Chapter 80 Playing with cars is called a local tyrant, but what about playing with boats
A week after the parade, Salisbury still fooled Parliament, and the Anglo-German Samoa-Africa Treaty was approved by the British Parliament, and Bismarck and Salisbury exchanged treaty texts. Salisbury's deliberate proclamation, however, was applauded by the British press for gaining access to several important areas of East Africa, as well as Germany's support for Uganda and its commitment not to expand in East Africa, and was heartened by the great promise of the government's announcement of a railway linking Cairo and Cape Town.
The fact that Nigeria and British New Guinea, which the Germans had in their hands, had taken advantage of the area was consciously ignored. But even if you know, under Salisbury's conscious propaganda, the British people will ignore it because of the construction of the 2C railway. Also at the behest of Jochen, the German overseas newspapers in Britain spoke of the concessions and contributions made by the Germans to the friendship between Britain and Germany. For a time, Anglo-German relations continued to warm up, and the Germans of the Salisbury ship cooperated so much, and their own civilian support continued to rise, which is also extremely happy. As a result, Jochen obtained concessions for exploration and mining in western and northern Australia.
After the treaty was completed, the Kaiser and his family joined the King Wilhelm at the mouth of the Thames on the Hohenzollern and then returned to Germany. After returning home, the royal family was also warmly welcomed and highly praised, after all, in this exchange the Germans took advantage of the area, compared to East Africa, which has been barren in the impression, the rapidly developing Cameroon has always been a treasure in the hearts of the Germans, and the neighboring Nigeria is not too bad, and the British have developed here for a long time, and the basic conditions are better, for the Germans who are eager for more opportunities to make a fortune naturally think that it is earned. Therefore, the Kaiser and his family, who had achieved such a diplomatic victory, were naturally praised by the people, and Bismarck, who signed the treaty, also gained great prestige.
Not long after Jochen returned to Berlin, he received good news from Daimler that the DS1 had its first order. The order came from the United States to the famous steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, a steelmaker who was clearly interested in automobiles, precision machines made of steel. Daimler took this very seriously, so he came to ask Jochen's opinion.
Jochen then instructed: "Since Mr. Carnegie is willing to buy the most expensive car in the world, it is only natural that we should give him the best service." Don't reply to the telegram, write to him, first express your gratitude to him for choosing our product, then tell him that we will do our best to make the best product for him, and then apologize to him and tell him that he has to wait 3 months for technical reasons. The letter is to be sealed with fire paint, and then our company's logo is printed on the fire paint. Don't send it by post, send a designer to ask Mr. Carnegie what he likes, and then create the interior for him according to his preferences. Since we claim to be customized, it is natural to have a customized look, and then give Mr. designer an entourage, to show the identity and ability of the designer, and the letter will be sent by the entourage himself. Both men and Mr. Carnegie had to wear outfits that matched our products and pinned a brooch with our company logo pinned to the neckline. In short, it is necessary to reflect the taste of the manufacturer who makes the world's most luxurious cars. ”
After thinking about it, Jochen said to Daim: "The DS1 has already released its word, and the annual production is only 12 units, so it is really just a word of mouth. It does not bring much economic benefits, and the main revenue-generating products are low-end models. But that doesn't mean we don't do high-end cars. Let Maybach continue to improve the performance of the four-cylinder engine, and then develop a simple, non-bespoke version of the premium model, which could be priced at £2,500 as an option for those in the upper echelons who don't get a DS1. You can control the production quantity of this model yourself, neither let too much appear in the market, nor too little quantity to produce much benefit. ”
Sending off Daim, Jochen began to be proud, and the effect of advertising through the royal family was really good, compared to the high-end model "Victortodea" 3870 marks developed by Benz that year became a dead goods, and the 200,000 marks DS1 sold the first car and drove a good start. Jochen then began to look to the future of BMW starting to occupy the European car market and then heading across the ocean.
Thinking of selling cars across the ocean, Jochen thought of shipping. During the parade, his uncle Edward took the Kaiser and his family to visit the new cruise ship Teutonian of the White Star Company, which was participating as an armed merchant ship, and it was on the Teutonic that Edward told Frederick III whether he wanted to order a royal yacht in England. Of course, neither Frederick III nor Jochen would have said to the German officials accompanying him, as Wilhelm II did when he visited the Teuton: "We-must-have-some-of-these!" ”。 However, to promote the development of the German shipping industry, the Kaiser father and son thought of the idea of building large commercial ships. So Jochen's proposal to build a large yacht in line with the German royal family at his own expense, and to use this as an opportunity to push the German shipping industry to start building large ships as well, was agreed to by Frederick III. But now that you think about it, competing with the British in the cruise sector doesn't seem to be so much in line with Germany's needs.
