After a detailed survey and various considerations, it was decided to build the railway from the south.

Of course, the political consideration is to compete with Britain and the United States for the land in the central and western regions of Canada, but the political calculation can not be regardless of the cost, and China has enough land in the Americas, and now Britain and the United States have begun to be afraid of China, before the Americans were worried about the influx of other European forces, and made concessions to China, and now the European forces are being squeezed out, compared with the United Kingdom, the United States is more worried about China's expansion in the Mississippi River Valley, and they are heading north to compete with Britain for the Great Plains, and they have begun to vigorously migrate to the west. The Indians of the eastern region were continuously expelled west of the Mississippi River.

China gained access to the Mississippi River, and the settlers began to divide up in two ways, one way over the Rocky Mountains, the other by land and sea, through New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico, along the Mississippi River north, and establishing colonies on the west bank of the Mississippi River between the Arkansas and Minnesota rivers.

With easy accessibility, the speed of immigration in China is staggering, with 100,000 people moving in a single year. This frightened the Americans and at the same time helpless. You can only walk into the UK one step closer. The romance of China, the United States and Britain in North America gradually kicked off.

At the point where the Minnesota River joins the Mississippi River, the Americans had several strongholds, culminating in Minneapolis and St. Paul, two cities facing each other across the river. Now China has also established a city on the Chinese side of the confluence, named Sancai City, because the Chinese found that from their own position, the other side of the Mississippi River is the city of Americans, and the other side of the Minnesota River is also the city of Americans.

Chinese immigrants cultivated here, grew grain and vegetables, and because there were many pioneers who traded and hunted north through Minnesota, they were all wilderness hunters and did not produce, bringing a continuous market for agricultural products in Sancai City, and compared to the American military positions on the other side of the river, the Chinese colonies were obviously more sustainable, and even began to provide food for American positions.

This made Sancai City quickly become a de facto, the Americans went north to the rear base, so it developed rapidly, and it was already a colony of 10,000 people, so the first railroad would start from Jinshan Province, cross the Nevada Mountains and other steep peaks, all the way through the Rocky Mountains, and finally lead to Sancai City.

The railway is more than 1,300 kilometers long, nearly 600 kilometers through mountainous areas, and the fairest estimate is that it will take at least 10 years to complete.

It is impossible for a large-scale project of this time span to be built by an individual, and must rely on special forces, either administrative or financial.

In fact, the forward-looking nature of large-scale projects led by political elites is beyond the reach of commercial forces, because politics does not need to think about costs, or less about costs, and the expectations of benefits are even smaller, or even non-existent.

Therefore, in the era of Louis XIV, France could build the Midi Canal that runs north and south of France, while Britain only began to build the canal in the last 100 years, because France is led by the government, and it is the king who needs to solve the problem of connecting his own Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, which is more of a political issue than an economic issue. Britain built the canal, but it was completely a commercial act, otherwise when the French built the canal, Britain could also build it, I believe that Britain and France at that time were basically the same technology.

The construction of canals in the era of Louis XIV is obviously different from the idea of canal construction in England during the Industrial Revolution, one is politically driven and dominated by political elites, and the other is driven by interests and dominated by commercial elites. China's Grand Canal is not to mention comparisons, which are completely anti-economic.

Compared with business-driven construction, political-driven construction tends to be bigger, more efficient, and faster; But there is no staying force, because the interest is eternal, so the driving force of business is persistent, and unless the interest disappears, this driving force will continue forever.

Whether the power of business or politics is strong depends on the national and cultural context. At least in China, and even in the vast majority of countries, the power of politics is stronger, and the real commercial countries, in fact, are a few countries such as the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, but because the British carried the power of the industrial revolution, they were too successful, which greatly magnified the power of commerce, making people think that business is the power of the future. In fact, business is only more economical than politics, but not necessarily more forward-looking.

Let the merchants build the Grand Canal, to build the Great Wall, and tell them that after building the canal, they can collect tolls to make money, and after building the Great Wall, they can make money by collecting city gate taxes, I am afraid that no businessman will take such a big risk to do it. But sometimes it is precisely because of this risk control that the merchants will not exhaust their national power for these glorious projects, as the monarch did.

Zhou Lang is a modern man who advocates business ideas. But the crown prince is not, Zhou Jitong has received the most rigorous education since he was a child, and saying that he is proficient in Chinese and Western studies is just a straightforward description, without any praise. The Chinese Confucians around him instilled in him a whole set of ideas of governance, and Western scholars gave him Western monarchism and other ideas.

This makes Zhou Jitong's view of business different from Zhou Lang, he thinks that whether it is business or politics, it is just a means to achieve the goal, which is easy to use! The supreme criterion that occupies his mind is neither politics nor business, but power.

Zhou Lang, who advocated business, successfully cultivated a business system, which allowed Zhou Jitong to use commercial means to achieve his political goals. So when it came to building a railroad, he first set up a commercial railroad company to raise money, and then used political means to push the company to operate quickly.

