Song Zhewu also had a headache about the peasants' use of chemical fertilizers, and the land in Shanxi was indeed very barren as Yan Xishan said. This is mainly because Shanxi was developed relatively early, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period, it was the territory of the overlord Jin Kingdom, and the land was cultivated on a large scale for thousands of years, and the land fertility declined very much. In the absence of fallow, the construction of water conservancy, supplemented by farm manure and chemical fertilizer, is the equivalent of a cure for the root cause, and if combined with other new agricultural technologies, the output of the land can be increased on a large scale.

But Song Zhewu, like Yan Xishan, could not force farmers to buy fertilizer.

For the bone meal factory and the fertilizer factory, the more production and the greater the loss, since no one buys it, it has to find its own way, and Song Zhewu will not let go of any resources that can be used in Shanxi. After thinking about it for a day, Song Zhewu had already thought of a solution.

It is absolutely impossible to force the peasants to buy chemical fertilizers, not to mention that it will cause public resentment in Shanxi, Suiyuan, and Inner and Outer Mongolia, and even the surging domestic public opinion will compare him to a warlord who robs the people's money.

It is impossible for Song Zhewu to provide free fertilizer to the farmers under his rule, which is not only a matter of financial resources, but also contrary to his original intention.

However, Song Zhewu has a way. He believes that the best way is to induce, even seduc. As long as the farmers see the huge benefits, they will rush to buy even if they don't need to recommend fertilizers, and the key is to see whether the temptation is huge.

Know that the power of example is endless. Song Zhewu decided to start a demonstration farm and let the yield speak for itself after the heavy use of chemical fertilizers and new advanced agricultural technologies.

Feng Rui was in a small experimental base organized by the Taihang Administration, but he tested the new agricultural technology suggested by Song Zhewu to him, and the effect was very good.

As for the paper mill, Song Zhewu had no choice but to hand it over to Xinghua first, that is, the bone meal factory, the fertilizer factory, and the Fenjiu Company, the Sericulture Factory, the Material Factory, and the Porcelain Factory, which had not been auctioned out, and he was also ready to hand them over to Xinghua Company. Of course, Xinghua Company could not take the property of the Taihang Administration for nothing, and this should be purchased by Xinghua Company at the starting price.

In the future, not only the demand for chemical fertilizer will be very strong, but also the bone meal factory, but Song Zhewu is not ready to use bone meal as fertilizer, he wants to open a large chicken farm, and those bone meal are very good chicken feed.

In addition, there is another property of the former Shanxi Provincial Political Axe assigned to the Taiyuan Administration, but Song Zhewu did not take it out for auction, that is, the salt lake in Yuncheng.

Yuncheng Salt Lake is located in the Jinnan Basin, with a total area of 132 square kilometers, Yuncheng Salt Lake is an inland lake surrounded by Zhongtiao Mountain and the Yellow River. The salt resources are very abundant, and it is known as the world's three major sodium sulfate salt lakes together with the Great Salt Lake in Utah in the United States and the Kuchuk Salt Lake in Siberia, Russia. With a history of more than 4,000 years, Yuncheng Salt Lake is the largest production base of inorganic salt in China in later generations.

This salt lake was owned by Yan Xishan on the grounds that it was related to people's livelihood, and all of it was owned by the Shanxi Provincial Salt Industry Company, which was formerly a subsidiary of the Shanxi Provincial Salt Management Office.

For this salt company, Song Zhewu has refused to sell it for the same reasons as Yan Xishan. In fact, this is Song Zhewu's selfishness.

Salt is an important raw material for the chemical industry, which can be made into chlorine, metal sodium, soda ash, caustic soda and hydrochloric acid. The salt chemical industry, which uses salt as raw material, is mainly used to produce soda ash and chlor-alkali, sodium metal and extended products.

Among them, the main downstream products of soda ash are borax (sodium tetraborate), sodium alum, alumina, synthetic detergents, glass products, soap, flat glass, sodium silicate (including sodium metasilicate), synthetic laundry detergent, sodium tripolyphosphate, as well as synthetic rubber and nitric acid. These are what Song Zhewu urgently needs for the development of chemical enterprises.

With the huge resources of the salt industry company, Song Zhewu's raw materials for the development of salt chemical industry can be fully guaranteed.

Although Wang Mingyang, a student of Song Zhewu, made great progress and achieved a lot of results under the guidance of Song Zhewu, and he also brought up a group of students of a certain level, after the large-scale construction began, there were still too few talents who could stand alone, and he alone could not cope with it. And Song Zhewu can't have the time to deal with these technical problems often.

However, Song Zhewu, who knows the history of China's chemical industry very well, knows that there is one person who can do it, and with him presiding over the salt chemical industry, Song Zhewu will definitely be a hundred people at ease, and this person is Hou Debang.

Hou Debang graduated from the Yenjing Tsinghua Preparatory School in the United States in 1913 and was sent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study chemical engineering with a score of 1,000 in ten courses. After obtaining a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he entered Pratt College in New York and obtained a tanning chemist certificate. In 1919, he received a master's degree from the graduate school of Columbia University in the United States, and in 1921, he received a doctorate degree from the same university with his thesis on "Iron and Salt Tanning".

