There is a waterway from the capital to Xiangzhou, but some roads are detoured, some big people in the capital can't wait, give Song Jiu a carriage, take the dry road, cross the Yellow River in Huazhou, and then go to Xiangzhou, but it is not in Xiangzhou, but in the west of Xiangzhou Lin Filter County, the ancient place name is also called Licheng Army, there are two iron pits in the northeast of the city, and the country is handed over more than 100,000 catties of iron a year.

Song Jiu was unconsciously in the capital, and the crowd still felt very dense, even if it was a suburb. The further north you go, the more sparsely populated you feel, and you have to come across a long way to see the village. In fact, the population is not dense, and the harvest of crops in this era is too low, and there are only two stones per mu in the north, and a family can barely maintain food and clothing on thirty or forty acres of land. The Northern Song Dynasty did not perish, and it was also dangerous to continue to develop at such a high speed, once the population reached 40 million households, with the pitiful size of the Northern Song Dynasty, all kinds of crises would erupt in an all-round way.

When he arrived here, Song Jiu really felt the meaning of the word ancient, backward technology, backward output, and difficult life!

In front of Lin Filter County, Song Jiu said to the two guards: "Let's change our clothes." ”

"Dress-up?"

"Change into plain clothes." According to the rules, he can also be regarded as a court minister, and he wants to meet with local officials, where does Song Jiu know what rules he does, and what truth can he see when he entertains in those scenes?

The group changed their clothes, and the Guo brothers sat on the side of the road to wipe their sweat. The four of them were a little bitter in this line, and it was Song Jiu's conscience, he sat in the carriage, and the two guards rode horses, and the speed was fast, so the four of them had to trot behind to follow. Song Jiu saw that they were too tired to do anything, so he took turns letting them get into the carriage and rest for a while to catch their breath. But in this way, the speed of the line is fast, and it can almost reach 150 miles in a day. A few days later, I arrived in Linfeng County.

Changing clothes is to change the guards, the two guards change their armor, they don't want to wear it, although the vest is lighter, it also weighs more than forty pounds, and it is comfortable to wear on this hot day? As soon as they changed their clothes, no one noticed, including the coachman, and eight people quietly entered the county seat of Lin Filter and found an inn to live in. The next day, Song Jiu took them out of the city, Tiekeng was not far from the county seat, only more than 20 miles away, and before they arrived at Tiekeng, they stopped in a small wine shop near Tiekeng, ordered a few side dishes, and drank slowly. Drinking is also fake, listening to the discussion of the people, especially a few iron pit servants came to eat wine, Song Jiu almost put down the wine cup in his hand and listened attentively.

Then he gave some bounty money to the uncle and had some small talk with him.

On the third day, he led a few people straight to an iron pit.

I saw a pit from afar, and some scattered iron furnaces, this is very speechless, iron ore is mined, to be smelted, how to smelt, smelt on the spot, first mine the iron ore, build a small earth iron furnace on the spot, cut down the wood on the mountain, make charcoal, and use charcoal and earth iron furnace to smelt iron ore. After refining and handing over to the government, the iron furnace kept moving, and wherever the mountains and forests were cut, the iron furnace was built.

Song Jiu frowned, continued to walk towards the iron pit, and suddenly saw a bad scene, a person with a leather whip in his hand and whipped a servant who was completely black.

I don't know the situation in the potholes, but thinking that in this era, it will be more bitter below, Song Jiu couldn't stand it, and shouted: "You can't fight." ”

The smoker stopped and said dissatisfiedly, "Who are you, who want to be nosy?" ”

Song Jiu snorted, and the guards understood, and handed over the imperial edict and the inspection envoy seal to the man. The man saluted first, but his expression was disrespectful, and said: "Song Chengshi, you are an official of the imperial court, and you want to have a good reputation, but if we and other small people can't pay the iron, and the officials come to urge, we will go bankrupt." ”

Song Jiu heard some of the situation, and said to Yan: "Don't worry, say it slowly, you are a small people, and I am also a small people." ”

"Cheng Shi is joking, how can you be a small person, won't you kill the villain." But Song Jiu's attitude was close, and this person also let go of his courage and poured bitter water.

