It is the autumn harvest season of another year, and in the 11th year of the Apocalypse, the soybean sowing area in Northeast China has risen to the level of more than 50 million mu. Farmland in Heilongjiang and other places has been largely cleared up, as the cold climate lasts for a long time and is not suitable for growing wheat, so soybeans have become the main crop, along with corn.

With the continuous increase of soybean planting area in Northeast China, the production of soybeans is also increasing. Autumn has arrived, and it is harvest season, and the Tohoku region has begun to enter an intense and busy harvest period, and the fields are full of farmers and workers busy harvesting soybeans and corn.

A large number of oil mills began to be established in the Northeast region, and most of these oil mills are now equipped with oil extraction equipment powered by steam engines, and the oil extraction efficiency has been greatly improved.

Soybean oil has become an important commodity and has begun to be sold in grain and oil stores. And those soybean meals have become excellent feed.

Barrels of oil were squeezed out to the roar of steam engines and loaded onto ships to various ports along the coast.

In the Western Regions, cotton has also entered the harvest period, and a large number of cotton farmers have begun to pick cotton in the cotton fields, many of whom are of different races.

Before the recovery of the Western Regions, there were many alien races, and the Mongols have been trafficking people to the Ming Dynasty in recent years, so there are many aliens in the Western Regions, but most of them are contract workers whose freedom is restricted, of course, these contract workers can also get a certain salary, but the salary is not high, pocket money is available, and someone is responsible for food and housing.

These bonded laborers seldom chose to flee because they were far away from their homeland, especially the serfs from Russia. And the treatment is not exactly the level of a slave, so in general, life can be passed.

The main reason why the Western Regions need so many workers is that the cotton planting area in the Western Regions is rising rapidly. Today, the cotton planting area has risen to more than 20 million mu.

This kind of planting area may not be too terrifying in the Guannai, but the Western Regions is a region outside the Guan, and the number of Han people is not so large, so naturally a lot of labor is needed.

There are more than 20 million mu of cotton, but the output is very huge. Because the Western Regions is very suitable for cotton growth, and cotton varieties have been improved to a certain extent. Production has also risen. Most importantly, the continuous construction of irrigation facilities in the Western Regions has ensured that these cotton fields can be irrigated.

The yield of irrigated cotton and unirrigated cotton is simply very different. Of the 20 million mu of cotton, the top of the Shangguan area has produced 30 to 40 million mu of cotton, and the cotton quality is very good.

In order to reduce the cost of cotton production, it has become normal to use a large number of wrappers. Hermes-Epitek's cotton farmers, on the other hand, enjoyed the cotton price subsidy for the second year, and this year's cotton price subsidy rose to 3 jiao per quintal. Directly three times higher.

In order to get more subsidies, cotton farmers are working hard to manage their own cotton fields, hoping to produce more cotton.

The cotton price subsidy is directly paid by the imperial court and does not affect the market price of cotton. Such a policy also guarantees the income level of cotton farmers, so that their income will not be lower than the horizontal line, after all, cotton planting is also very hard, especially harvesting cotton. If the income is still below the horizontal line. Then not many people want to grow cotton. And the income of cotton farmers is below the horizontal line, after all, the Ming Dynasty is now starting the industrial revolution. Sooner or later, workers' incomes will increase, and if they buy cotton at the market price, the price of cotton overseas will be very low, and then these cotton farmers will become very poor.

But the Ming Dynasty is a big country, and it is impossible for all cotton to be obtained from the outside. It is impossible to plunder cotton from the outside to meet the needs of the entire Ming Dynasty, which is completely different from the British situation in history, which was the first to carry out the industrial revolution.

Therefore, the country's cotton production must be increased. At least be able to meet most of your needs. As for the money subsidized to cotton farmers, it is naturally for consumers to pay. By raising the tax on finished cotton cloth, the local price of cotton cloth will be raised, so that two prices will be implemented.

The price of local textiles is inevitably higher than overseas, after all, the income of workers is also high. And everybody needs textiles, and it's fair to split the money to subsidize cotton farmers by raising taxes. To put it bluntly, this is a means of wealth distribution.

By planting cotton, cotton farmers can produce cotton with peace of mind, regardless of the market price, and how much they produce will be subsidized.