One of the difficulties he encountered was that the domestic financial crisis was triggered by the railway, and now everyone is very worried about the railway, and the railway stocks and bonds were once uncared for. The crown prince immediately supported it politically, announcing that the land within a hundred miles (60 kilometers) on both sides of the railway, as well as the mineral deposits on the land, would be granted to the railway company.

This is not his invention, the railway company of Yunnan people does this, and even the railway company is a mining company, this model makes the Yunnan Road Mining Company in the economic crisis stand out.

In addition, the crown prince also stood up for the endorsement of the railway company, personally for the railway company to pull investment, the United States is not short of money, according to the liquidation criteria, the Zhu family got a large amount of gold and silver mines, Zhou Jitong did not dare to rob the Zhu family's gold and silver, he just persuaded the Zhu family to invest in the railway.

Then Zhou Jitong used these gold and silver mines as reserves, established a bank, authorized the bank to print paper money for investment in the railway, and followed Zhou Lang's method of bailing out the market, allowing the bank to issue paper money with treasury bonds as reserves, and Zhou Jitong authorized the bank to use railway bonds as reserves to issue new paper money.

In this way, the bank can print as much money as the railway needs to buy the railway, and in this way, it raises enough money for the railway to start construction.

Although this model is dressed in the cloak of business, but in fact the smell of power is very strong, it is not for the purpose of cost and profit, purely for the purpose of creating capital, everything is built around the railway, if the railway will benefit significantly in the future, everything can be recovered, but if the prospect of the railway is not good, then there will be a crisis, and this bank will be a tool to loot the people in the name of the railway.

The merchants were not stupid, and the paper money depreciated rapidly, and Zhou Jitong continued to use political means to defend it, first announcing that the taxes of the American provinces must be paid by the banknotes of the railroad bank; The banknotes were soon run again, and Zhou Jitong announced that he would stop cashing banknotes. The bank credit that had just been established was played by him.

But the construction of the railroad was always going on, and it was not halted by lack of funds, after all, the plundering of the rich American wealth through a monopoly banking system was enough to support such an ambitious project.

The railroad was built from two ends, one side from Sancai City to the west, passing through the Great Plains, and a year later it was built into the Rocky Mountains; On the one hand, it was built from the city of Jinshan to the east, and almost at the beginning it was drilled headlong into the mountains, and it took less than 50 kilometers to advance in a year, because the western section was the most difficult from the beginning, and the railroad had to be built in the Sierra Nevada Mountains at an altitude of 2,100 meters, and the first 80 kilometers were almost all through the mountains, and 50 bridges and more than 10 tunnels had to be built.

It is estimated that it will take three to five years to dig these tunnels and bridges alone.

By the following year, the slow speed of the railroad disappointed investors, and the printing of too much paper money, the monetary system in the Americas was extremely chaotic, and the consequences of the crown prince's disrespect for commerce began to appear. Zhou Lang respects the laws of business so much, and it will also cause an economic crisis because of the problem of railway bonds, not to mention the fledgling, ambitious but inexperienced crown prince.

At this time, someone gave him an idea, in order to save the precarious paper money and the precarious railway, he should ask the Da Zhou Goods and Colony Bank to help issue bonds in Da Zhou, compared to the Americas, Da Zhou obviously has more money.

The crown prince believed this man, because this person was the shopkeeper of the branch of the Merchant Colony Bank in the Americas, which had always had branches in the Americas, and the banknotes of the Merchant Colony Bank were also circulating in the Americas, and the bank's business in the Americas was mainly to purchase gold from the Americas and guarantee payment, because the Americas had not been incorporated into China before, and had no power to manage the financial business of the Americas.

After the crown prince came to implement the county system, he did not give the public bank this power, but set up his own bank to support the railway, and as a result, the railway and the bank were very bad.

The crown prince knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch, and of course he knew what the public bank wanted, but he had no choice. He had always regarded the public bank as his father's tool to control financial resources, and felt that it was no different from the Manchu Mint Bureau. The Merchant Bank is a freak all over the world, and Western banks are privately owned, including the Bank of England. However, China's commercial banks claim to be the head offices of the country's merchants and people, and are neither private nor official property. That is, there is no commercial business and there are no shareholders who receive dividends. Specializing in the issuance of various bonds, there are many profits, all of which are accumulated in the reserves of the public bank, resulting in the accumulation of more and more reserves of the public bank, and the credit of paper money is getting higher and higher.

Because the crown prince regarded the public bank as a tool for the emperor to manage the money, so he did not turn to the public bank at the beginning, he came to the Americas for experience, as a twenty-five-year-old young man, he was not mature enough, he was eager to prove himself, and turning to the public bank was equivalent to turning to his emperor's father, so he did not want to seek financial support from the public bank, and started a new business himself, and as a result, he was in a hurry for quick success, but messed things up.