86_86695Shao Kailin has had a hard time lately. Originally, there were only three mills in Zhijiang County, and Shao Kailin's mill was one of them. It is just right that the three mills undertake the milling business of the entire Zhijiang County.

Shao Kailin and two other millers divided a general sphere of influence in Zhijiang County. The three mills kept their own duties, and for decades they were fine. Until the steam mill in Gangbuk Village opened.

The steam mill in Jiangbei Village was established little by little by the scientific research group of the Daying Craftsman Battalion and the Teaching Battalion, in the exploration and sorting of the small steam engine and related materials brought by Wang Shuhui.

The main reason why Wang Shuhui brought the steam engine to the end of the Ming Dynasty at that time was because Jiangbei Village was on high ground, and it was not practical to dig deep wells for irrigation. Only a water lifting station can be built on the riverside to irrigate the cultivated land near Jiangbei Village.

Under normal circumstances, a diesel engine will solve the problem. But Wang Shuhui feels that even if a diesel engine is used, the diesel has to be brought back from modern times, and it is better to use steam power. There are several small coal mines in Zhijiang County, and coal can be bought directly locally.

Wang Shuhui put the basic principles and specific operation methods of the steam engine in modern times, and invited graduate students majoring in mechanical engineering and ancient Chinese to make a special simplification of the relevant materials. In the materials, a large number of rare words for the people of the Ming Dynasty are also comprehensively and in detail annotated.

After that, Wang Shuhui explained the construction plan and specific construction methods of the steam water lifting station to the craftsman camp. After that, he let it all go, and the members of the scientific research group of the training camp and the craftsmen of the craftsman camp went to the specific operation.

Nearly a month later, Wang Shuhui paid attention to the construction of the water lifting station. Of the five steam engines he brought, two were built into water lifting stations and two into steam mills.

Originally, Wang Shuhui was surprised by the completion of the water lifting station. Unexpectedly, these semi-literate craftsmen and students, who had only received a few months of basic education, were able to learn and apply it to promote the application of the steam engine. He was able to build two steam mills independently. And what surprised him the most was that the reason why the smallest steam engine was not used was that a student in the research group of the teaching camp wanted to install the steam engine on the ship. It's just that his idea has not yet come to fruition.

Wang Shuhui was very happy to find out about this situation. Originally, he thought that the promotion of the steam engine could not be carried out until the basic education was fully rolled out. He didn't expect that in the Ming Dynasty, the laborers on the front line of labor would have such an inspiration for the steam engine.

He immediately made an important decision to establish the Steam Engine Research Institute with the craftsmen and instructors involved in the project as the core. He gave them a large amount of relevant materials, research models, practical equipment, and basic theoretical numbers, and let them study them.

Wang Shuhui is very happy that they have been able to achieve such results. He handed over two steam workshops and two water lifting stations to them as subordinate units of the institute. And he also decided to hand over the operation of the steam mill to the research institute. Wang Shuhui told them that all the income from the operation of the steam mill was owned by the institute.

Wang Shuhui felt that the development and promotion of steam power in the last years of the Ming Dynasty was not an unreliable thing. In Europe, the early industrial steam engines were already built by Thomas Seville in 1698, Thomas Newcomen in 1712 and James Watt in 1769.

Therefore, even if the promotion of steam power began in China in 1620, it was only about 100 years earlier than in history. In terms of the level of scientific and technological development of ancient China, it was a hundred years more advanced than Europe, which was just a norm.

Wang Shuhui also did not ask the staff of the Steam Engine Research Institute to be able to immediately manufacture an industrial steam engine. As long as they understand the basic origin and operation laws of the steam engine, they are completely fine. The most important thing is that Wang Shuhui's current requirements for them are only to be able to use and operate the steam engine according to the instructions and materials. After all, Wang Shuhui can easily order high-power small and medium-sized industrial steam engines from county and township-level mechanical processing factories in modern society.

It doesn't matter if you can't make a steam engine at the end of the Ming Dynasty. As long as those workers have a large number of contacts and use of mature industrial steam engines, then, with the comprehension and manufacturing capabilities of the Chinese, with the development of Wang Shuhui's basic industrial construction in the late Ming Dynasty, it will not be delusional to build a steam engine in the late Ming Dynasty.

Wang Shuhui felt that his steps were very slow, like an old lady with small feet, he was simply moving step by step, moving towards the road of industrialization. However, he didn't know that just two steam mills would blow the entire grinding industry in Zhijiang County.

Shao Kailin had discovered not long ago that many of his old customers no longer patronized his mill. As a well-known shrewd person in Dongtankou, Shao Kailin can be described as a long-awaited sigh. He didn't know why he was losing customers. By the time he had sent his men to inquire about the business of the other two mills. He found that his loss of customers was not serious. Because of the other two mills, one has closed its doors. In the other house, for three or four days, not even a single customer came to the door.

Shao Kailin is different from other merchants, he is a rare pure businessman without a political background in this era. Shao Kailin is from a large family in Nanjing, but his luck is not very good, he is a concubine. He himself didn't have the mind to read, and after a few years of studying at home, he began to follow the adults at home.

