Zhang Qi and Xia Chun are doing specific work on the formation of the city defense battalion, and there are ready-made models to refer to, Li Mao does not attach great importance to it, and the city defense battalion is a well-known oil and water department, no matter how many pairs of eyes are staring, he also needs Zhang Qi and Xia Chun as a buffer. Since Jia bluntly took charge of Chengwu County, he has carried out several sweeps of officialdom, and today's Chengwu County is full of outsiders from top to bottom, and the life of outsiders as locals is not very good, and Feng Bu's life in the county government is very difficult.

Hearing that Li Mao was responsible for preparing for the city defense battalion, he took the initiative to come to the door, hoping to serve under Li Mao, Feng Bu is a senior veteran, skilled in knives and pens, and has a wide range of contacts. Jia bluntly disagreed. However, he did not close the door to death, he gave Li Mao a solution, persuading Feng Bu to resign from Chengwu County and then be requisitioned by Li Mao.

In this way, Feng Bu's twenty years of seniority in Chengwu County have returned to zero, and after arriving at the Gushan Town City Bureau, whether or not to reuse it and how to reuse it is completely based on Li Mao's words, and he himself does not have any bargaining qualifications.

Jia bluntly said that the intention of doing this was to help Li Mao, and Li Mao understood it. Feng Bu thought about it again and again, but still submitted his resignation to Chengwu County and applied for the city bureau as Bai Ding. Li Mao gave him the position of co-organizer and assisted Zhang Qi and Xia Chun in forming the city defense battalion.

The main responsibility of the city defense battalion is to maintain law and order in Gushan Town, Feng Bu is a good hand in this regard, and with him joining, Li Mao is relieved.

At present, the most important thing is to find money, Yu Hualong gave the city defense battalion a staff of 120 people, according to the fixed quota of 125 people, and the extra five people are used as public kitchen expenses. The treatment of the Qing Navy is not low, but it is definitely not as good as the official of Chengwu County, what they do is much the same, but the treatment is 108,000 miles different, which is tempting to abuse power. Li Mao didn't want his subordinates to ride on the heads of the people to make a fortune, and he wanted to eat and take cards.

For this reason, you must have money in your own hands, and only with money can you do a good job in the article of punishment and reward, and if there is no reward for punishment, the soldiers are afraid but will not use it for themselves. Finding money is a university question, and Li Mao does not have much experience in this regard, but he has one of the biggest advantages is his knowledge, and if he sees things differently, he looks at problems from a different angle.

In addition to the 4,000 garrisons, there are about 20,000 family members of the army in Gushan Town, and the total number of other people is not less than 30,000, and the consumption of vegetables and grain is huge, and out of the need for military control, the people are not allowed to cultivate the land within 10 miles around the military town.

All the vegetables needed in the city had to be brought in from other places, and together with other necessary items, the transportation volume was huge. Li Mao judged that in the near future, Gushan Town will become an important commercial and trade center in the northeast of Caozhou, and its status is likely to replace the current Chengwu County, so that Caohu Lake will become an important water passage with endless sails, and Li Mao feels that it is very necessary to build a wharf by the lake to seize the opportunity of water transportation.

If he had done such a thing a month ago, Li Mao would have to obtain Yu Hualong's consent, but now he can make his own decisions, and the city bureau has jurisdiction over the civil affairs in Gushan Town and the surrounding ten miles, repairing bridges and roads, building wharves, and dredging rivers, which is both responsibility and power, and power brings both responsibility and convenience.

Even in the dry season, the waterway in the middle of the lake is still navigable, but it is not possible to carry large boats, and if you want to drive large boats, you must dredge the river. After the winter, the flood that had tormented Chengwu County for more than half a year finally receded, and a thick layer of sediment accumulated at the bottom of Caohu Lake, and the construction project in Gushan Town had ended, but there were still 2,000 people who had not left, and there was still a project fund in Yunzhou that had not been allocated in place, and they had not yet received their wages.

Can't get the wages, the construction site is no longer in charge of food, the people can only go to Gushan Town to buy grain, after the disaster, Chengwu County rice is as expensive as pearls, plus the new city of Gushan Town was built, the materials are scarce, the people can not buy food, if they are in other places, they or will make trouble early, but Gushan Town is a military town, there are 4,000 garrisons in the city, borrow a few of them dare not make trouble.

Li Mao seized the opportunity, raised a sum of food everywhere, opened a recruitment office outside the city, recruited river workers to dredge the river, there was no salary, but the food was enough, and the desperate Minzhuang calculated the account.

The dredging of the river began, and Li Mao persuaded the clerk to delay the wages again and again until the dredging of the river was completed, and then the people were released to return to their hometowns. At this time, the design plan of the Chengdong wharf has been freshly released, and the plan is Li Mao hired a Jiyin County official to do, this person has worked in the Ministry of Industry for many years, presided over the design of a number of large-scale wharf projects, and felt Li Mao's sincerity and help.

After the plan was completed, Li Mao asked people to set up a stone tablet by the wharf to remember his name and praise his virtue.

The design plan of the wharf in the east of the city is very grand, but at the moment Li Mao can't come up with the money, so he can only do it in stages, complete the core part first, let the water transportation flow smoothly, and at the same time ask the military academy to write a letter, in the name of military needs, it is strictly forbidden to build a wharf privately, to ensure that the wharf under the name of the city bureau is dominant. The wharf revenue goes to the city bureau, and after the city bureau deducts the necessary expenses, the surplus is handed over to the military academy.

At the same time as the wharf was built, Li Mao leveled a piece of land next to the wharf, set up a vegetable market, a cattle and horse market, and a fish market, and set up a city order management.

Li Mao's second way to find money is to set up a goose and duck down processing factory, Gushan Town is located in Su Xiaodu Township, rich in goose and duck down, especially famous for goose down, but in the past, goose and duck down are sold to foreign merchants in the form of primary products, the profit is not high, and it is difficult to form a scale, Li Mao's idea is to sell the goose and duck down after simple processing, the profit can be increased by two percent, and the process is very simple, and the required is nothing more than labor.

There are 20,000 military families in Gushan Town, nearly 10,000 healthy and capable women, and the military families are not as squeamish as the ladies and ladies of the scholars' families, most of them are not from high backgrounds, they have been working hard since childhood, they are simple and capable, if they can have a job, they are not too tired, and they can earn a little money to supplement the family. They would definitely like to participate.

Li Mao once worked in a labor-intensive factory, and his highest achievement was as a team leader, and he knew a little about the inner workings of the factory.

In addition, by virtue of the credibility of the city bureau, the start-up capital for setting up a factory can be greatly reduced, for example, the wages of workers can be temporarily arrears, the transport workers and guards can be transferred to the city defense battalion to serve as soldiers, the raw materials can be paid on credit to the merchants, after the formal operation, the taxes can be relied on without paying, the transportation costs can be reduced to a minimum, and the military material institutes can directly do business with the local military material institutes, and there are the city bureau city defense battalions and the 4,000 Qing Navy as backers, and they are not afraid of any long-sighted ruffians and hooligans to harass......

These are all appendages of power, born with it, and the key is to have a pair of eyes for discovery.

Opening a wharf and building a vegetable market is a small amount of money, the money is small but stable, and opening a factory is a quick money, fast money is easy to earn, and there are many of them, but they are unstable, if you want to make a lot of money quickly and steadily, Li Mao feels that you still have to start with the land.