On a snowy day on the third day of the first day of December, the living room of Xiyuan Jingshe with the fireplace burning was as warm as spring, and Zhu Youzhen, who was sitting in front of the fireplace, said to Fan Jingwen and Li Banghua who were sitting next to him: "... The Taihu Lake bandit case has been closed, and the next step is to deal with the problem of those Hutian fields that have not been collected in the treasury.

Enclosing the lake as a weir to reclaim the wasteland on the lake beach is an extremely common means of pioneering in the south of the Yangtze River and Huguang. Because the wasteland of the lake beach has always been fertile, and the profit is great after reclamation, it is especially favored by the people in the south of the Yangtze River, and the price of lake fields is also higher than the price of ordinary paddy fields.

But behind this high return, there is also a great hidden danger. First of all, the displaced people and ordinary people are limited to limited resources, and most of the enclosures they build lack labor and materials, so they can only be used for a while, and once they encounter the flood season, these lakes and fields are the most vulnerable objects.

Secondly, when the high-ranking families encircled the lake fields, they only cared about their own profits, and did not care about the original problem of waterway flood discharge and the needs of the people near the lake for production.

Therefore, the government must no longer sit idly by and wait until something goes wrong, as it has done in the past, to hold the government accountable. In addition to the disrepair of the rivers for many years, the area of these large lakes has been continuously reduced by the surrounding lakes and fields, resulting in the weakening of flood storage capacity.

I have summoned you to discuss with you how to manage the water conservancy construction of Taihu Lake, Dongting Lake, and the Jiangnan region. I hope that I can take advantage of the deterrent power of the Taihu Lake bandit case and solve the problem of the disorderly reclamation of the lake fields by the people around Taihu Lake while the iron is hot..."

Li Banghua replied with understanding: "What does Your Majesty mean, return the field to the lake?" However, there are thousands of lakes and fields around Taihu Lake, and if you want to return the fields to the lake, I am afraid that the local people may not accept it, right? ”

Fan Jingwen retorted: "There are only more than 1,000 beneficiaries of the opening of the lake, but the surrounding land affected by the abandonment of Taihu Lake water conservancy is more than hundreds of thousands of acres, I think Your Majesty is right." We should give priority to water control, and we should not allow a small group of people who reclaim lakes and fields to harm the interests of the surrounding people..."

Zhu Youzhen interrupted the dispute between the two in time, "I don't mean to be one-size-fits-all, and to forcibly return all the lakes and fields to the lake. Instead, the Ministry of Water Resources sent people to inspect the direction of the rivers around Taihu Lake and the local river flow during the flood season, and then make a unified water conservancy plan for Taihu Lake, of course, taking into account the interests of Taihu Lake fishermen and the needs of lake transportation.

The plan will be consulted with the local people, and then implemented after the autumn harvest next year. No matter who is involved in the planned lake fields, the enclosures must be demolished and returned to the fields, but some compensation must be made.

Lakes and fields other than those planned should be inspected and reinforced, and unified management should be carried out, and no further unauthorized reclamation of lakes and fields should be allowed in the future. Even if there is such a need, it must be planned by the Ministry of Agriculture first, and then the people should be organized to construct it in a unified manner, and then the fields should be allocated...

I hope that within three to five years, we will be able to carry out a comprehensive rectification of the water conservancy facilities in the entire Jiangnan region, and remove all the lakes and rivers that have been encroached upon by the high-ranking families and displaced people. The local government can't do this thing, and only the imperial court can take the lead in organizing and planning and scheduling across regions to break the luck psychology of some people in the local area..."

After Fan Jingwen and Li Banghua left Xiyuan, they kept their heads down and thought, until they walked out of the palace gate, and then he thoughtfully asked Li Banghua beside him: "Li Shangshu, does Your Majesty have other intentions to clean up the lake fields and rectify the water conservancy in the south of the Yangtze River?" ”

Li Banghua, who was much older than Fan Jingwen, heard this, and just glanced at him before smiling and saying, "Maybe Your Majesty has other ideas, but for us, cleaning up the lakes and rectifying the water conservancy in the south of the Yangtze River is our goal, isn't this enough?" ”

"However, with Wei Zhongxian by his side, won't this matter really change its taste..."

Li Banghua hurriedly interrupted him and said: "How can today's Wei Zhongxian be the Wei Zhongxian of the past, I think that with Wei Zhongxian here, some things will be easier to do." Your Majesty has just said a lot, but there is one sentence that has won my heart. The livelihood of the people in Jiangnan is much more important than the morality of the scholars, and if we only stick to our own view of good and evil, then in the end we will not be able to accomplish anything..."

