As soon as Feng Yunshan wanted to say something, cabinet member Luo Zenan also followed Xu Shou to him, and shouted anxiously: "Your Majesty, Weichen has 100,000 urgent things to report!" ”

In Feng Yunshan's impression, Luo Zenan has always been calm, he has never seen such a hurry, and hurriedly said: "Luo Aiqing, don't be in a hurry, if you have something, talk about it directly!" ”

"Your Majesty, the Cabinet, at the insistence of Vice Premier Li, has approved a plan for large-scale steel smelting in the whole country, and it has already begun to be implemented in several provinces some time ago. Wechen always felt that this plan was not conducive to the long-term development of the empire, especially to agriculture and other industries, so he came to report to His Majesty and begged His Majesty to personally intervene and re-examine the strategy of developing the steel industry! ”

Luo Zenan's words made Feng Yunshan a little unresponsive for a while.

"National steelmaking?" Feng Yunshan muttered: "Assault Movement-style steelmaking? ”

"Yes, Your Majesty!" Luo Zenan replied: "According to Wechen's inquiry, this large-scale steel-making movement was first triggered from Yuhang County, Hangzhou Prefecture, Zhejiang Province. Some time ago, in order to implement His Majesty's previous decree to vigorously accelerate the development of industry, especially the steel industry, the cabinet passed a resolution "The whole country strives for the production of 800,000 tons of steel", and this resolution was distributed to all parts of the country, which also allocated steel output targets for each province. It may be that the provinces have issued it to all provinces and counties, and the enthusiasm for production in various places is high, and there are more and more more distributions and implementations at all levels.

In order to implement the production tasks assigned by the higher-level government, a township called Xianlin Town, Yuhang County, Hangzhou Prefecture, thought of some biased methods, mobilized the villagers and peasants to desperately build many small blast furnaces for iron-making through crowd tactics, and successfully smelted molten iron! There is a small iron mine in Xianlin Town, and the construction of hundreds of small blast furnaces can still ensure the supply of iron ore for iron smelting, but not elsewhere?

Seeing the successful experience of Xianlin Town, Yuhang County made a big fuss about promoting it, and then the entire Yuhang County built a new small blast furnace for large-scale steel smelting. After some calculations, according to the calculation of the labor population, tens of thousands of small blast furnaces can be built to make iron at the same time, and 60,000 tons of pig iron can be produced this year! The Hangzhou government was ecstatic to report this large-scale steelmaking to Zhejiang Province as the most important political achievement, and the Hangzhou government quickly followed up and concluded that a Hangzhou government can make 900,000 tons of iron! In other words, the task made by the cabinet for the whole country this year is only 800,000 tons, and they can refine 900,000 tons in Hangzhou alone! ”

Luo Zenan was a little indignant, and then said: "Wang Youling, the governor of Zhejiang, thinks that this is a great thing, and the steel industry can be rapidly developed. Escalated to the Cabinet. The Cabinet Li believes that it is in response to the previous decision to vigorously develop the iron and steel industry, and caters to His Majesty's edict to highlight the development of the iron and steel industry, so it is decided to promote the ironmaking experience of Hangzhou Prefecture nationwide and carry out a national steelmaking campaign! ”

Hearing this, Feng Yunshan completely understood.

He didn't expect that his words would create a catastrophic movement similar to that of later generations! History is such a coincidence, whether it is in later generations, or today, whether it is the high-spirited people's congress battles a hundred years later, or the hot flashes of today's group of villagers, it proves a truth, the trajectory of history always has its own specific direction, even if it is a different era, the people bred in this land seem to be biased in that direction in the end.

Fortunately, Luo Zenan reported it to himself in time, so he had the opportunity to correct it in time. Speaking of which, Feng Yunshan was also very embarrassed. He was the emperor of the Chinese Empire, but now he has never wanted to be in it, he has always dreamed of an ideal form of government similar to that of the later German Empire, that is, a constitutional monarchy, in which he is an emperor who is both high and detached, and does not have to work hard to manage political affairs, enjoy rights without fulfilling obligations, and live happily. Of course, it's not that we don't ignore political affairs at all, but we don't pay attention to daily chores, key major decisions, or we have to control the direction, and the so-called key decision-makers such as designers and helmsmen in later generations are not executors.

It is precisely because of this that Feng Yunshan will set up the cabinet to help him manage government affairs. In this way, not only can you free yourself from complicated affairs and have time to do what you like, but you can also form a routine and mechanism to shift from the centralization of power by the feudal monarchy to a moderate degree of democratic centralization.

Feng Yunshan envisioned himself, the emperor, as the head of state, and slowly cultivated the executive head of the cabinet, the prime minister, with the two of them taking on different responsibilities for this powerful empire. At present, of course, the prime minister leads the entire cabinet to be accountable to himself, but in the future, he will gradually delegate the power of the emperor to form a form similar to the House of Elders or the current European parliament, and let the cabinet be accountable to the parliament, so that the country can be firmly governed for a long time. Even if one day, he is gone, the country will not be in turmoil because of his departure, and it will not be torn apart, so Feng Yunshan is slowly trying to do this.

But I didn't expect that such a big thing would happen just after the introduction of the new cabinet. Feng Yunshan, who has studied history, naturally knows how disastrous the consequences of the movement in later generations have caused to the country, and with the famine in the following two years, which caused a large number of people to die unnaturally in peacetime, these consequences and crimes have been detained on the head of this great steelmaking movement.

Feng Yunshan also knew that the lesson of the great steel-making movement in later generations was very painful. Because of too much input, but failed to produce as imagined, although the temporary increase in steel production, but one-third of the production of steel are waste, in fact, there is no significant growth, but in the following years led to the low growth or even decline of the steel industry, seriously damaged the steel industry.

Therefore, Feng Yunshan didn't have time to think about it, and his first reaction was to immediately stop the large-scale steelmaking movement.

But Luo Zenan made a suggestion: "Your Majesty, although Weichen knows that the large-scale steel-making movement should be stopped, it cannot be directly and immediately abolished. After all, this is an important decision made by the Cabinet, and the Cabinet has just been established, and if the directive issued is abolished within a few days, it will be a serious blow to the prestige of the Cabinet, and His Majesty's purpose of establishing the Cabinet will be lost.

Moreover, the steel industry is indeed the core and program of all industries, and the development of the steel industry is very correct and appropriate from the original intention, and it is very beneficial to the entire industrial system of the empire.

Therefore, Weichen suggested that we should continue to implement the large-scale steel-making movement and develop the steel-making industry, but not too radical, but realistic large-scale steelmaking! ”