Shanxi Yucai Steelmaking Plant is a genuine steel enterprise.

In today's Republic of China era, it is the largest iron and steel enterprise controlled by Chinese capital in China, and it completed civil engineering and construction in April 1926; It was put into production in September-October of the same year. The main equipment is imported from Germany.

After it was completed and put into operation, Zheng Yongxi served as the director of the factory, and Dong Dengshan, a metallurgical engineer from the Metallurgical Department of the University of Pittsburgh, served as the deputy director. In the early stage of production, due to poor technology and equipment commissioning, and other reasons, the production output was extremely abnormal, and it was gradually improved after a period of transformation.

Although the annual output of the Yucai Steelmaking Plant is very small, only more than 10,000 tons, the output of the Republic of China, where the national steel output is only 50,000 tons, and 70 percent of the production capacity is still under the control of British and Chinese capital, this output is absolutely proud.

The equipment of this factory is not only more advanced, but also the supporting facilities of this factory are arranged in accordance with the layout of German enterprises, which is very reasonable, and the affiliated enterprises are very complete, and the most important thing is that there are many technical personnel and skilled workers, and they already have all the qualities of modern industry in the West.

In Shanxi, there is also an old provincial capital iron and steel enterprise, which is the first steelmaking plant in Shanxi, but the output of this steelmaking plant is much smaller, and the equipment is backward, in fact, it is mainly based on iron production.

The steel industry is the backbone of a country, and without a strong steel industry, a country's waist will not be hard, which is especially obvious during the period of large-scale industrialization in the 30s of the 20th century. It was during this period that China's steel industry experienced a recession, even during the so-called "golden decade".

During the period of the Beiyang political axe, the steel output was more than 50,000 tons, and even the guns and guns could be made by themselves, but after nearly 20 years of development, not only the output did not go up, but even the technical level also had a serious regression.

Song Zhewu, a later man, had a clear understanding of the importance of iron and steel, and he knew that without the support of a strong steel industry, he would not have been able to manufacture guns and artillery on a large scale, let alone planes, tanks and warships. If everything has to be imported, not to say that he doesn't have so much money, even if he does, it is also subject to others, and once the war starts, he will be ready to bear the so-called neutrality of the hypocritical Western countries and impose an arms embargo.

As a result, the Yucai Steelmaking Plant occupies an extremely important place in Song Zhewu's plan, which Song sees as the seed of his strong steel industry, and he wants to build this plant into a model enterprise in the modern steel industry. This precious Yucai steel mill, he naturally will not sell it.

The director of Yucai Machinery Factory is Han Pingzhou, who graduated from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Tokyo, after he completed civil engineering construction at the same time as the machine factory and the steel plant. The installation of the machine began immediately afterwards and was officially put into operation in September 1926, before the steelmaking plant.

At the beginning of the construction of Yucai Machinery Factory and Steelmaking Factory, it was the expansion of Shanxi Arsenal, and it was also the time when a large number of supporting auxiliary machinery was needed. Therefore, Yucai Machinery Factory makes every effort to manufacture all kinds of working machines for the arsenal. By 1930, more than 1,300 machines had been produced. In the later period, with the improvement of production capacity and technical level, it also used all kinds of machines for private production, not only continued to manufacture lathes, milling machines, slotting machines, planers, drilling machines, etc., but also manufactured flour mills, looms, looms, spinning machines, kerosene engines with various horsepower, and steam engines.

What surprised Song Zhewu the most was that Yucai Machinery Factory could still design iron melting furnaces, hot blast furnaces, ash cleaning furnaces, etc. for steelmaking. Although these smelting equipment are still small and medium-sized equipment, Song Zhewu absolutely believes that as long as the conditions are suitable and have sufficient technical and equipment support, it is inevitable that Yucai Factory will manufacture large and medium-sized smelting equipment.

Moreover, this Han Yongzhou not only recruited many engineering and technical personnel for Yan Xishan, but he also paid great attention to cultivating talents and improving the recognized technical quality, and opened a night school in the factory to teach educated young workers to learn technology.

Now, Yucai Machinery Factory has cultivated a lot of technical personnel, can do advanced design technicians, there are more than 100 people before and after, can see the map in detail, skilled technical workers have more than 1,000, looking at the whole country, can have such a strong technical strength of the national enterprise absolutely no second.

This Han Yong Zhou is very talented, and even the well-informed Ba Yuzao and Guo Wenyuan, who are both very talented and talented, are full of praise for their abilities after talking to Han Yongzhou. In Song Zhewu's view, this Han Yunzhou is another Guo Wenyuan-style talent.

What made Song Zhewu sigh was that a talent like Han Yongzhou was not famous during the Republic of China! Song Zhewu believes that this is entirely due to the lack of progress of the national political axe, and Yan Xishan's limited financial resources and needs, so that Han Yizhou did nothing, and did not leave a strong mark in the history of China's iron and steel development.