In the Wensi Academy, a craftsman sent a freshly processed gear to Xu Xingsheng, Xu Xingsheng raised the gear and looked at the light outside into the room, and after a long time, he asked the craftsman next to him, "What is the effect of this gear?" ”

The craftsman on the side immediately said happily: "It is much easier and stronger than the previous gear, the kinetic energy lost in the transmission process is also less, and the probability of failure is about seventy percent. ”

Xu Shisheng's eyes were still on the gear in his hand, compared with the gear made by the craftsmen with actual experience before, the gear in his hand was obviously more pleasing to the eye, and it looked like there was a surprising beauty.

When the concept of the machine was proposed, the machine was also divided into four main parts: power, transmission, execution and control.

The output power of natural energy such as manpower, animal power, wind power, and water power is not large and unstable, so the transmission structure becomes more and more complex, which not only requires that the kinetic energy loss in the transmission process is not large, but also requires that the unstable power become a stable kinetic energy output through the device of the transmission structure.

In the past six or seven years, the Wensi Institute's work experience summary of the old craftsmen, coupled with the cultural education of the young craftsmen, has made the machinery manufacturing institute under the Wensi Institute make rapid progress in machine research and development and manufacturing technology. After the mission to Europe brought back a large number of scholars such as Galileo, mathematical theories began to be introduced into industrial design, first from the mathematical design and processing of computer parts, and then developed and improved machines, which has become the young craftsmen of the Wensi Academy... No, it's a new way of working for engineers.

For the older generation of craftsmen, these young engineers are too lazy to work in a way that can be used to determine the change of a component based on mathematical calculations? The various construction methods handed down by the ancestors, which one has not been gradually shaped after tens or even hundreds of years of use.

However, this was an era of exploding demand for machines, and the expansion of domestic and overseas markets led to the further development of workshop-style handicrafts into standardized factory production. Anywhere there is a way to use machines to save manpower, and to use machines to speed up production, will be preferred by factory owners.

Because the current situation is that as long as you can produce goods faster, you will be able to occupy more markets. Today, with the continuous improvement of the productivity of the Ming Dynasty, the domestic and foreign markets faced by the factory owners are no longer as worrying about buyers as in the past handicraft era. That is to say, in the domestic and foreign markets where transportation costs can be afforded, the upper limit of the goods it can consume has almost been met by the goods of the Ming Dynasty.

Next, the factory owner wants to keep the factory's profits, either by reducing costs or by continuing to explore new markets. The latter is not something that a single-handedly factory owner can do, but the former can be achieved through the adoption of new technologies, new processes and new machines.

Machines that can improve labor productivity will always have new products, so factory owners don't need a solid machine that can last for 100 years, they want the machine to last until the next generation of new machines are built, so that they can abandon the old machines and buy new ones to maintain the leading position of the factory.

With the support of this concept of manufacturing machines, the power to develop new machines at the Bunsi Institute was very sufficient. The seemingly wasteful and unreliable whimsy of young engineers is being trial-produced one by one with the support of Xu Xingsheng.

Of course, the reason why Xu Xingsheng was willing to support these young engineers was not only because of the emperor's hints. It is also because of the idea put forward by these young engineers that if only one out of ten pieces can be successful, the machine building will be able to recoup the cost.

Just a little improvement on the old machine can turn it into another generation of new machine, and the factory owners have to pay for it. And the Ministry of Internal Affairs can recycle and repair those old machines at a low price, and then sell them to other backward provinces, or Japan, Ryukyu, and Korea, and make a lot of money.

In this continuous improvement of design, the various components of the machine are becoming more and more refined and durable, whether it is the transmission, actuation or control parts, it is more and more difficult to improve efficiency. Factory owners, on the other hand, are increasingly dissatisfied with the power component of the machine, which, in addition to the instability of the known power source, is also limited by the space.

While more and more factories are being built in the north, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a suitable place to build a new factory. Not to mention, the most stable and effective hydro power is not only affected by the dry period in the north, but also has to compete with local agricultural water and industry peers for water sources. In Tianjin alone, the number of such lawsuits has risen from less than 100 three years ago to 1,239 this year.

Whether it is the Wensi Academy or the knowledgeable factory owner, they are increasingly turning their attention to the steam engine used to pump water. This extremely rudimentary pressure-free steam engine can provide a certain amount of power as long as there is coal, which not only gets rid of other power that is limited by the site, but also is a source of power that can work all year round.

At this time, although the pumping steam engine has separated the pumping part from the steam engine part, which greatly improves the pumping efficiency, it is still a machine that can only be used for pumping water, and cannot output power for the factory machine.

As a result, some factory owners offered a large sum of money to reward the craftsmen for building a steam engine capable of powering the machine.

Xu Xingsheng looked at the gears in his hand and felt that Wensi Institute should not lag behind in this regard, otherwise the leading position of the machinery in machine manufacturing would be driven down by those factory owners, which was an amazing loss for the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

He thought to himself that maybe he should enlist the help of the Ordnance Warden and Yenching University to see if they could first theoretically verify the feasibility of a steam engine to provide machine power.