After inspecting the wood products factory and the adjacent plantation, Qiang Quansheng inspected the Henan glass factory again.

To be honest, Henan Glass Factory has not had a strong presence in China over the years, and their products are relatively simple, and their technology and quality are just like that, very general. Over the years, they have solved the problems of a large number of bubbles, impure color and turbidity in glass products, and the product quality has been greatly improved, but their technological level has always been a certain gap with the old continent Venice, France, and the Netherlands, which are old glass-making powers. For example, they are slightly inferior to each other in terms of talent reserve and production technology, and the main form of production in the factory is also dominated by handicrafts.

Until last year, they were able to provide some products such as glass, glass or crystal laboratory instruments, handicrafts and telescopes of very average quality to China. Due to the number of skilled workers, the size of the factory has not expanded much, which has led to the fact that production has not been able to rise, and it can barely supply the country.

At the end of last year, the East Coast people spent a lot of money to recruit some senior technicians (second-rate technicians, first-class can't dig) from the Netherlands, which is now the most advanced glass technology in Europe. Since then, the technical capabilities of the Henan Glass Factory have been greatly improved, such as the quality of their thermometers is better than before, and the accuracy is also higher. And more importantly, their product line is richer. Under the leadership of these Dutch technicians, the Henan Glass Factory began to organize skilled technicians to hand-make high-resolution telescopes and microscope lenses. In particular, the microscope lens is even more important, and the design principle of the instrument, which is said to be the main investment and research and development of the Ministry of Health, is already available. Just wait for Henan Glass Factory to polish some high-grade lenses.

As for the materials needed to polish the lens. The few high-quality glasses produced by Henan Glass Factory can. Crystals can also be (Uruguay is rich in crystals), and even gemstones from the new China region can be provided, and the Ministry of Health can provide them, and they now just need you to polish the lenses they need so that they can assemble a high-magnification optical microscope.

The teachers and students of the Capital Medical College under the Ministry of Health have long been tired of holding some low-magnification magnifying glasses all day long to observe insects, make specimens, and compile animal and plant catalogs. They desperately wanted something more "advanced", clearer, with higher magnification to look at something interesting, like human blood, and so on.

However, in view of the current domestic slag glass manufacturing technology, as well as the color difference that is difficult to eliminate under the existing conditions, the compound microscope is difficult to eliminate and other problems. These Dutch technicians are still required to make high-magnification single-type microscopes (i.e. magnifying glasses). The Ministry of Health has given a high reward for this, starting with a magnification of 50 times, and the bonus will rise by one step every time a certain multiple is raised, and the highest prize has even reached an unprecedented 2,000 yuan. And their bounty is open to the whole world, and these craftsmen can write back to the Netherlands or Germany and invite their skilled friends to join in and polish high-quality lenses.

With a high-magnification microscope, whether single or duplex, it will undoubtedly provide an extraordinary assistance to the East Coast in the observation of microorganisms and bacteria. It is only after the development of microbiology that modern medicine can gradually get on the right track, which is why the Ministry of Health has invested a large amount of special money in this project.

After taking a turn inside the Henan Glass Factory. Qiang Quansheng was not very interested in the heavily recruited Dutch technicians and their work. As a high-ranking economic official, he is more interested in the living conditions of the workers in the factory today. Nowadays, there is a bad phenomenon in China. That is, every time the government builds new settlements in the hinterland, there are always many industrial workers in the cities who take the opportunity to apply for relocation to the new inland towns with their families. At this time, the government will always recruit some old nationals to mix with those new Shandong people, so as to strengthen the effect of the government's various assimilation measures.

Therefore, at this time, it will always be easier for these workers in the original cities to obtain government permission to move their hukou to those new towns. New towns, on the other hand, are generally agricultural towns, and the vast majority of residents are farmers, so most of these people will give up their status as workers and start farming and herding sheep in the local area.

This phenomenon began to appear sporadically at the beginning of the previous year, and gradually increased last year, and reached its peak at the beginning of this year with the establishment of Ningjin Fort and Canyon Fort successively, and a total of about 400 low-level workers of building materials companies, agricultural workers of state farms, and apprentices of wood processing factories applied for immigration to these two places, which surprised the officials of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

After receiving the report from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Executive Committee immediately instructed the Mei organ, which had not been established long ago, to conduct an investigation, and finally found out what had happened. In fact, the simple thing is that the average standard of living of the peasants is higher than that of the workers. For example, the average worker in the Henan Glass Factory spends most of his monthly income of six yuan on staple food and some non-staple foods, and the few remaining money can be used to satisfy some of his hobbies, such as buying goods or services such as alcohol, high-end leather boots, woolen coats, tropical dried fruits, newspapers and books.

