Gladstone sighed and said, "Your Majesty, we have all been deceived by your Prussian cousin-in-law, Wilhelm Frederick Ludwig!" That old thing, it's a war maniac! He turned the whole country into a military camp, and he wanted to put all the men into the army, and he wanted to put all the people into the arsenal to produce weapons, and the only pleasure became war!

Your Majesty, do you know that they have a regular army of nearly a million men in Prussia, and if you count the reservists and other people who can be called up to fight, I am afraid that there are no less than two or three million men. The number of his army is literally enough to fight all of Europe! Therefore, we, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the French Empire, and the Austrian Empire, together dealt with him, as well as the broken Tsarist army and the Danish army, but in this way, the Prussians did not back down in the slightest, nor did they look like they wanted to surrender and beg for mercy. Stand up to the armies of all countries! ”

Victoria sighed and said: "It seems that Prussia will not give in and surrender without a real decisive land battle, Ludwig has indeed been developing the military, this is not too much of a secret, but I can't imagine that he can develop so violently!" Could he really challenge all of Europe and want to be another Napoleon the Great?

It is no wonder that Prussia has always wanted to unify the whole of Germany and reshape the German Holy Roman Empire. Now that Tsarist Russia is facing dismemberment, and East Prussia is very close to the vast and rich Eastern European Plain, and Prussia has also received part of its territory in history, how can such a good opportunity be missed? Because of their lack of resources and small territory, the Kingdom of Prussia was able to maintain its status as a second-rate power on the European continent. And their goal is really to unify the entire German Confederation and expand its territory to become a European power! ”

Gladstone said: "Recently, the Prussian army has not moved for some reason, but has been heavily defended in its positions. It seems that something is waiting for. I have already questioned France and Austria through the Foreign Secretary, urging them to attack as soon as possible, defeat the Prussian army and force the Kingdom of Prussia to submit! This was the first step in cutting off the wings of the Eastern powers in Europe. ”

As soon as Gladstone finished speaking, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli, hurried in, his face was so anxious that he didn't even have time to salute him, just nodded slightly to Queen Victoria, and hurriedly said: "Your Majesty, Mr. Prime Minister, something bad is a big deal!" There was secret news from the London Stock Exchange that steel and rubber stocks, which had been rising in price a few days ago, suddenly plummeted, and they could not get rid of it, and they were all selling off, and no one took over all the way. ”

"What's going on?" Gladstone was stunned for a moment, and couldn't help but ask in detail.

Victoria was clearly aware of what Chancellor of the Exchequer Benjamin was saying, but was incredulous and asked in disbelief: "How so?" ”

Chancellor of the Exchequer Benjamin Disraeli slowly explained with a sad face, and the two gasped for air, only then did they understand the importance and urgency of the matter.

Here's the thing.

Benjamin Disraeli is a Jew who has already served as Chancellor of the Exchequer once, and this is his second time as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Soon after he took office, he noticed that the price of a commodity called rubber was rising rapidly, and the price of steel was also skyrocketing.

Nowadays, the manufacture of all machines, the construction of railways, the manufacture of ironclad ships and even the production of guns in the world are inseparable from steel, especially the price of steel, which has soared. Ten years ago, the world steel market was still in excess of demand, except for the United States, because of the construction of railroad purchases, the rest of the country, prices fell again and again, no one cared. But in recent years, because of the large construction demand of the Chinese Empire in the East, the price of steel has risen again and again, from the original 8 pounds per ton to 35 pounds per ton today, which has risen more than four times.

And the rubber, as we all know, is a new thing, which is currently being used to wrap copper wire as an insulating sheath for cables, and is a necessary material for the installation of telegraph communication cables, and its price has risen rapidly. The Chinese Empire in the far east, is in the process of large-scale construction of new railways and communication and telegraph cables, as well as the construction of warships are all using rubber, especially the large-scale application of four-wheeled carriages, according to some merchants of the Kingdom of Great Britain in the East to see, that evil country built countless cement roads in all directions, called official roads, thus giving birth to countless four-wheeled carriages, and these four-wheeled carriages are different from the wooden wheels of the Kingdom of Great Britain. They used rubber inflatable tires as wheels, which are very easy to use, alleviate the vibration and impact during exercise, and have very little resistance to walking, and can run quickly. This greatly increased the role of rubber, and when Europeans learned of this, they followed suit, and there were already such businessmen specializing in the production of tires on the streets of London, and in turn, the demand for rubber increased dramatically, and the price skyrocketed.