This was the problem of the mining system of the Song Dynasty.

The Tang Dynasty opened mines by directly setting up officials to let the convicts mine and smelt, which has many drawbacks, what if there are no convicts? There are prisoners, because they are prisoners, these officials will not treat them as human beings, and many prisoners will be tortured to death, but these people are sentenced to exile, that is, they do not deserve to die, this kind of inhumane behavior Zhao Kuangyin and Chai Rong can't stand it. The third is that the officials are in charge, and they are seriously greedy for ink. So from Zhou Wei to Chai Rong and Zhao Kuangyin, they gradually reformed and changed to a contract system.

First let the officials estimate the annual output, and call the local high-wealth householders, that is, the rich households, these iron pits are handed over to you to manage, but you have to hand over how much iron a year. If the prolific one is yours. It seems to be more humane, but it is not.

The first is that the high-income households have money and can exploit them, but the really powerful ones cannot be apportioned by the official households. It is still very dangerous to have no power and money in this era, just like a country, rich and weak, it will be treated as a lamb by countless hostile countries.

Second, officials should also be "patriotic", so this estimate can only be estimated at a high level, not at an underestimate.

The first procedure is completed, the second procedure comes, and the masters who can be the ones who can do this errand are all rich masters at first, and then it doesn't matter if they are bankrupt or not, they will not work with their own hands for the time being, so they hire customers (tenant farmers) as coolies.

The former master is more work and more rewards, and the customer laborers are not, they are big pot rice, mixed life, and in the underground pit, the master comes to work, the master is not there, and he is lazy immediately. As a customer, I can also understand that life is hard, the salary is low, and it is dangerous, and that one is willing to work hard. As a master, I can also understand that it is impossible to complete the task in eight out of ten iron pits, so what if I can't complete the task? The officials came to urge, and if they didn't pay it, they would be punished with heavy flogging, and if they were exiled, they had to spend money to buy iron in private mines and come back to make up the difference. It's just that you've completed the task, okay, there's potential to be tapped, and the government apportionment will increase again next year until you can't complete it. Therefore, desperately urging customers to dig day and night, the tighter they press, the more unhappy the customers are, and even openly grinding foreign workers. So a bad cycle is formed.

In this regard, the imperial court does not have a good strategy, and also wants to loosen it, Guan Jian imperial court loosens one step, and the following can be loosened ten steps, the iron is not enough, this loosening, the whole country will have an iron crisis. So Zhao Kuangyi kindly reminded Song Jiu, you bring a few more guards down. It doesn't matter if the officials come to urge the iron, they are all villagers, they can know each other, they don't dare to do anything, the officials can't do it, the mine owners won't do anything publicly, but they have resentment in their hearts, if they bring few guards, they can even instigate customers to make things difficult or even beat officials, the law does not blame the public, as long as they are not seriously injured, it is equivalent to beating in vain.

Song Jiu misunderstood that he was greedy for ink, he would be greedy, and the imperial court also sent officials to manage it, but loose management, that is, when the time came, he would send officials to collect debts, and he would not go to the iron pit. There are even some civil servants like Dr. Zhang and Dr. Yan, gentlemen don't talk about profits, they don't even ask about management, and they all leave it to harsh officials. There will be a cat in the middle, but on it, it is not something that Song Jiu can see right now. Zhao Kuangyi didn't want Song Jiu to ask, so he deliberately instructed him not to cause some disputes.

The iron pit of the Lizhou army is a very good example, two iron pits, the amount of iron is good, so the imperial court ordered more than 100,000 catties of iron, which was borne by two rich households. It's sad, this is the debt of King Yama, and whoever gets it will be bad luck for eight lifetimes.

After the pit master finished speaking, he cried.

