"County magistrate, this is an industrial windmill shipped from China in the first half of this year, with 60 horsepower as standard, a total of 4 seats, and can cut 24 ship boards at the same time, which is extremely efficient." After accompanying Liang Xiangjian to the Heishui Shipyard by the dock, the officials of the county finally showed a slightly relaxed expression, because this shipyard can be called the largest industrial facility in the county, with the first investment, the largest number of workers, and the best equipment - no, the Heishui Pioneer Team has just exchanged a large amount of tea and raw silk for a lot of industrial machinery from the mainland.

It is true that these machines are all second-hand goods that have been eliminated locally, and they belong to the transitional equipment used in the early days of local industrialization, and they are not very advanced in terms of technology or design concepts, and even many of them are not used in the shipbuilding industry at all, but Blackwater Shipyard still bought them without hesitation. After all, in the context of the Executive Committee's suppression of the industrial base in the Heishui area, if it weren't for the fact that many local factories began to gradually update their equipment, how could the Heishui area have this opportunity to pick up cheap?

Moreover, the Blackwater Pioneer Team also spent a huge price in order to obtain these outdated equipment, which are generally only fifty or sixty percent new. First of all, even if they were to sell the equipment that would have been remelted, the local enterprises on the east coast would have to ask for a lot of money, and they would not accept the surplus gold and silver in the Blackwater region - because they believed that the gold and silver would increase domestic inflation and disrupt the normal economic order on the east coast - and only collect raw silk, tea, porcelain, medicinal herbs, and other goods that could reduce local inflation, which could be used to recover the currency in the hands of the people, which shows the high difficulty of obtaining these scrapped equipment.

"First-hand equipment such as industrial windmills can also be obtained, and it can only be said that Captain Shao and Deputy Commander Wei are still a little thin. It is also considered to support the development of the Blackwater region. It's just that there are a lot of parts in the city, and the ironworks in the city can't produce them themselves, right? I think the accuracy requirements are not low. And there is no local steelmaking. It's always a problem that you can't even produce high-quality iron. Liang Xiangjian looked at the industrial windmill and the exterior wall (masonry) that had been installed in place, and asked casually.

Johnson and other county officials were embarrassed when they heard this. Indeed, the ironmaking workshops in Heishui County have always used local steel as raw materials for secondary production, not to mention steelmaking, the quality of molten iron is very average (of course, this quality has exceeded the level of other countries in East Asia at this time), there are few machine tools, and there is no high-precision machine tool that can process parts. Wei Boqiu had even asked about the Northern Arsenal before. Wei Boqiu was annoyed that he could sell obsolete machine tools, even pedal machines, to the Blackwater Pioneer Team, and that people would rather go back to the furnace to make iron than let those equipment flow here.

"County Magistrate Liang, this is the truth. At this stage, the ironworks in the city can only process some clumsy parts, plus simple repairs of farm tools, weapons, armor, etc., and they don't even have a boring machine to drill the barrel, which is really cold. And there is also a shortage of talent, and to tell you the truth, many of the people in the ironworks are either 'self-taught' soil experts or local apprentices of the same level. Their skills are mediocre, and their knowledge has many fallacies. The vision can not be compared with the local talents, on this condition, the development of industry, a word, difficult! Johnson told the truth.

"Take your time." Liang Xiangjian was clear about the local restrictions on the industrial development of the colonies, so he could only say: "It's a big deal that I sell some old faces and come back from the mainland to exchange some second-hand equipment." Today, I will exchange a few miscellaneous models of steam engines, tomorrow I will get a few forging hammers back, and the day after tomorrow I will pour a set of small second-hand stamping equipment, and slowly save it, and the family will always be rich. Although we can't even overhaul these equipment, the appearance of this kind of thing that represents industrial civilization in the Far East and in Heishui is already a historic breakthrough. So let's not rush, we have to take our time, the first step is to develop talents and workers, and at the same time further enrich the local population, which is the key. ”

After visiting the shipyard, Liang Xiangjian and the others went back to the city for a lunch -- the lunch was quite sumptuous, with rye, potatoes and other local crops as the staple food, accompanied by sea vegetables, crabs, salted fish imported from Dabo County in the south, beef and mutton bought from Miaojie County, and Daqu in the river produced in South Africa.

After eating, Liang Xiangjian, who had taken office as a new official, worked tirelessly and led a group of people to the east to inspect the coal mine.