For example, for the foreseeable demand for automobile shipping, it is clear that ordinary cruise ships are not suitable as car transport vessels. With the rise in automobile manufacturing and sales, a dedicated vehicle carrier is essential. Moreover, the British are far superior to the Germans in the traditional shipping business such as passenger transportation, bulk cargo transportation and other fields. With the development of Germany's share of world trade, the export of German goods and the import of raw materials in more and more quantities have also led to the development of the German shipping industry. However, the United Kingdom, which has an inherent advantage in shipping, will find it difficult to challenge it in traditional projects. In 1871 the tonnage of German merchant ships was only 16.4% of that of Britain, and now, because Germany has developed its colonies better than it has historically, this ratio has risen to 17%. However, even if the British and Germans later engaged in the shipbuilding competition and the cruise ship competition later in history, by the outbreak of World War I, the Germans' merchant ship tonnage was only 27.9% of that of the British.
So if the traditional field can't be compared, can it find another way to monopolize the market? Since the ro-ro wheel is only a transportation vehicle, even if it can be built, the demand will not be too large in a short period of time. However, the development of the oil exploitation industry will increase the demand for crude oil carriers, in 1886 the British built the crude oil carrier Good Luck, Good Luck is only a sailing ship, and the oil carrying only 2,300 tons, if Germany can build a large number of large oil tankers carrying about 10,000 tons of oil, it is not too difficult to monopolize the crude oil transportation market that is not too large now.
At the same time, Germany has become a major country in the steel industry because of the 600 million tons of phosphate-containing iron ore from Alsace-Lorraine, but with the emergence of new nickel alloy steel, Germany, as a country that is not rich in various rare metals, is also necessary to import a large number of ores, so special ore carriers are also indispensable. In addition, there are container ships, which can be transported efficiently enough to blow up the cargo compartments of general cargo ships and cruise ships.
More importantly, for a long time, it will not conflict with the cruise ships of the traditional transportation strength of the United Kingdom, and it is difficult for the British to master the construction technology in a short period of time, and more importantly, once the standards set by Germany begin to be accepted, the British must also build supporting facilities and ships according to this specification. It is also important to note that these ships need to carry more capacity than cruise ships, otherwise it will be difficult to improve the efficiency. Then the construction of ships that are larger, more complex in structure and more technically difficult than ordinary cruise ships will obviously also be of great help to improve the capacity of the German shipbuilding industry. Moreover, shipbuilding can promote the economy, and when the navy's shipbuilding cannot be carried out on a large scale due to various restrictions, promoting the development of the civilian shipbuilding industry is obviously a good way to improve the economy.
As for whether such shipbuilding will cause dissatisfaction among the British, Jochen is not worried, first of all, Britain's hostility to Germany is due to the severe consumption of British national strength after the Second Boer War, and in order to divert the anger of the people at home, those British politicians set up Germany as a target. And the development of German industrial foreign trade began to greatly grab the traditional share of the British in the market, so this target is more targeted for the British people, "Why is Britain's national power declining?" Not because we fought the Boer War, but the Germans were robbing our market. Under this bandit logic, Anglo-German trade rivalry began to rise to the level of national hatred. Therefore, the rise of the Germans' national power before this is not too noticeable, and Jochen intends to develop a new mode of transportation outside the traditional shipping projects of the British, which is much more concealed than directly competing with the British in the traditional field, and when the British realize that their traditional market share is seized by new shipping methods, it will be difficult to suppress the already growing German shipping companies.
After making up his mind, Jochen reported his ideas to Frederick III, who was very interested in Jochen's alternative approach and Frederick III, who also wanted to promote German shipbuilding and shipping. The two shipping companies North Deutsche Lloyd's and Hamburg-Americas, BHS-Sansohofen Maschinenbau and Krupp AG were immediately summoned, as well as the three shipyards of Hovald, Schauch, Royal Royal, Demag Hoisting GmbH and, of course, the Royal Deutsche Oil Company in Jochen's hands. These giants of shipping, mining, steel, oil, machinery, and shipbuilding got together to discuss the future development of the German shipping industry and the design needs of new ships.