As for the price of exported textiles, customs duties are charged. In the case of insufficient supply of local textiles, tariffs can be raised, and when there is a surplus of local textiles, exports should be encouraged and export tariffs should be reduced, so as to strengthen the competitiveness of textiles in overseas markets.

This is all the need for the imperial court to flexibly adjust according to changes in the situation, so as to create a stable environment. Under the unified price, the raw material production cost of the enterprise is roughly the same, and in terms of profit, there is little difference between the local and overseas cotton prices.

Of course, the local textile market is actually monopolized by state-owned enterprises. The monopoly mode is still dependent on taxation and other aspects, the proportion of state-owned textile enterprises is the largest, in those ordinary textiles that have no technology, through the adjustment of taxation, only state-owned textile factories have profits. If privately-owned textile factories want to make money, they need to innovate, such as making new tricks and taking high-end routes.

To put it bluntly, it is necessary to innovate, innovation is the driving force of economic development, only innovation can produce new imbalances, others have what I don't have, I also have to have, so the consumer market has appeared, and the economy will naturally go up.

This kind of imbalance is to create contradictions, and of course this is a relatively moderate contradiction, a contradiction that can make social progress. The progress of mankind is basically inseparable from the contradiction thing.

Industries that cannot be innovated are naturally directly monopolized, so what is the use of private businessmen in these fields? Naturally, they are all kicked out of the game and let state-owned enterprises do it, so as to create a certain profit margin.

In the industrial age, cheap was a somewhat erroneous notion that cheap meant no profit, and no profit meant no money could be invested in further development.

Blindly pursuing high prices, of course, is also wrong, it is an extreme line, and extreme is not advisable.

Similar to the textile industry, which is related to people's livelihood, for those ordinary textile production, it is indeed necessary to hand over the production of ordinary textiles to state-owned enterprises, and create profit space through monopoly. But this degree should not be too much, and the price must be within the acceptable range of the people. At the same time, it is possible to accumulate capital, so that there is enough money to update production equipment and develop new production technologies, and the treatment of workers is guaranteed to a certain extent.

These are all means of wealth distribution, and a relatively fair distribution of wealth can make the whole society more harmonious and prosperous.

In the eleventh year of the Apocalypse, the textile tax was raised. This was originally more beneficial to the southern textiles, but in the eleventh year of the Apocalypse, the state-owned textile factories have basically used steam engines, and the production cost of cotton cloth has been greatly reduced, so that these textiles are still competitive after reaching the southern market.

The total number of spindles in state-owned textile factories has risen to 6 million spindles, and the production capacity has been fully able to digest the entire textile market in Daming.

State-owned textiles poured into the market like a flood monster, directly submerging the textile industry in various provinces. The textile industry in the rural natural economy of the northern provinces has been almost completely wiped out, and the market for homespun cloth has been completely lost. Everywhere in the rural markets, there are a variety of textiles from the factory.

At the same time in the southern coastal provinces. In the provinces of the Yangtze River basin, the cotton cloth produced by state-owned enterprises has also invaded on a large scale, occupying the urban market without suspense, but the rural natural economy in many provinces has not been completely crushed.

There are even more unemployed textile workers, and many unemployed textile workers can only find the Civil Affairs Bureau to ask for immigration or work in the New Deal provinces because they can't survive.

In order to prevent these unemployed workers from being forced into a dead end, Zhu Youxiao can be said to have taken a multi-pronged approach to deal with it. Immigration of immigrants, relief of relief. Personnel were also dispatched to inspect the localities one after another. There are both light and dark.

Under the effect of various policies, no one starved to death. Because of this, the immigrant population increased dramatically this year, and a large number of them were textile workers.

Of course, there are many textile workers who change careers, but there are many immigrants. The provinces are full of teams recruiting immigrants, and all you have to do is sign up. The travel expenses and food expenses along the way were covered by the imperial court. In the eleventh year of the Apocalypse, the financial budget in this regard reached tens of millions of yuan.

The imperial court's exit fee, such a policy is more favorable for immigrants. In fact, many people want to emigrate, but they can't do it without travel money. Since the imperial court paid for it, these people who wanted to emigrate could embark on their journey and live in overseas areas.

