On October 6, 1684, the weather was getting warmer, but the construction site of the Yanbu Railway was deserted. The reason is that the railway construction funds in the third quarter have not been allocated in time, and even many project funds in the second quarter have been delayed many times and have not been settled.

Although the companies responsible for the construction of the railways are state-owned, it is impossible for them to work without receiving money all the time. They also have expenses, and they also have to support people, and if they can't receive money, they will lose money and even go bankrupt, so even if the State Railway Administration repeatedly greets them, they still resolutely stop work, and then take over several projects of the State Development Administration, build reservoirs and dig ditches on the Pampa Plain, and sometimes help build some standard brick houses, which can be able to maintain the team.

Seeing that this was not an option, the State Administration of Railways immediately sent dignitaries to Yancheng County by boat, intending to hold a consultation meeting, but unexpectedly the ship carrying the envoy sank at sea. After learning of the situation, the railway general manager reauthorized Chen Jia, who had been promoted to deputy general manager of the American Railroad Company, to hold a meeting nearby to discuss the resumption of work, but the time was greatly delayed.

Today, Chen Jia personally rushed to the Chenqiang Township Railway Station by car. From Yancheng Township to Chenqiang Township, this section of the railway has been open for a long time, so Chen can take the Star de la Plata train to the station and hold a meeting, well, investor meeting.

In addition to representatives of local governments and state-owned enterprises, representatives from the Italian consortium and Genoa Luca, representatives from the Portuguese consortium Almeida and representatives from the Spanish consortium Rodriguez and others attracted the most attention.

Gianluca himself is an investor in the Yanbu Railway, buying more than 100,000 bank lira in bonds, and at the same time being the spokesperson for Italian investors such as the Doria family and the San Giorgio comptoir. Although he has not been on the East Coast for a long time, he is definitely more than Luciano, the CEO of the Forest Development Company, who has lived on the East Coast for many years, and is the most well-known Italian in the country.

Needless to say, Almeida is familiar to the people of the East Coast, the "Great Benefactor" of the East Coast in the early days, and the main trade object. But this old family, which has a deep background in Brazil and Portugal, is obsessed with many technologies on the East Coast, first stealing cattle and sheep bred on the East Coast, and later even forgetting the steam engine technology, so they were directly beaten to death with a stick.

Fortunately, this family is deeply connected in Portugal, and although it was once a big injury, it finally eased up. And with the change of attitude of the Portuguese upper class, it once again entered the east coast market and resumed certain commercial ties. Moreover, the Almeida family is also more obedient this time, and after returning to the East Coast market, in addition to routine trade, they have also invested heavily in some basic projects with low returns and long cycles, and purchased many 20-year and 30-year long-term low-interest bonds issued by the government. This kind of style quickly won a certain degree of favor from the East Coast government, making the family's vision in the relevant departments no longer so "eye-catching", and their family's business in the East Coast also developed in a more orderly manner.

During the construction of the Yanbu Railway, the Almeida family also bought a lot of bonds issued by the State Railway Administration, totaling more than 80,000 yuan, which is not a small investor, so it was also fortunate to be called to a meeting.

Compared to these two "big players", Álvarez Rodríguez, who represents many Spanish investors in La Plata, is much inferior. The Rodriguez family, who had amassed a fortune through decades of trading with the East Coast, managed to raise only 50,000 pesos to buy bonds, and the other small families combined invested more than 30,000 pesos in bonds or stocks, which is not much. However, considering that their foundation is relatively thin, and most of their industries are mainly agriculture and animal husbandry, they cannot be compared with those overseas giants, so it is not bad.

Of course, in addition to them, there are not no so-called "big players", for example, Mr. Oleg Naryshkin from the distant Russian Empire invested more than 35,000 rubles in the Yanbu Railway, which is the first in terms of personal contributions. Moreover, this gentleman still buys stocks of the Yanbu Railway, unlike most people who invest in bonds, which is even rarer. You know, most investors are only interested in all kinds of bonds guaranteed by the credit of the East Coast government, and they are not sensitive to railway stocks, the main reason is that they have doubts about whether the railway can be completed in this way, and at the same time they are worried about the possibility of long-term losses in the future, so even if the East Coast State Railway Administration has been shouting hard, there are really few people willing to buy stocks, and even if they do, they don't buy much, and the sales situation is very cold.

Against such a backdrop, Oleg Naryshkin's behavior became so striking that many people laughed at the young man from remote Russia at the beginning, thinking that he must have been deceived by the East Coasters, and bought stocks in a daze, as if they were going to rot in their hands. However, as the East Coast government continued to invest a lot of money and manpower in the Yanbu Railway, and the American Railroad Company was officially established, the number of people who ridiculed Naryshkin gradually decreased, but most people were still not optimistic about the railway's profitability in the short term and were unwilling to try to buy stocks in large quantities.

This time, the American Railroad Company gathered many major investors to participate in the fundraising meeting, and Oleg Naryshkin planned to invest another 5,000 rubles to buy shares, which surprised and delighted Amtrak's vice president Chen Jia, who learned of his intentions, and hoped that his move would lead more people to realize the value of Yanbu Railway stocks, rather than just staring at those fixed-income bonds.

Even before the meeting, the State Railway Administration had received an official letter from the Ministry of Finance, asking them to suspend the issuance of railway construction bonds for the next three years in order to improve their financial situation. To put it bluntly, in fact, the Ministry of Finance does not want to give them a bottom line for the time being, let them take it easy, control the speed of spending money, and avoid falling into a bigger quagmire financially.

Of course, the General Administration of Railways also resisted, but the attitude of the Ministry of Finance was very resolute, and the attitudes of several bigwigs who originally supported the railways suddenly became a little ambiguous. They vaguely heard that the "old men" of the Executive Committee were now investing a huge amount of money in the construction of the navy, and at the same time appropriately expanding and reorganizing some army units, and the purpose of wanting to make things happen was very obvious, which made them more pessimistic about how much investment they could get in the future.