Through Guo Wenyuan, Han Yongzhou and others, Song Zhewu has more confidence in developing and building his own national defense industrial system. He believes that talents like Guo Wenyuan and Han Yongzhou will never be the only two special cases in China, and there will definitely be many talents who have been buried, and he must find out these talents one by one, so that they can learn and use them well.

Don't say that Yucai Machinery Factory can now produce more than 10,000 tons of Gang, that is, just with Han Yongzhou and these engineering and technical talents and many skilled workers who are difficult to buy, how much money is given to Song Zhewu, he will not sell it, the important surname of talent In this era, probably no one can know better than Song Zhewu.

At the same time, Song Zhewu also felt sorry for Yan Xishan, he has such a good foundation and conditions, if he concentrates on development for a few more years, it will not only benefit the people of Shanxi, but will make great contributions to the modern industrial construction of the Republic of China, Yan Xishan's history may have to be rewritten, and his historical status in the Republic of China will also be greatly improved.

As for Taiyuan's power plant and water plant, although these two are civilian enterprises, Song Zhewu's economic center and the main essence of the Fourth Route Army are here, and the hydropower in these two places is extremely important, not only to ensure absolute safety, but also to vigorously expand their scale and production capacity in order to meet the needs of production and life.

For example, the existing power of Taiyuan power plant is only 1500 kilowatts, such a small electric energy output, to cope with the existing enterprises in the Taiyuan area of electricity will be able, but with the gradual development of Song Zhewu's construction plan, such a small electric energy output is far from enough, if it is added to the back of two zeros, maybe it is okay.

Even if it is only to expand production capacity as quickly as possible, these two companies must be under the absolute control of his Northern Construction and Development Committee, and it will not be easy to invest in the expansion of production if it is handed over to private individuals.

Therefore, the Taiyuan Power Plant and the Taiyuan Waterworks are also not for sale by Song Zhewu.

The other type is purely civilian enterprises, or can be classified as civilian enterprises, such enterprises are: Jinyu Fenjiu Co., Ltd., Shanxi No. 1 Steel Mill, Bin Ji Hardware Store, Shanxi Match Factory, Shanxi Flour Mill, Shanxi Textile Factory, Shanxi Woolen Weaving Factory, Pujin Silver Mining Company, Shanxi Mining Bureau's coal mines, sericulture factories, Jinheng Paper Mills, as well as Pingding, Xiangyuan, Changzhi, Jincheng, Pingyang, Yuncheng, Xinjiang, Lingshi, Xiangning, Fenyang, Qilan, Shuoxian, Laoxian, Datong power plants, Taiyuan bone meal factory, Taiyuan fertilizer factory, as well as several feeder factories and three ceramic factories.

In addition, there were 63 percent of the shares of the Jinsheng Bank held by the Overseer's Government and 25 percent of the shares of the Yujin Coal Mining Company, which Song Zhewu also took out for sale this time.

Although many of these enterprises are outside the jurisdiction of the Taiyuan Administration, the Nanjing Political Axe has made it clear that these industries will be handed over to Song Zhewu's Taiyuan Administration, and the money obtained from the sale of these industries will be remade into the Jin Banknote Reserve. Song Zhewu's retention of these enterprises would bring a lot of inconvenience to his management, but Song Zhewu still decided to sell them without worry.

Because of the express order of the Nanjing political axe, Song Zhewu sold these enterprises, and the Shanxi provincial political axe, which had been relocated to Linfen, had no right to interfere.

Shang Zhen is very resentful of Song Zhewu now, he deeply regrets why he didn't think about selling these companies at that time, even if he can't save the Jin banknotes, at least he can raise some money for his provincial political axe!

Shang Zhen, who was very annoyed, had no choice, just sulked in his life. However, Shang Zhen also wanted to make some trouble for Song Zhewu, so much so that when Xu Yongchang and Yang Aiyuan asked him to settle the food and salary of the Jin Sui Army and the remnants of the Northwest Army, Shang Zhen told them, 'There is no money, and his provincial political axe for next month's expenditure has not yet been settled!' However, he had an idea, and that was to sell the property of the Shanxi Provincial Government to pay for the army'.

For Shang Zhen's bad idea, Xu Yongchang and Yang Aiyuan will never fall for this. If they dare to attack the idea of these enterprises, don't say that Song Zhewu will not agree, even Nanjing will not agree, then it will be a blatant violation of the order of Nanjing's political axe, and the current Jin Sui Army and the Northwest Army can no longer withstand any blows.

Therefore, when the announcement of the Taiyuan Administration to sell the industry of Shanxi Province's political axe came out, Shang Zhen, Xu Yongchang, and Yang Aiyuan did not react, and some of the generals below were resentful, and they were also suppressed by the two.

On the contrary, merchants from all over Shanxi, and even powerful businessmen from Suiyuan, Hebei and Henan, responded very enthusiastically and came to participate in the auction.

On the day of the auction, the auditorium of Shanxi University, which was the auction venue, was crowded with businessmen participating in the auction, and the scene was very enthusiastic and even fierce. Many of the industry's final winners have gone through more than a dozen rounds of sign-ups to get their wish......

(To be continued)