Since last year, the demand for rubber in the international market has increased sharply, showing an obvious situation of short supply, and rubber prices have risen rapidly. Not only did many merchants in the Kingdom of Great Britain see this opportunity, but other merchants in France, Prussia, Sweden, and even as far away as the American Federation and the Confederates in the Americas also coveted this lucrative opportunity and bought rubber from place to place. But the rubber has only been found for many years, and with the current technology, it cannot be stored for a long time, where is the supply there? As a result, these capital businessmen set their sights on the source of rubber production - rubber plantations.

This kind of business opportunity for rubber price increases, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the opportunity is fleeting, and it is too late to plant rubber temporarily. But London as a world financial center, all kinds of banking and financiers haunt it, see this opportunity, which will let go, so a lot of European businessmen gathered in London, have organized groups to the tropics to prepare for the establishment of rubber plantations, and among them, South America because of the recent war, and the degree of difficult to develop the environment is not popular, and at this time, the quietly appeared Oriental companies and Oriental businessmen strongly recommended, Together with some European businessmen, they claimed that they had set up rubber plantation companies in the East Indies and the Malay Peninsula and other South Seas, and even some rubber plantations had already begun mass production, but in order to expand the scale of production, they were preparing to issue rubber stocks in Europe in order to produce more rubber and make a fortune.

As a result, most of Europe became a sensation, and thousands of financiers gathered in hundreds of exchanges in London, the most important of which was the London Stock Exchange.

At the same time, rubber prices in Europe have risen sharply. Under this stimulus, a large number of rubber companies appeared in London, and began to rely on the London financial market, that is, the London and European financial markets, dominated by the London Stock Exchange, to issue shares. Among them, the most famous is the Hongni Company, which was opened by a businessman surnamed Hong and a Scottish businessman named Sandersonny.

The merchant surnamed Hong did not come forward much, but the Scottish businessman Sandersoni proudly claimed that the company operated rubber plantations and other businesses in the East Indies and the Malay Peninsula of the Chinese Empire, Vietnam and Qiongzhou Island, and was also preparing to build the world's largest cable factory on Luzon, which has copper and rubber plantations, and can gather all the materials for making cables, which is very convenient. Especially for rubber plantations, as long as there is more capital and local workers are recruited to expand the plantations, at the current price of rubber, investment in shares will make a lot of money.

At the beginning, Hongni's business was light, and not many people cared about it. However, the businessman surnamed Hong and Sanderson took turns to place advertisements in the "Times", the "New York Times" of the United States Federation, the "News" of France, and other major newspapers with large circulations, bombarding and promoting, and organized a group of so-called economic experts and financiers to publish "The Rubber World of the Future" in the "Times" and other major newspapers, vigorously promoting the inference that "the demand for the budget for the next 30 years will exceed the supply" of rubber.

With the endorsement of these experts, coupled with the claims and demonstrations in the newspapers that the experts themselves had purchased the shares issued by the Hounny Company, the Hounny Company suddenly became known to many capitalists in the financial industry, although it did not cause a sensation in the entire London area.

The company claims that planting rubber trees can be profitable, and the market of rubber stocks will be bullish for the next 30 years. I don't know if it was to attract investors to buy its shares, or if the Honi company was really so profitable that the rubber plantations it had mastered began to generate income, and the Honny company even paid dividends in advance, and it was also very profitable, which led to not only London businessmen buying its shares, but also many other rubber companies even began to buy the shares of the Honi company.

Since the end of last year, rubber prices from the three major rubber markets in the East, Guangzhou and Shanghai, as well as Singapore, have begun to soar, followed by rubber prices in the London market, which have also generally risen and risen more strongly. From 35p per pound of dry rubber, it has risen to 55p per pound at the end of last year, and at the beginning of this year, it has reached 70p per pound, and it continues to rise, and by the beginning of this month, it has risen to 135p per pound, and the latest price news came a few days ago that it has reached 160p per pound.

In line with this, the stock of Hongni Company has soared several times faster than the price of rubber. It is no wonder that stocks are originally expected to be speculated, and there is a role in this.

Originally, Hongni Company claimed to have 80,000 hectares of rubber plantations, all of which have begun to harvest rubber, and the annual output of rubber is more than 40,000 tons according to the conservative output of 10,000 tons of rubber from 20,000 hectares per year. In this way, at the original price of 35 pence per pound of dry rubber, or £321.2 per tonne, the annual production value of the company reached 12.84 million pounds.

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