Dwight continued, "You know what we've done to study the reactions of the various parts of the blast furnace! We forcibly stop the blast furnace while it was running, and then pour cold water into it to see the state of each part, which costs a lot of money! We do this because we want to study the process of blast furnace smelting thoroughly, so that we can refine better molten iron, and steelmaking will be guaranteed! ”

Dwight said: "In this information of Lin Yuan, the reaction of each part of the blast furnace at each time is very clear, and we need to do hundreds of furnace shutdown experiments!" Aren't these worth buying? ”

Jenningsen was moved, they walked into the tent, smiled and handed the deposit slip to Lin Yuan, and said, "General Lin, your information is very useful, I hope we can continue to cooperate in the future." ”

Looking at the backs of the two of them leaving satisfied, Lin Yuan sneered in his heart: "It seems that I didn't guess wrong, what they want is the reaction process of the blast furnace, and Dwight's request at the end of the day exposes their true intentions, but they can't get anything." ”

This is exactly Lin Yuan's strategy, he asked Liu Jinqiu to describe the blast furnace reaction process in great detail in the technical materials he gave him, which really moved them, but Lin Yuan also asked Liu Jinqiu to leave mistakes in the technical materials, and it would not be of much use for the British to hold it.

The investigation lasted for three days before it ended, and Dunant said to Lin Yuan: "I will announce what I saw and heard in the prisoner of war camp to the whole world, I have never seen a commander who can treat prisoners of war like you, to be honest, I admire you very much." ”

Lin Yuan smiled: "You're not worried that I'm cheating?" ”

Dunant smiled: "I am almost seventy years old, and I have seen countless wars, if you are really lying to me, then I admire you even more, because I have not seen through your deception." ”

The two looked at each other and smiled, and Dunant said, "I am very grateful to those two arms dealers, if they hadn't funded it, there would not have been this investigation of ours, I hope they will go bankrupt forever, and there will be no more wars for mankind." ”

Lin Yuan thought to himself: "It seems that this investigation is really the idea of the arms dealer." ”

Dunan and the others said goodbye to Lin Yuan, as soon as they left, Lin Yuan took people back to the city of the three surnames, and on the way began to think about the next step, thinking: "We need to produce more advanced weapons, we need a larger-scale steel mill, we need to develop the chemical industry, we need mining ......" But he always felt that he was missing a most basic thing, what was this thing, and he couldn't really think about it for a while, at this moment, a group of old men, wearing rag clothes and crutches, stopped in front of the horse tremblingly.

Lin Yuan didn't understand what he meant, and hurriedly dismounted, the old man led by stepped forward, fell down and bowed, Lin Yuan hurriedly stretched out his hand to mix, and the old man cried: "Please be the master!" ”

As soon as the words fell, more than 20 old men behind him knelt down one after another, and the sound of pleading was endless, Lin Yuan hurriedly asked, "What's going on?" ”

The old man said: "Some time ago, the military masters were fighting, collecting cloth from house to house, hoping that the adults would be kind and give us some, there was not much cloth at home, and the family could only wear a pair of pants......"

Lin Yuan hurriedly asked: "Is there such a thing?" ”

A staff officer next to him hurriedly replied: "That's right, we don't have bags of sand to repair fortifications, we only get the people's family to collect, cloth, straw mats, door curtains, everything that can wrap the soil is basically levied, when the first requisition said that it will be returned as soon as the battle is over, but the cloth wrapped in sand and soil has been worn out, and there is no way to use it anymore." ”

Lin Yuan, as a modern person, at first it was difficult to imagine what it was like to have no bags, in modern society, there are countless plastic bags and cloth bags, and later Lin Yuan understood that in this era, not only bags are scarce, but even cloth is a rare thing for ordinary people.

The raw materials of cloth can be roughly divided into two kinds, one is chemical fibers, such as acrylic, polyester and the like, which do not need to be thought about in this era; One is natural fibers, such as cotton, silk, hemp, wool, etc., although the production structure in ancient China was male farming and female weaving, and there were many people engaged in weaving, but the output of these things was very low, and the textile technology was also backward, and the per capita possession of cloth was pitiful.

The old man cried again: "Please be gracious, the fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl in the family has a bare ass all day long, how can she get married?" ”

Lin Yuan asked his subordinates: "Didn't you come from the rear?" ”

The staff officer hurriedly replied: "It's a batch of shipments, but it's raining in the past two days, the roads are muddy, and after the cloth gets off the train, the hours are spent on the carriage, and the cloth in the rear is also out of stock, and it is now being transferred in the Jiangnan area." ”

Lin Yuan nodded, he had no choice, now there is no condition to get the chemical fiber out, Lin Yuan comforted the old men, and ensured that the cloth would soon be sent to the people, and the old men left.

Looking at their departing backs, Lin Yuan suddenly understood what those missing things were, that is-the road!

Modern China once had a slogan: if you want to get rich, first build roads, this sentence is simply the truth for Lin Yuan's now, the load-bearing capacity of dirt roads in this era is too poor, Luo Chaoying once wanted to make a batch of 105 mm caliber cannon howitzers, such caliber artillery is enough to make every commander in this era excited, but later calculated the weight of the gun body, and then look at the load-bearing capacity of the road, this idea was completely abandoned.

Lin Yuan wants to build a large steel plant in the northeast, and the raw materials and equipment can only be transported from the Ryukyus, and the general trend of steel smelting is the large-scale blast furnace, so the quality of the things that need to be transported must be very large, and the road surface will not be able to withstand it at that time, and the car will be lifted out of the mud pit after walking a few steps.

More importantly: the material exchange of modern industrial production is extremely frequent, taking the steel industry as an example, the coking process can produce a large number of chemical raw materials, these chemical raw materials are transported to the chemical plant, and the chemicals produced can contribute to improving the quality of steel, of course, this is only one of the thousands of examples, the transportation of these materials, it is impossible to rely on the railway alone, you can't build the railway to the factory gate, if the railway is compared to the main artery of material transportation, the highway is the branch of the aorta, through themto get nutrition to where it's needed.

What makes Lin Yuan even happier is that in this era, it is entirely possible to build a road surface with strong load-bearing capacity, and he has determined that cement and stone are used as paving materials, cement is made of limestone and clay, both things are very common, and there are also firing methods.

Because there are no advanced mixers and pavers, so the road will not be paved quickly, so it is necessary to use the limited cement in the key place, that is, next to the steel plant and the mine, drawing on the experience of the development and construction of New China, Lin Yuan decided to establish a steel plant in Anshan, not far from the Benxi iron mine, and mine coal in Fushun.

Therefore, Lin Yuan initially planned to build a road from the mouth of the Liaohe River, so that the equipment transported by sea could be directly unloaded at Yingkou Port near the mouth of the Liaohe River, and then entered the railway transportation by road transportation, and the equipment was transported to the station on the railway line, and then converted into road transportation to be sent to factories and mines.

Building roads requires a lot of manpower and material resources, which requires a lot of money, and the Russians and the British can't get the money for a while, so the silver from the Jilin Silver Dollar Factory will be taken out first and used for road construction.

At this time, the Qing court sent a secret telegram.