On May 20, Li Zhi rode on the grass on both sides of the road in Liaodong Province with 500 guards and 100 honor guards, watching the driver of the transport carriage pushing and pulling the carriage with difficulty. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

It is thirty miles north of Jinzhou, and it is the key part of the transportation artery in eastern Liaodong. At present, the grain in Liaodong is not yet ripe, and the more than one million laborers, peasants and slaves in Liaodong Province all depend on the grain supply in the Guannai. Every month, Li Zhi spends a huge amount of silver, grain and grass.

However, it was not easy to transport grain from the customs to Liaodong.

After several years of development, Tianjin Dagu Port has now become a grain transshipment base under the leadership of Li Zhi. It is connected to the Bohai Sea, and the grain from the coasts of Taiwan and Shandong can be transported by sea; The inner sea is connected to the river, and the grain can be transported to the Tianjin Acropolis and Beijing by boat. The grain of more than one million people in Liaodong comes from Dagu.

The grain was loaded onto ships at Dagu. The steamer crossed the Bohai Sea to transport grain to Jinzhou and went ashore, and then changed to horse-drawn carriages to distribute truckloads of grain to various parts of eastern Liaodong.

However, the path left behind by the Tatar Qing was too poor. The Jurchens started by fishing and hunting, always thinking about looting and plundering, and did not have the habit of building infrastructure. The Tatars occupied Liaodong for more than 20 years, and the transportation of Liaodong still relied on the dirt roads left by Liaodong Town in the Ming Dynasty.

A few days ago, there was a light rain, and the road north of Jinzhou turned into a quagmire. The wagons transporting grain waited until today, when the roads were almost dry. But even so, from time to time the carriage got stuck in the still wet mud and could not get out.

In front of Li Zhi, a carriage got stuck in the mud. Seven or eight carriage drivers gathered, shouting and pushing the carriage, which weighed more than a thousand pounds.

"Hey!"

"Hey!"

"Hey!"

Shouting and pushing a dozen times, the carriage was finally pushed out and back on the hard road. The coachmen were tired and sweaty, and they gathered together and squatted together, lit a dry cigarette, and took turns to smoke. After resting for more than ten minutes, they each returned to their carriages and began to urge their horses.

Li Zhi took a breath and said, "I didn't expect that the grain transportation in Liaodong would be so difficult. ”

Zheng Yuan, the governor of Liaodong, rode beside Li Zhi, shook his head, and said, "Grandpa Guo, the difficult ones are still to come. In less than two months, the dry fields in eastern Liaoning will be harvested. ”

Zheng Yuan pointed to the uninhabited prairie and said: "There are thousands of miles in eastern Liaodong, and there are 12 million mu of fields that we divided at the end of last year. Some of these fields have high yields, some have low yields, and the average harvest is seven buckets. After removing the seeds of the coming year, Liaodong will be able to harvest about 6.5 million stone of grain this year. ”

"There are 600,000 Liao people and 400,000 Tartar slaves in Liaodong, and one million people consume about 3 million stone of grain a year. The surplus 3.5 million stone grain will be transported into the customs. At current prices, the surplus is worth seven million taels. ”

Zheng Yuan said again: "Grandpa Guo, you have also seen that when the Tartars ruled, they only thought about looting and plundering, and basically did not build roads, and the roads left by Liaodong Town are now a mess. All parts of eastern Liaoning are more than ten days away from Jinzhou seaport. I calculated that if the grain was transported back to Tianjin by horse-drawn carts, it would take 20,000 horse-drawn carts to transport it back and forth for a year before all the grain could be loaded onto the ship. ”

"If you hire these 20,000 horse-drawn carriages at a price of four taels a month, the freight will be one million taels this year, close to one and a half of the price of grain!"

Hearing the astonishing figures calculated by Zheng Yuan, Li Zhi couldn't help but be moved. If the freight is so high, the grain in Liaodong will be discounted a lot. The incomes of tenant farmers, service teams, and landlords who cultivated in Liaodong would drop by half at once.

Zheng Yuan took a breath and said, "This is still the first year. At present, 500,000 strong laborers are working to open up wasteland and build water conservancy projects, and next year we will be able to build at least 12 million mu of canals and waterwheels that have been abandoned to dry land, turning these abandoned fields into fertile fields that can be cultivated mechanically. At that time, Liaodong's grain output will double, and the freight spent on land transportation will cost 3 million taels of silver a year. ”

Most of the grain in Liaodong is cultivated using Li Zhi's agricultural machinery, and the per capita yield is extremely high. The food grown in this way has gone beyond the scope of the smallholder economy, and can be said to be commodity agriculture. For commodity agriculture, transportation is a big problem.

Today's Liaodong is facing such a problem, and millions of stone of grain have to be transported to the customs every year. The muddy roads left behind by the town of Liaodong decades ago simply cannot carry such transportation.

Zheng Yuan bowed to Li Zhi and said, "So, Grandpa Guo, I suggest that the construction of cement roads in Liaodong begins. Strive to build cement roads in every town with 1,000 people. A single carriage can only tow 1,300 catties of goods on dirt roads, and more than 2,000 catties of goods on cement roads, so that the cost of the road can be reduced by half at once. ”

"The initial investment is a bit bigger, though. But once built, millions of freight savings can be saved each year. ”

Li Zhi looked at Zheng Yuan and felt that this uncle was capable now. Although he was born in poverty, he is now in such a high position as the governor of Liaodong, or the "captain of the Liaodong Reclamation Brigade", but he has no stage fright. Half a year after taking office, he began to ponder and solve the infrastructure problems in eastern Liaodong.

Li Zhi looked at the grain convoy slowly moving forward in front of him and said, "The cement road can be repaired as a grassroots road network. However, even if the cement road is built, it still cannot solve the increasingly heavy transportation problem in Liaodong. ”

Zheng Yuan was stunned and asked, "What should I do?" ”

Li Zhi thought for a while and said, "We can try to build a railway in Liaodong!" ”

Zheng Yuan heard it in a fog, and he didn't understand it even more: "What is a railway?" ”

Li Zhi said: "The so-called railway is to lay smooth steel rails on the ground, and take advantage of the low friction of the rails to reduce the forward resistance of the trucks. In this way, goods that used to take five horses to tow can now be towed using a single horse. ”

Zheng Yuan pondered for a while and said, "I'm afraid it will cost a lot of money to build such a road, right?" A pound of our crucible steel costs five cents a pound of silver, and how much silver does it cost to spread on the ground? ”

Li Zhi said with a smile: "It is not possible to use crucible steel, the output alone is not enough, we have to make cheap steel." ”

Zheng Yuan looked at Li Zhi and said, "Crucible steel is already much cheaper than steel in other parts of Daming, and Grandpa Guo can produce cheaper steel?" ”

Li Zhi said with a smile: "This new steelmaking method is not complicated, it just separates the carbon in the pig iron by oxidation, and turns the pig iron with high carbon content into steel." ”

Li Zhi glanced at the slowly advancing grain convoy and said, "This time back in Tianjin, let's start building a new steelmaking converter!" ”