When he was in his twenties, Shao Kailin was also a long-time businessman. He found that Nanjing's local big business was inextricably linked with various court officials and local nobles. He felt that with the strength of his family, it was almost impossible to achieve something in Nanjing.

When you come out, you can have a piece of the world. Five years ago, Shao Kailin walked out of Nanjing and took root in this small Dongtankou in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. With the courage to break off the way of retreat, Shao Kailin successively defeated two of the four major mills in Yuanzhijiang County. Eventually, under his aggressive attack, the two remaining mills compromised him. From then on, the three mills began to monopolize all milling work in Zhijiang County for ten years.

Shao Kailin has always felt that being able to monopolize the trading of an industry is the real big business. With more than ten years of hard work, he has also saved a huge amount of family assets. He was bent on expanding his power and monopolizing the milling industry in the entire Jiangbei region and even the entire Jingzhou Prefecture. But I didn't expect that before I could start the game, I was hit head-on.

I don't know the reason for the loss of customers, Shao Kailin can be described as scratching his heart and fidgeting. Businessmen like him, who can monopolize the industry in their county, naturally have their own way in the county government. However, I don't know what's going on, a large number of government officials and scribes in Zhijiang County have disappeared recently. Now there are all fresh faces in the yamen.

Fortunately, Shao Kailin's path in the yamen is also wide, and he still found an old scribe in a household to understand the situation with him.

"Is there a mill near the wharf in Jiangbei Village?" Shao Kailin listened to this clear answer, and groaned a little.

"Brother, do you know what the Jiangbei Village Mill is coming from." Shao Kailin asked.

The old scribe named Wang Yuxuan found by Shao Kailin was a shrewd person who had been in the Zhijiang County Ya for 30 years. He knows everything about the wind and grass in Zhijiang County. Wang Yibin's family has several smoking mills in Jiangbei Village, and he knows this. However, he was not allowed to sue Shao Kailin so casually.

Wang Yuxuan, the old man, clearly knows that now, in this Zhijiang County Yali, except for two or three officials and the scribes in the ceremonial room, other positions are vacant in a large area. Such a rare opportunity to move forward is rare.

Wang Yuxuan is almost fifty years old this year, and if he is not motivated, he will be completely old. Therefore, not only was he not prepared to tell Shao Kailin what was going on in Jiangbei Village, but when he returned to the yamen for a while, he immediately reported Shao Kailin's peeping into the palace to the palace guards who were responsible for "protecting" the county magistrate in the county ya.

Soon, Wang Shuhui knew about it. When Wang Shuhui received this news, he felt a little strange, a local merchant in Zhijiang paid attention to what the steam mill was doing.

After pondering for a while, Wang Shuhui realized that as a person in an industrial society, his understanding of industrial power was quite numb. He forgot that ancient people were susceptible to all kinds of shocks in the face of industrial power.

As far as the steam mill is concerned, whether in terms of grinding efficiency or the quality of the milled product, the steam mill is much better than the hydraulic mill or the storage mill. Even in feudal society, the role of the market was still powerful. Consumers can easily judge the advantages of a steam mill. What's more, the price of the steam mill of the steam engine research institute is cheaper than that of an ordinary mill.

It is not uncommon for a fast, efficient, high-quality, low-cost steam mill to easily defeat a backward, inefficient, low-quality, high-cost hydraulic and storage mill. This is just a small splash in the tide of human social progress. The power of industrialization is not limited to the mill.

Although Wang Shuhui has little interest in people and things that are destined to be eliminated in social progress. However, he had his plans. The installation and commissioning of such things as small steam engines has been completely mastered by the craftsmen of the big battalion. He is now preparing to sell the small steam engine.

Whether the use of small steam engines will bring about a wave of local handicrafts turning to industrialization is what Wang Shuhui wants to experiment.

A month later, the "True Qi Engine" became famous throughout Zhijiang County and the surrounding area. Everyone in the neighborhood knows that the "True Qi Machine" is really an incredible thing, and they don't know who has such a wonderful idea to think of transforming "True Qi" with the power of water and fire, and driving things with "True Qi".

In the entire Dongtankou, there is actually only one merchant that uses a steam engine, which is what outsiders call the "real gas engine". That one was the original Shaw Mill of the Shao Kailin family, which is now renamed the Shaw Workshop.

Just when Shao Kailin himself didn't figure out whose handiwork Jiangbei Village was, and was still in a state of panic, Liu Huaiji came forward on behalf of the palace.

Speaking of which, it costs five hundred taels of silver to buy a "true qi machine" that I have never heard of. If it weren't for the fact that the other party was the king's house, Shao Kailin would have let the dog go a long time ago. However, even if he didn't believe that the "True Qi Machine" was really that magical, Shao Kailin could only accept it.

When the people from the Steam Research Institute came to install a steam engine for him, he found that the "real gas engine" was much better than the one he used to grind with livestock in the past.

Under the attack of Jiangbei Village Mill and Shaw Workshop, the two remaining mills in the Zhijiang area soon closed down one after another. Shao Kailin took over the two mills at a very low price, realizing his first monopoly on the milling industry in Jiangbei