Because of this, the State Railway Administration, which has lost its ability to issue bonds, is now increasingly inclined to sell a certain amount of shares to raise funds for railway construction. Anyway, as long as the American Railroad still accounts for more than 50%, then the right to operate the railroad is still firmly in their own hands, and others only have a share of dividends, and they cannot dictate the daily operation and management of the company. Even, in extreme cases, only the state-owned railway has more than 50% of the shares, just make sure that the railway still belongs to the state, and the rest can be exchanged for money or some money, don't worry too much.

However, the plan is beautiful, the reality is always the reality, and the General Administration of Railways hopes to sell shares in exchange for construction funds, and others have to buy it! No, Amtrak Vice President Chen Jia held a morning meeting, and he couldn't say how many shares these people bought. In addition to Oleg Naryshkin's 5,000 rubles, Gianluka, Almeida, Rodriguez and others only promised to buy no more than 10,000 yuan in shares, and they had to go back to negotiate before they could be finalized, which made Chen Jia feel very disturbed and even more disappointed with these guys. You must know that the tens of thousands of yuan of shares they promised to buy are not even as good as the sales results of the Yanbu Railway shares publicly issued by Amtrak on the Qingdao financial market! The brave middle class of the East Coast Republic bought more than 70,000 yuan of Yanbu Railway stocks, which was much stronger than their so-called big bosses, so it was no wonder that Chen Jia felt that these people were not like words.

What's more, what made Chen Jia even more embarrassed was that the Spanish investment representative Álvarez Rodríguez who attended the meeting also protested against the East Coast! The reason for the protests was the recent frequent presence of East Coasters on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, attacking Spanish estates, farms and ranches, resulting in a large number of casualties and property damage. Rodriguez believes that these attackers, who "speak with an East Coast accent", are highly skilled, well-equipped and tactically savvy, and are unlikely to be ordinary bandits. They had reason to believe that the East Coast soldiers must have been involved and played a key role, otherwise it was unlikely that they would have gained the upper hand in a head-to-head confrontation with the gaucho thugs raised by the Spanish aristocracy.

Chen Jia was embarrassed and a little annoyed by the Spaniard's accusations, because Alvarez's public mention of this matter at the investor conference would obviously damage the image of the East Coast Republic, and if this incident caused other investors to have an opinion about the East Coast, which would affect investment, then the matter would be even more serious.

"This group of lawless army horse manure actually did this kind of thing, now let me wipe your ass!" In the conference room, Chen Jia, vice president of Amtrak, faced some angry questions from the Spaniards, and scolded wildly in his heart for a while.

………………

And just when Chen Jia had a headache at the meeting and didn't know how to explain it, outside Nancun Port, a horse team of more than 70 people led by Inigo had just rushed into a Spanish manor. They surrounded the small manor in broad daylight, and then slowly removed the cattle, sheep, and grain that were placed outside, and set a fire to the hay pile and burned it all.

There were dozens of Spaniards armed with muskets in the manor, most of them Mestizos, and occasionally some Walloons who had arrived here from the threat of war in the South Netherlands, all of them very nervous, clutching the muskets with good ammunition in their hands, staring at the "horse bandits" who had just pulled down the gate of the manor.

The "horse bandits" can be determined to be all East Coast people, but they are definitely not real bandits, but East Coast soldiers with professional skills, or at least retired soldiers, which can be seen from many aspects.

The "horse bandits" pulled down the gate, and there was a burst of cheers, and then they began to form themselves and rushed towards the manor. The owner of the manor on the Spanish side is also an old oilman who has fought in the Old Continent for many years, although his face is solemn, he is not particularly panicked. I saw that he commanded the dozens of people under his command, using the cover of houses and other facilities, calmly using a volley of guns to roll out one by one, so that the first batch of East Coast cavalry rushed in almost had no stock, and all of them were beaten into hornet's nests.

Seeing this, Inigo decisively gave the order to stop the attack and asked everyone to withdraw. They don't have artillery as heavy weapons, and since the enemy is already prepared and organized using the terrain, it is very unwise to attack again, and the casualties will become too great to be worth it.

And in the recent past, they have relied on their surprise advantage to break several Spanish colonial estates, large farms and ranches in a row, and even a small town called Major Pedro Town has gone around a circle, but before they could do anything, they were driven away by the Spanish colonial army that rushed to hear the news.

With such a brilliant record, there is naturally no need to fight to the death with others, so it is better to check the harvest at hand and temporarily collect the troops and return to the camp. Anyway, through the recent period of continuous attacks, they have already played out the impact, I believe that the Spaniards are starting to panic, right? That would be fine, the more panicked you are, the better, and it would be better to move out of Buenos Aires and live further north, and vacate all the land here, and then everything will be settled!

Inigo certainly didn't consider that his actions could have some negative impact on rail financing, and he wasn't at that level yet, and he couldn't have considered the issue so comprehensively. But even if he knew, he would probably still act according to the previous plan, and it was unlikely that he would care what the railroad department thought, after all, he was a sheriff officer, a reservist, not a railroad official.

The Spanish side was at a loss for the attack of Inigo and others, and could not grasp their movement trajectory at all, so they could only passively defend. In addition, some relatively fierce Spaniards also began to fight back, and they even mobilized the Clandis and Quechuas, telling them that the East Coasters would not leave them to live in this rich land, and that they would kill all the natives at every opportunity, and persuade these large numbers of Native American Americans to fight with them against the attacks of the East Coasters. As a result, the situation has undoubtedly become more complicated, even to the point where it may require the intervention of higher-level officials on both sides.