The existence of the penal labor camp has a long history in the Changshan Iron Mine. Originally set up to punish South African labourers who cheated or tried to escape in the course of their work, the camp became a permanent institution due to the occasional attacks of the Charua tribe and the gaucho bandits, who were captured and brought in.

In the past six months, with the promulgation of the new regulations of the Executive Committee, all parts of the country have begun to send prisoners to the Changshan Iron Mine. If these prisoners had stayed on the line, they might have been able to go to the Falklands, South Africa or the New China region to "start a new life." But now they are unlucky, and one by one they go to the notorious hard labor camp of the Changshan Iron Mine to do heavy work.

Zhou Dahe was not even willing to stay in the hard labor camp longer. The low, sturdy, dark cell-like dwelling, the glazed-eyed, lifeless miners, and the vicious overseers who led the wolfdogs around had a great impact on Zhou Dahe. Especially after the Norwegian supervisor in charge of receiving it, he looked at the two of them with a cold gaze, which made Zhou Dahe feel an indescribable sense of discomfort.

After leaving the room as if fleeing, Zhou Dahe, Ronald, Bogdan and others embarked on a journey back home. The journey back was relatively smooth, and it took them only three days to arrive at Zhenhai Port at the mouth of Yazi Lake, and only made a short stop at the dock of Xiayihe Fort on the way, while replenishing fresh water and refueling coal and water for the small steamer.

As the only node of north-south transshipment, Zhenhai Port at this time is the moment of surging crowds. Groups of newcomers from the Old Continent were transported by ship after they came out of the quarantine camp. The second assignment is then made according to the respective destination.

In 1640, more than 7,500 people actively or passively emigrated from overseas in the East Coast Republic of China. In addition, two Guaraní tribes have recently been conquered in the northwest region of Coal River Township this year. As a result, the country's population exceeded 40,000 in early December 1640, reaching more than 42,700 people.

Compared with the whole of 1639, when the number of immigrants was about 6,000, the number of European immigrants, especially those of French origin, fell more rapidly this year. In addition to the more than 1,000 adult immigrants from the provinces of Gascogne, Languedoc and Haut-Gabriel, there are only about 600 French children, plus some Baltic people from North Germany and Livonia who have voluntarily emigrated, and the white immigrants from Europe are just over 2,000.

This was marked by an explosion in the number of Ming immigrants, who had only 1,200 in 1639 but had suddenly jumped to 3,000 this year (including Japanese and Koreans). For the first time, the number of European immigrants exceeded that year. Of course, these surges in Ming immigration also nearly bankrupted the finances of the Eastern Coast Republic of China, even though the Inland Republic, which is currently saddled with nearly half a million yuan in debt, is not far from bankruptcy.

In addition to the Europeans and the Ming, this year the Easterners bought a large number of slaves from Muscat merchants, as well as from the Ottoman Empire. Among them were 800 Persian slave girls, 700 Persian children, and nearly 1,000 Cossack, Tatar, Berber, and Maghreb slaves. As for the total of about 1,500 children (more than 600 French, 700 Persians, and orphans of other nationalities), they were basically delivered to the expanded Corps Fort in the West Ridge area without any delay. There, they will receive a ten-year systematic and rigorous education with their first five seniors.

Excluding children, there are about 6,000 adult immigrants. After the creation of three new settlements in the Duck Lake basin, the remaining 3,700 or so migrants to be distributed were dismantled and distributed elsewhere. Among them, the two shipyards and their supporting factories have a total of about 700 people; The cotton peasant township was divided into 1,000 people. for more than 10,000 acres of newly cultivated cotton fields; Zhenyuan Township, Ranch Township, Dingyuan Township and Chengguan Township were allocated 100, 400, 200 and 500 people respectively. The last 800 people were assigned to Ping'an County, an important town in the north and the center of heavy industry in the East Coast Republic of China, to fill the personnel gap in heavy industrial enterprises such as Ping'an Iron and Steel Plant, Coking Plant, North Arsenal, First Machinery Factory, and North Gunpowder Factory. Thereinto. As the top priority, Ping An Iron and Steel Plant has 400 people, which can be said to be the leader.

Speaking of Ping An Iron and Steel Plant, it has really become a problem for the Executive Committee and the Government Council. Since the ignition was successfully produced a few months ago, the steel mill has recently started to have frequent accidents, and the quality of the steel produced has also been problematic. In particular, a batch of cast iron that was ready to be used for the machinery department to make parts was even more unbearable, and it was directly returned, which made Gao Xiaogang, the director of the steel plant, jump to his feet in a hurry.