Production in the coal mines is still dominated by forced laborers, supplemented by a small number of North Korean and Ainu miners, and the technology is backward, the equipment is aging, and the talent is scarce, so that the daily coal output is only about 100 tons - this output is not even as good as two years ago, to Liang Xiangjian's surprise. But local officials were quick to give the answer, and that was that a significant number of coal miners had been sent to the southern settlement of Due Township, where large open-pit coal mines were also found, and the quality of the coal was even better than that of the Blackwater mines.

"The quality of the coal in the Due coal mine is quite good." Johnson explained to Liang Xiangjian, "The quality of the coal in the Heishui coal mine is quite good, at least more than one grade stronger than the Australian coal, but there are still quite a lot of impurities, gangue and so on." However, the coal in Due Township is different, and their texture is quite good! Moreover, the county magistrate, you can see if you go over there to see that the coalfields in Due Township are very close to the sea, and in the dark valley over there, many coal seams are even exposed. If it weren't for the fact that one of the Hezhe people accidentally talked about what happened over there, I'm afraid we wouldn't have known about it. ”

"Oh? The quality of the coal there is so good? And what about the traffic conditions? I heard you say that the coal field is very close to the sea. Liang Xiangjian suddenly became interested, so he asked.

"It's close to the sea, but unfortunately it's not a good port." Speaking of this, Johnson also sighed, and said regretfully: "The coast there is basically straight and steep highland, and most of them are stones and gravel, and there is no grass on them, and the land is extremely barren. There is only a small area along the coast where the ground is low enough to build a port, but unfortunately it is a shoal, and the water is so shallow that large ships cannot enter it at all, and can only navigate small boats or barges with shallow draft. Of course, even small boats and barges have to take advantage of the high tide to get in, otherwise they will run aground. And if you delay there too long and miss the low tide, then you will have to stay there all day and wait for the next high tide, which is very inconvenient. ”

"In addition, the land there is also very poor, and even the land under the forest cover is mostly low-quality black soil, which is really terrible. Even the grass is not growing very well, and we have a pasture there, but the poor quality grass is not enough to feed the livestock that are used in the mines. The desolation and barrenness of the place you can see at a glance, the last time I led a team to send a hundred hard labor prisoners there to dig coal, those guys even shed tears when they saw the steep and desolate coastline. Another official also interjected, and it was clear that everyone didn't have a good opinion of the ghost place in Due Township.

"Due Township is too poor." While accompanying Liang Xiangjian towards the coal mine, everyone said in unison: "You see that there are still people growing rye here in the county, but it can't grow there at all, and the few local residents can only grow potatoes, which are barren-tolerant crops, and usually go to the mines to work and barely make ends meet." However, the quality of the coal there is indeed really good, and now the navy and the migrant ships have also picked it, so they have to use the coal from the Due coal mine, and the black water coal is no longer in their eyes. So this time we sent a hundred more prisoners to increase the production of the mines, nearly half of whom were spies from England, Holland, Portugal, etc., who had been exiled from the country, and we would certainly take good care of their ......."

The road to the mine is muddy, and there are houses on one side of the road, some of them of masonry and some of them of wood. In front of the house are stacked with stacks of hay and firewood, of which the haystack is prepared for livestock to survive the winter, and firewood is the fuel for the residents. Next to the haystack is a fenced vegetable garden with cabbage, carrots and other vegetables, which are almost ready for harvest, which are important for the local population to survive the long winter.

In fact, at this time in Heishui County, the houses in the county town and the houses outside the city are generally the same, they are all residences with vegetable gardens and woods, and the whole county is actually a large rural area, but it was previously ordered by Mo Dashuai to be artificially fenced with city walls.

Such a city is not worth mentioning in the local area, and it can even be said that it is unqualified, but in the remote and backward Heishui area, this city is already like a bombing sky, and it is even jokingly called "Yangzhou", "Suzhou", and "Paris" in the Heishui area, which makes Liang Xiangjian, who has just arrived, very speechless.

The Blackwater Coal Mine is still dominated by hard laborers, and their enthusiasm for their work is just that. Liang Xiangjian casually entered a cell shared by 20 people, and was immediately smoked out by the smell inside: the smell of ammonia in urine, the sour smell of human sweat, the fishy smell of salted fish hanging under the eaves, and the bed bugs scurrying around.

"Improve the living conditions and hygiene of the prisoners, and implement some incentives and punishments to increase their enthusiasm for work." Liang Xiangjian, whose face was still very pale, stood outside the empty prison room and said to the officials who followed him: "The slave prisoners are numb and lifeless, like the walking dead, how can this improve labor efficiency?" ”

Looking at a group of officials who were either submissive or disapproving, Liang Xiangjian sighed and said, "Forget it, this is not an overnight thing, the development of Heishui County has a long way to go." (To be continued......)