Song Jiu helped him up and said: "Don't worry, it's definitely not a good way to beat people, since the imperial court asked me to come, it means that His Majesty is also concerned about this issue, you take me into the pit to have a look first." ”

Entering the pit, it is a bit deep, and even in order to save costs, there is no torch in it, and if you go inside, if you extinguish the torch, it is like coming to the underworld. Finally, I saw someone digging a mine, knocking on the stone wall with a hammer and a hammer, and it took most of the day to knock down a piece of iron ore, carry it outside with a basket, and then smelt it in the earthen iron furnace. Not to mention how much iron will be wasted in that earthen iron furnace, even this way of mining is this, and I don't know how much iron will be wasted. Song Jiu estimated that a good iron ore would not be able to get one-thousandth of it if it was mined in this way. What impact it will have on future generations, Song Jiu didn't want to. But this way made him frown.

After watching it for a day, listening to the mine owner complaining about a day's grievances, Song Jiu's ears were almost calloused, and the next day Song Jiu said: "Go to Cizhou." ”

Coal and ironmaking have appeared in Cizhou, and it is the focus of Song Jiu's attention. The group continued to go north, and three days later arrived at Guzhen on the west side of Cizhou Cishan, where the iron pit and the Xingzhou Qicun Iron Pit were the largest part of the Song Dynasty iron pit, almost bearing two-fifths of the current Song Dynasty iron production. Is someone using coal to smelt iron, but it is still an earthen stove, Song Jiu asked, there are more people complaining, speaking of one thing, smelting is good at collapse, Sanzhou iron mine is an old iron mine, it can be said that it has been dug since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and the following is dug like a labyrinth, often the pit is dug too much, and landslides begin to appear. Once there is a landslide in this era, it means that the people below are ...... Dead Light! There are also problems with iron furnaces, some people want to build large iron furnaces to save costs, but the smelting furnace is easy to collapse when it is large, not to save costs, but to waste costs.

Song Jiu's eyebrows were so fast that he couldn't stretch them, so he didn't look at them again, but turned to the coal mine to look.

It is also a history of blood and tears.

Coal mines will not only collapse, but also gas, after the death of a lot of people, some people find out the law, before going in with a long bamboo pipe, the pipe in front of the fire, if you encounter gas ignition, immediately lie on the ground, the fire from the back, people to avoid death. However, some of the gas is ferocious, and once it explodes, it will not die, but it will also burn off its skin and bones.

Boss Hu said: "This is simply not human work!" ”

I used to think that Lifu was very bitter, but compared to these miners, what is it?

Song Jiu went to see the steelmaking again.

At this time, when the officials of Ci'an County heard this, they rushed one by one, and they might not take Song Jiu as the same thing, but he represented the will of the imperial court, and he had to be entertained in terms of etiquette.

Song Jiu's head was eight big at this time, where was the mood, a little cold, and went to see the steelmaking. Hundred steelmaking is expensive, not a common practice, mainly to look at the large-scale steelmaking method.

The steelmaking method is a steel-filling method handed down from the Northern and Southern Dynasties, in which high-grade iron ore is smelted into raw iron, and then liquid pig iron is poured on wrought iron to make the iron penetrate into steel. Compared with the Han Dynasty frying method, there are many advantages, pig iron as a carbon agent, the temperature after melting is high, accelerating to wrought iron carbon, fast time, and increased productivity. Wrought iron is carbon alloy formed by carbon infiltration, and pig iron is decarburized to become high-quality steel. The carbon, silicon, manganese, etc. in high-temperature liquid iron react with oxide inclusions in wrought iron to remove impurities and form a true alloy. It is easy to operate, if you want to get steel with different carbon contents, you can obtain it as long as the pig iron and wrought iron are smelted in a certain proportion. Of course, don't think about the last one at this time. In the Song Dynasty, it was further developed, with pieces of pig iron embedded in coiled wrought iron bars, sealed with mud in the steel-making furnace, and smelted, and the suburban fruit was a little better than the original.

Progress is progress, but Song Jiu carefully thought about the principle in his mind, and then thought about the chemical reaction in the middle, as well as what he had seen and heard in this line, he couldn't help but hold his head, squatted on the ground and shouted: "It's too big for now." ”

That's not a little bit bigger!

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