Gao Xiaogang worked in a steel mill for a few years before he crossed over, but what he did was rolling steel. After Ma Jia became the president of the Government Council, he naturally took over the position of director of the Ping An Iron and Steel Plant.

The pressure to be the director of what is probably the most important factory in the Eastern Republic is not to be underestimated. In particular, this factory began to be built a few years ago, although it was temporarily suspended for various reasons, but then it was immediately restored, such an important factory took two or three years to officially put into operation, and as a result, a few months after it was put into operation, there were frequent various problems, which made Gao Xiaogang not depressed.

Since the first ignition of production a few months ago, when 30 tons of iron were produced on the same day, production has been abnormal these days, and most of the problems are concentrated in the iron-making workshop. After many in-depth analysis and research of the factory technicians, several problems were summarized in the current production: one is the furnace cooling accident that occurs from time to time, the second is the poor efficiency of the steam blower, the third is the high sulfur content of the coke, and the fourth is that the iron ore sent is too large and the reduction is not sufficient.

Therefore, after summarizing the problem, Gao Xiaogang immediately gathered several technical backbones in the factory together, and then held a meeting to discuss the solution.

"First of all, let's talk about the furnace cooling accident." In the conference room of Ping An Iron and Steel Plant, Gao Xiaogang held a large teapot and said with a serious face: "I think this kind of accident is essentially caused by improper operation, and of course the on-site management is not in place." Pierre, you are an engineer, how does the vocational education of the workers usually take place? ”

"These workers are new to the factory in the last batch, and they are currently being rotated for internships." Pierre, a former Swiss blacksmith and now an engineer at Ping An Iron and Steel Works, whispered: "This incident happened because the masters of the workshop went to the canteen to eat at noon, so they asked a few of them to be temporarily responsible for feeding." As a result, they overfed the furnace at one time, causing the lower part of the furnace to freeze. Now, in order to avoid such a situation again, on the one hand, we will increase the training of new workers and strengthen on-site management, on the other hand, we have also developed a new method of layering and grading fabrics, that is, batches and layers, small quantities of multiple fabrics, to ensure that furnace cooling accidents do not occur again. ”

"Write down this issue and discuss it after the meeting." After listening, Gao Xiaogang turned his head and instructed his secretary to take notes, and then said to everyone: "Then the next question." As for the efficiency of the steam blower, well, I'll talk about it. In the past, we used an animal-powered blower, but after using it for a long time, there were no problems. This time, in order to respond to the call of the state, our factory carried out steam technical transformation of the equipment of the whole plant, so many animal power blowers were removed and small steam blowers were used. But now there is a problem, these steam blowers are not designed in a reasonable way, and they are not designed according to the performance parameters we require! These eight lambs of a machine factory are completely fooling around! The number of times the steam engine pulls the bellows is only about 120 times per minute, which is completely insufficient. I will negotiate with Li Hongxing of the First Engine Factory about this matter, and ask him to pull all these steam engines back for me and replace them with a new batch, well, the number of times the bellows should be pulled at least 200 times per minute. ”

The people below have long been complaining about these faulty steam engines. Although the work is very efficient, unlike manpower or animal power that requires rest and food, but the disadvantage is also very big, that is, limited by the quality of product processing, from time to time it will give you some small problems, which will affect the normal production of steel. In fact, the steel plant is quite good, there have been other units in the past there have been boiler explosions and deaths, since then, many boilers as long as there is no weight requirement is generally built very thick, just to prevent the recurrence of such things.

In fact, who in this audience does not know the benefits of the steam engine? Moreover, the improvement of the quality of the steam engine by a machine factory in the past two years is indeed obvious to all, and the average time between failures has been several times or even more than ten times the original. But who told them that they had always been used to animal-powered blowers, and now they are a little uncomfortable to change to such a new guy. In addition, there are many production accidents at this stage, and everyone needs to find an excuse to shirk responsibility, so the steam engine was hacked by everyone "just right".

"The third problem is that the sulfur content of coke is too high." Gao Xiaogang looked at the notebook in his hand, and then said to the person sitting behind: "Hu Laosan, you are responsible for docking with the coking plant, you can tell me what the reason is." Don't talk nonsense, get straight to the point. (To be continued......)