dig up the mud. The excavated sludge is transported to the brick kiln yard by hand, and then made into bricks and burned bricks.

On February 18, the dredging work was officially completed. With Shao Shude's order, the wooden temporary sluice gates stacked between the embankment culverts were pumped up. At the same time, rushing waves gushed out of the four culvert mouths, and as the water level gradually increased, tugboats and barges were the first to float; When the water level climbed above 4 meters, Yunsheng No. 1 also slowly floated.

At this time, everyone at the downstream embankment worked together and began to dig the waterway reserved in the middle of the embankment for enough ships to pass.

The king hammer has already started the main engine of the freighter, and when the water level no longer rises, it begins to slowly move forward. At this time, Lao Zhang's tugboat had already dragged several barges and began to pass through the waterway reserved in the middle, the waterway was quite wide, and the tugboat barge was not large, Lao Zhang's tugboat fleet passed smoothly after some careful driving, and sailed to the mouth of the river.

When it was Yunsheng No. 1's turn to pass through the waterway, everyone was very worried. The width of the Yunsheng No. 1 of more than 2,000 tons reaches 12.5 meters, and the waterway reserved in the middle is only 15 or 6 meters wide. Fortunately, Wang's hammer level was not bad, and Yunsheng No. 1 also sailed out of the waterway smoothly, sailed all the way to the sea off the estuary, and then anchored on the pier built by crossing the crowd.

When Wang Tiehammer lowered the anchor chain and turned off the main engine, the dock suddenly resounded with earth-shattering cheers!