In the autumn of 1878, a railway craze that spread throughout the world quietly rose. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Since the era of railways, every economic crisis has often erupted because of railway speculation, and the end of every economic crisis, or the next round of economic boom, has also begun with another boom in railway construction.

And this time is no exception, the same railway boom was first set off from the United States. Historically, in 1879, the United States began to get out of the economic crisis, and at the same time began the boom of railroad construction, but due to the promotion of the previous labor company, the Taiping Railway began to open in June, and most importantly, it coincided with the famine in northern China, and a large amount of grain exported from the eastern coast of the central United States was transferred to the west, and as a result, the Pacific Railway was opened and immediately operated well.

Under the stimulus of this favorable situation, the American people began to have confidence in the railroad again, and investors believed that it was still profitable to build the railroad, at least in the west.

With the stock price of the Taiping Railway rising one after another, taking advantage of this opportunity, under the organization of Morgan & Company, the $100 million bond of the Northern Pacific Railway, which dragged Jay Cook, a banking giant, to death, was finally successfully issued after a lapse of six years, and the construction of the Northern Pacific Railway began.

Led by the two major Pacific Railroad companies, the U.S. economy, which had been struggling to survive the economic crisis for six years and had completely squeezed the bubble clean, has finally begun to recover.

The United States began to build railroads on a large scale, which led to the development of the steel industry and machinery manufacturing. Coupled with continued expansion of agriculture, the U.S. economy is booming again.

In the unregulated U.S. market, there are often a variety of irrational ways of doing business, excessive speculation is one of them, every time it causes a serious economic crisis, but whenever it rises, Americans will also invest irrationally and frantically, which will stimulate the prosperity very intensely, and at the beginning of this boom period, it will soon be driven by the developed financial industry, and it will quickly enter the upsurge, and the confidence of the whole country is very strong, and the momentum of the U.S. economy taking off can not be pulled by eight bulls.

Historically, from 1879 to 1883, the United States built nearly 53,000 kilometers of railroads, accounting for about 50% of the world's railroad construction during the same period, the output of major products of heavy industry doubled, and the technical level of the steel industry began to keep pace with Britain. However, the U.S. steel industry still can't meet the needs of railroad construction, and still needs to import a lot of British steel, and even began to import some German steel. As a result, the United States has once again become the leader of the world economy's prosperity.

Now the industrial boom in the United States has been advanced by half a year, and the world economic crisis has ended half a year early.

Later economists attributed the end of the economic crisis to the fact that the completion of the Pacific Railroad connected the east and west of the United States, and led to the growth of the economy between the east and west of the United States. But some Chinese economists pushed the end of the economic crisis to 1866, the year of the famine in Shandong, to 1866. Because that year was the beginning of the construction of the two railways in Qinhuangdao and Jiaozhou Bay in the north, which means that some experts believe that the Ming Dynasty injected the first impetus into the end of this economic crisis.

This conclusion is not unreasonable, the two railways of Jiaozhou Bay and Qinhuangdao were built almost at the same time, and they are both ultra-long railways. Now the railway from Qingdao in Jiaozhou Bay has passed through Henan, entered the territory of Shaanxi, and approached Xi'an, this line is 1,200 kilometers long. The railway from Qinhuangdao first arrived at Datong, and then went south to look at the whole of Shanxi, which is equivalent to the sum of the Daqin Railway and the Tongpu Railway General Plant in later generations, and is 1,500 kilometers long. In addition, a railway was built from Dalian to Manchuria in the north, also with a length of 1,500 kilometers.

In just a few years, the total length of the railway line that was started at the same time in Daming was close to 5,000 kilometers, although there is no crazy speed in the United States to build railways, but this is still a huge market, the rails alone consumed nearly one million tons of steel, plus other railway locomotives, carriages and other accessories, Daming's own steel production can not be supplied at all, so a large number of purchases from the outside world have also stimulated the recovery of the world economy, so it can also be said that the world economy is recovering, although the main driving force is not from Daming, But Daming was the first to begin to inject impetus into the recovery.

In addition, the construction of railways in other parts of China has also brought great benefits to the world economy. Britain had to pass through the British Bridge built by the Ming Dynasty, and the scale was no smaller than the railway built by the Ming Dynasty. Russia's railway line from the north to the south was also built on Chinese soil. If the recovery of the world economy was mainly driven by a railway boom led by the United States, then it was not the United States that started this wave of railway boom, but China.

What's more, the first batch of start-up funds for the recovery of the US economy was not the high grain order from Daming.