And the peasants are different. They spend very little on food, because they produce their own food, and even some meat and non-staple foods can provide a considerable part of themselves, and they may only need to spend a very small amount of cash on some necessities such as fuel, soybean oil, salt, etc. In addition to this, they can go to the market and sell their produce for cash, and then buy some goods that are out of reach of many wage earners. Although the land tax of the peasants in the first few years was very high, once their land was changed from the initial allocation of five acres to ten or twenty acres, and the tax tax has passed the peak period of the first few years, their income will quickly surpass that of the apprentice workers who have not been employed for a few years, and even catch up with those ordinary workers whose income is not very low, which makes many factory workers envious and hateful, and express that it is difficult to accept.

In the end, there is something wrong with the distribution system. The state took grain from the peasants at a reasonable price and sold it to European countries for money in exchange for scarce foreign exchange. In the process, farmers receive a certain amount of cash income, which is enough to offset their expenses on seeds (purchased from agricultural technology stations), fertilizers, maintenance of water conservancy facilities, etc., and there is also a large surplus. However, when a large amount of grain is exported abroad, and the material depot must maintain a certain amount of grain in stock for emergencies, the price of grain in the market will not be cheap.

In addition, a large number of elite men from the riverine region of South Africa were transferred to the Far East to fight in the war, and the Mozambican black slave Ding Kou, who was promised by the Executive Committee to replenish the Eight Banners of South Africa, was unable to fulfill due to financial constraints, so the output of sorghum in South Africa has gradually declined in recent years, and the sown area has gradually shrunk, and the amount of cheap sorghum supplied to the country has naturally decreased year by year. Under the influence of these multiple factors, the local grain price finally balanced at the current price, although the price will fall a little every year because of the increase in grain production in the agricultural area of Huxi, but the decline has been greatly slowed down.

The fact that large quantities of grain were artificially exported abroad in exchange for foreign exchange to supplement the huge financial hole created by the decline in textile sales, and the lack of cheap sorghum provided by the colonies due to the wars in the Far East inevitably forced many people to buy wheat and even rice at relatively high prices, which undoubtedly increased the national expenditure on food.

It seems that this problem needs to be solved, otherwise the development and growth of the future backbone of the country will be hindered to a certain extent. Although it is well known to the discerning people that the prospects for the development of the workers are far greater than those of the peasants, because as long as you improve your skills, the wages will soon rise like rockets, but for some short-sighted apprentices or ordinary workers, they will only care about the immediate interests and will not think too long-term things. Especially for those workers who have little prospects, such as brick kiln factories, it is better to live comfortably as farmers.

However, it is also a problem to solve this problem, because there are only two ways to reduce food prices. First, if the supply of grain is increased, prices will naturally fall; The second is to carry out financial subsidies, which involves the problem of money, which is not simple. With the government still heavily indebted, the ongoing war in the Far East, and the large quantities of supplies (including female slaves) to be procured in Europe, the Executive Committee would certainly be cautious about subsidizing the price of any commodity, especially food, a basic commodity that consumes so much. This subsidy can't come out of more than 100,000 or 200,000 yuan a year, and it's really hard to say whether the executive committee is willing to come up with this money now, anyway, Qiang Quansheng is very unoptimistic.

Other than that, there is only one way to raise the wages of the workers. And this, in fact, is no different from the implementation of price subsidies for grain, because it costs money. Thinking of this, Qiang Quansheng has the urge to look up to the sky and sigh, the economy is sluggish, is a penny a hero, where is there still living money to use now?

It seems that we have to figure out a way from the Far East. Mo Ming has been tossing in the Far East for so long, in addition to bringing some precious furs and medicinal materials to the local people at the beginning, he also sent some books, calligraphy and paintings, jade, jade, handicrafts and cultural relics to the local people that cannot be eaten. There are not many gold and silver that can be used directly as currency, grandma is a bear, it seems that the military department has to write a letter to the Far East, beat those military leaders well, set a target for them, and send some silver to the mainland. Let Bao Chenan, deputy commander of the gendarmerie unit in charge of intelligence work there, pay a tight eye and strive to send 100,000 yuan (about 120,000 taels of silver in silver) back to the mainland a year, so that many problems can be solved. (To be continued......)