Because of the strong rise of the economy of the New Deal provinces. More and more people are aware of the benefits of the New Deal in the regions, especially the various policies that have been continuously publicized in the newspapers, and the people in the provinces are also aware of the benefits of the New Deal for them. Therefore, there are more people who are willing to emigrate, and as long as they immigrate to overseas colonial areas, they can enjoy the environment under the new political system. The overseas colonies of the Ming Dynasty were basically New Deal systems.

Many people who choose to emigrate are to escape the oppression of the old system and go to the New Deal provinces to find a pure land. The emperor is willing to give them the passage fee, which can be regarded as very powerful.

Especially the people in the Jiangnan area, because of the high degree of education, these people emigrated overseas, which reassured Zhu Youxiao the most, and he could bring a lot of cultural heritage to the colony. If a group of people who immigrated to overseas with a low level of education, they were really afraid that they would rebel en masse.

Therefore, this travel fee must be paid.

In the eleventh year of the Apocalypse, a large number of ships were launched, and nearly 1,500 merchant ships of 2,000 tons were launched, and the maritime transportation capacity was finally increased a lot, but it was still a little tight, because of the relationship between a large number of immigrants, the commodities and raw materials that needed to be transported also increased with the increase in the degree of development.

The first 1,000-ton steamship was successfully launched at the Tianjin shipyard, but the production capacity of the steamship was still a little worse and needed to be further improved.

As for the sailboat, it can still be used for the time being, there is no need to rush to eliminate it.

The phase-out of sailboats will be a gradual process, with the first to be eliminated will be the capacity of sailboats, converted to steamship capacity, and then the elimination of sailboats in use.

This year, disasters in various provinces continued, especially in Shaanxi, which has really become a dense area of natural disasters.

However, the situation was still very stable when the imperial court was fighting fires everywhere. Under the current New Deal model in the north, there are many jobs, and farmers who have left the land due to natural disasters can also earn money through part-time work, so as to achieve the problem of food and clothing.

There are many construction projects in the imperial court, and there are also many investment and construction projects in state-owned enterprises in various countries.

Water conservancy projects are still continuous construction projects, and the scale of highway construction has been reduced, but local township road construction projects have begun to appear.

If you want to get rich and build roads first, the main highway network has been repaired, and then the next step is to start building township-level roads, and if you open up roads, economic development will be much more convenient.

Emerging construction projects were telegraph and railroad, and telegraph systems were rolled out to counties and counties, and even to township governments.

Each prefecture and county has its own telegraph system, which can speed up administrative efficiency and control the situation in real time.

In the second half of the year, the scale of railway construction has expanded a lot, and the number of workers involved in it has reached more than 600,000 workers, and the number of workers involved in railway construction is still rising with the increase in railway construction projects.

After the main railway line is repaired, the branch line will be repaired.

After the branch lines were repaired, they had to be repaired to factories, mines, lumber yards, quarries, etc., and in the era when there were no cars, railways were very important, and the efficiency of transportation on land was all improved by railways.

That kind of small line, which requires large quantities of raw materials and commodity output, can only be repaired, or can not be separated from the road, the highway is more responsible for short-distance transportation, so at this time, the imperial court concentrated the construction of the highway to the construction of township-level roads. However, after all, the finances are not sufficient enough to fully build township roads in the provinces.

With Zhu Youxiao's efforts, Daming spent another year peacefully, and there were not many man-made disasters except for natural disasters. Industrial development was rapid, with the massive use of steam engines leading to a rapid increase in productivity.

With the railway, with the steam engine, Zhu Youxiao decided to increase the scale of cement production, cement has appeared, but the scope of application is not large, usually made of blast furnace slag, belongs to the by-product of industrial development in these years, reinforced concrete structure building technology has been developed.

However, because the transportation cost of mass production of cement cannot be controlled, and the efficiency of producing cement with animal power is too low, it is not used on a large scale. Nowadays, with railways, it can be repaired to the mining area, and the power of the steam engine is used to mix and roll cement materials, and the production cost of cement can be greatly reduced.

The emergence of reinforced concrete will greatly improve the speed and quality of engineering construction, so the production of cement is a very important basic industry.

Daming Cement Company was established in the 11th year of the Apocalypse, and began to invest in the construction of cement plants in various places, and the steel company also increased the scale of steel production. (To be continued.) )