Historical changes are always inadvertent, Zhu Jinglun did not remember the exact time, and did not know that the world should have been able to get out of the twelfth economic crisis of the world from 1873 to 1879 next year, when he saw that from September, the import and export of the Ming Dynasty both increased, and the demand for raw silk and tea from abroad continued to increase, he also judged that the economic crisis was probably over, thinking about it, it has been six years, and it has been a rare long depression period, so Zhu Jinglun judged that the next round of economic growth is coming.

In recent years, Zhu Jinglun's ruling strategy has always been to adhere to steady reform, and follow the laws of the economy, seeking to carry out reform at the best time of the economy, so as to make the impact of reform more stable, so although there have been many social problems in the Ming Dynasty over the years, the scale is not large, most of them are individual cases, and there is no national war like Japan, which can be regarded as a dividend brought by Zhu Jinglun's experience.

In this period of economic growth, Zhu Jinglun still has to unswervingly carry out sudden reforms, and the fundamental reforms have almost been carried out, such as the establishment of a universal education system, the establishment of modern judicial procedures, the establishment of a modern military system, and the establishment of a modern administrative system, but there are still some outdated places in these systems that have not yet been removed.

In the past, education was established based on the imperial examination system, which was promoted by the strong official-oriented ideology of the Chinese people, and because mathematics was added to the imperial examination, primary school students could learn mathematics. The effect can be said to be quite good, which greatly improves the mathematics level of Daming students.

However, because the main focus is on the promotion of universal education, the content of the imperial examination of the Ming government has always been based on Confucian classics and mathematics, and the proportion of other subjects such as history is not high.

The judicial system, which had been in operation before, was mainly based on the legal provisions of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and incorporated the common law trial procedures in the United Kingdom. Arguably the biggest change is the introduction of new things, not the change in the content of the law. However, the laws of the Ming and Qing dynasties, as the pinnacle of ancient Chinese law, still have many incompatibility with modern society.

After so many years of accumulation, under the system of popular legal law, many precedents have been accumulated that are not covered by the old legal provisions, and it is time to take this opportunity to collect precedents into a book and formulate new legal content.

On the issue of the military system, under the impetus of the young Zhuang faction in Europe, a European-style military system was basically established. More specialized army and navy military schools were established. A system of reserve soldiers was established, and a war mobilization system was established. But so far, this system is only preliminary, and the Ming Dynasty only has 200,000 standing troops and 200,000 reserves, which is far from commensurate with the huge population of the Ming Dynasty. It is not yet realistic to establish a comprehensive compulsory military service system, but it is still possible to support more than doubling the number of troops and making the standing and reserve forces add up to one million.

The government administrative system is mainly popularized from the modern customs established by HD in that year, but this system is still running relatively well in the customs and household departments, which are related to finance, and can greatly combat corruption and keep the entire administrative system relatively clean.

However, when it is extended to the entire administrative system, problems slowly begin to appear, in those departments that have no direct interests, whether it is the supervision system or management efficiency, are far less transparent and efficient than the departments that can be audited by accounting, the biggest problem is that officials are procrastinating, officialdom is forming gangs, human relations are complex, all kinds of small circles are popular, and people without background, no matter how excellent, it is difficult to get ahead.

It is basically impossible for this system to give birth to the result of Zhu Jinglun's exceptional promotion of a practical talent like Chen Qiyuan.

The Menxia Province led by Hurdt has been collecting relevant information and has accumulated a wealth of materials, but it has not dared to move for stability reasons, and now the time has come to take advantage of the general economic trend to make a deep adjustment.

It's as if the economy last took advantage of the economic growth period after the Franco-Prussian War to carry out in-depth reforms in the military and education. In the last period of growth, the Ming Dynasty established a new military system, thoroughly promoted the universal education system, created the Ming Dynasty's military power to dominate Asia, and also made the Ming Dynasty's school enrollment rate reach eighty percent, which can be said to be an outstanding effect.

This time, the reform should be deepened in an all-round way, and the military goal is at least to be able to compete with the first-class powers on the European continent; In terms of education, the enrollment rate will be increased to more than 90 percent, and the popularization of education will be completely completed; In terms of law, based on the operation mode of modern society, adjust and establish a more comprehensive legal content, and complete the modernization of the Ming judicial system; Administratively, we will further improve the efficiency of the entire administrative system, and completely eliminate the accumulated shortcomings that have the greatest impact on the administrative efficiency of the Ming Dynasty after corruption, such as negligence and dereliction of duty.

In terms of the general goal, even if it cannot be compared with Britain in terms of political stability and Germany in terms of government efficiency, it must be able to catch up with France, which is the third in Europe and the third in the world, in terms of overall efficiency.