In 1921, he returned to China and was hired as the chief engineer of Tanggu Soda Factory; During this period, he also served as a professor at Peiyang University. Since 1922, he has been elected as a director and executive director of the China Chemical Industry Association; Director and Chairman of the Chinese Society of Chemical Engineering; President of the Chinese Chemical Society; Chairman of the Chinese Society of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering; Director of the Preparatory Committee and Chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China. He is currently the chief engineer of Tianjin Yongli Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. and the director of Tanggu Soda Plant.

Due to the technological blockade imposed by several large soda companies in the West, the "Solvay Method," the most advanced technology in the soda industry, was tightly controlled. Hou Debang explored and researched on his own in China, and finally succeeded in his research and made it public.

As a result, Hou Debang was appointed as an Honorary Member of the Royal Society. At this time, there were only 12 foreign members of the Royal Society, and only one each from China and China in Asia. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers have also appointed him as honorary members.

When it comes to Tianjin Yongli Chemical Industry Company, it is impossible not to mention Fan Xudong, the pioneer and founder of China's chemical industry, who founded Yongli Chemical Industry Company.

Fan Xudong graduated with honors from the Department of Science and Chemistry of Kyoto Imperial University in 1910. After graduating from Kyoto Imperial University, he stayed on as a teaching assistant. He returned to China in 1911 and founded the Jiuda Refined Salt Company in Tanggu, Tianjin in 1914. On this basis, in order to realize the desire of industry to save the country and develop the chemical industry, Fan Xudong also started the alkali industry, and began to establish Yongli Alkali Factory in 1917.

At the beginning of the soda plant, the production was very abnormal, and with the efforts of a group of technical backbones such as Hou Debang, a series of technical problems were solved, and normal operation was achieved in 1926, producing high-quality soda ash. In order to further develop the salt industry, Fan Xudong successively established the Yongyu Salt Company in Qingdao and the Xinfu Salt Distribution Company in Hankou from 1926 to 1927.

Song Zhewu believes that if these two "cattle people" can help, not only will there be no problem with his explosives raw materials, but also the entire salt chemical industry will not need him to worry too much.

It's just that it's tricky to recruit these two "cattle people".

Fan Xudong's career is now booming, and the "Red Triangle" brand soda ash won the gold medal at the International Exposition in Philadelphia, USA. The products not only sell well in China, but also are exported to this and Southeast Asia. Asking him to give up his career to work for him Song Zhewu is obviously a ridiculous thing in the Arabian Nights.

Moreover, Hou Debang and Fan Xudong admire each other and regard them as confidants, and it is estimated that it will be difficult to succeed if Hou De comes over by himself.

Sure enough, the person who went to Tianjin to contact Hou Debang soon came back and told Song Zhewu, who said that he was 'very grateful to Song Zhewu for his kindness, but he was unwilling to leave Fan Xudong's Wynn Company'.

Song Zhewu, who had been prepared for a long time, found Wang Mingyang and took out the technical specification of the "joint alkali production method" that he had written overnight.

Seeing this manual, although Wang Mingyang had long admired Song Zhewu's rich chemical knowledge, it also surprised him again.

You must know that the most advanced technology in the alkali industry is the "Solvay method", but Song Zhewu's "joint alkali production method" is much more advanced than the "Solvay method", and he really can't think about what Song Zhewu's head is made of.

To put it simply, this new process has increased the utilization rate of salt from 70% to 96%, and also converted the original useless calcium chloride into ammonium chloride, which solves the problem of calcium chloride occupying land and destroying fields and polluting the environment. At the same time, the process is shortened and the equipment required for alkali production is simplified. In fact, this joint alkali production method was successfully researched by Hou Debang in the early 40s, and it was also named "Hou's joint alkali production method".

After Song Zhewu gave Wang Mingyang a detailed explanation, Wang Mingyang took this technical manual and set off to Tianjin to find Hou Debang.

On the same day, Fan Xudong agreed to establish a joint venture with Xinghua to set up a soda company in the suburbs of Taiyuan, with equipment and funds to be provided by him, accounting for 49 percent of the shares, and Xinghua to invest in technology and resources, accounting for 51 percent of the shares, and Hou Debang was the manager and chief engineer of the joint venture company.

For these enterprises that were not auctioned off, Song Zhewu's plan was for Xinghua to carry out large-scale transformation of these enterprises, and wait until these enterprises were on the right track, and then spin them off. Because Song Zhewu's strategic development direction for Xinghua is finance, electronics, and chemical medicine.

Of course, these spun-off enterprises will be vigorously transformed by Xinghua, not only in terms of hardware and scale, but also in terms of technology and management, and even the world's advanced level.

In this way, after these enterprises are in the hands of private capital, advanced technology, management, and business philosophy will gradually be accepted by private capital, thus guiding the national industry to the correct direction of modernization development.

(To be continued)