"Oh, by the way, isn't your eldest son 7 years old this year and already in school, right?" Li Fushou asked.

"In the first grade of elementary school, this kid speaks Spanish better than me, he learned it from his mother, and he wants to be a diplomat when he grows up." Speaking of the child, a smile appeared on Fan Zhongzhai's face.

"Yes, with ambition, today's children can receive the best education, and their future achievements will not be bad."

"Lord Yuanding, I would like to ask you for good luck." Fan Zhongzhai replied with a smile.

His first wife was a Caucasian Cuban woman named Natalia, who was very beautiful, and this eldest son was the first child of the two.

But two years later

Through some comical operations, the original first wife Natalia inexplicably became a concubine, which is really called every day, called the earth and the earth, and has nowhere to redress her grievances!

This situation is not uncommon among Chinese bigwigs, and it can only be attributed to the imperfect legal system in the past few years.

Fan Zhongzhai Ming Media is marrying a Chinese wife, that is, the original maid next to Li Fushou is named Shishu, and after marriage, she changed back to her mother's name Nie Hongzhi, and the two have known each other since they worked beside Li Fushou, and they don't know when they saw the right eye.

Nie Hongzhi gave birth to a son for Fan Zhongzhai this month, and he danced with joy.

"Brother Zhongzhai, after the promulgation of the "Marriage Law", what is the social response?" Li Fushou asked.

"In this regard, our secretariat has been tracking and collecting, and asked the civil affairs department to submit a report regularly, on the whole, Chinese immigrants are still supportive, of course, there are a lot of complaining and strange things, mainly for the division of property clauses and the provisions of raising children to the age of 18, these people used to be carefree, and they felt uncomfortable when the regulations were introduced at first glance, and they were not considered mainstream opinions. The opponents, mainly white Christians, were very unhappy with the fact that Chinese people were allowed to marry concubines, believing that it was a form of disguised discrimination. ”

"Huh...... If they are not satisfied, they can be converted to Taoism, so that it does not violate the Christian doctrine of monogamy, and we do not block such a door. ”

Li Fushou said it very easily, and Fan Zhongzhai was directly speechless;

How can it be as simple as you say?

In fact, the provisions of the "Marriage Law" do leave a back door for Chinese Americans, firstly, starting from respecting the thousand-year-old traditions of Chinese society, not making 180-degree changes, and not imposing monogamy, which will be very difficult to accept, and there will be great opposition and resistance.

The second is to create conditions for the growth of the Chinese population, and after the suspension of the large-scale immigration policy one day, the existing natural population growth alone will greatly surpass that of the white population, and the basic market will be consolidated and expanded, which is the foundation of social stability.

When the white community becomes an absolute minority, it doesn't make a big splash.

Talked for a while

Li Fushou asked; "What file do you have in your hand?"

Fan Zhongzhai took the document and handed it over with both hands, explaining; "Oh...... Here are three documents.

One is a grant for the construction of HMS Majesty, the first of Her Majesty's class battleships, to mark the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, at the Portsmouth Naval Yard in England.

The British side demanded that the down payment of 620,000 pounds be made by the end of April to make full preparations for the laying of the keel in May. ”

"The Brit is really troublesome, okay, I'll take it and see for myself."

Li Fushou stretched out his hand to take the document and flipped through it, this is the only "Majesty" battleship to start construction this year, and it is also the only "Majesty" class battleship built at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in the United Kingdom.

The other three ships will be built at the Hongshan Shipyard by prior agreement.

In this era, the British man-made ships have amazing capabilities, and how long was the construction period of the "Majestic" class battleships with a displacement of more than 10,000 tons in the shipyard?

If you don't believe it, you can outfit it in 5 months.

This is not the fastest, the fastest speed is to build a 10,000-ton battleship with a displacement in less than 4 months (referring to the construction of the slipway, not including the time for launching and outfitting).

Therefore, before construction, it is necessary to allocate a sufficient amount of down payment for the purchase of no less than 3,000 tons of special thick plates for ships at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in the United Kingdom, order new steam boilers and steam engines, and order a large number of marine equipment including windlass and artillery.

"TNND, this year's finances have just returned a little blood, and these life-urging ghosts of the Royal Navy have come to ask for accounts again, what a headache!"

Li Fushou couldn't help but complain, threw the document aside, picked up the document below and looked at it.

Fan Zhongzhai beckoned the maid to serve him a pot of hot tea, and then turned to leave, the affairs of the secretariat were complicated, and he really wanted to talk about it when he sat in the position of secretary general, but he was much busier than the earl.

In the fourth shearing season of 1882, the purchase price of fine merino wool was one pound and one penny, an increase of one percent from the third season, and basically stable at the current price level.

Excluding expenses, this resulted in a net gain of £2.91 million for Red River Valley Ranch.

In 1879, 1880 and 1881, when the price of wool was strongly suppressed, the income from the pasture was 2.12 million pounds, 510,000 pounds and 170,000 pounds respectively.

After abandoning the policy of suppressing the purchase price of wool, from the second shearing season in 1882, the price of wool soared from the lowest 3.1 pound a penny to a pound a penny, and the price soared by 310 percent, returning to the reasonable range it should be.

The Red River Valley's pasture yields showed a steep upward curve, with a net income of nearly £7 million for the whole year of 1882, which greatly relieved the financial pressure.

With this huge income, coupled with the more than 10 million pounds of dividend income from various enterprises in the Red River Valley at the end of the year, Li Fushou was finally able to fill the hole in Huitong Bank's millions of pounds of loans.

Don't look at the huge amount of more than 13 million pounds at the end of the year, minus the repayment of loans, minus the million-pound investment in the Koi copper-gold mine, minus the follow-up investment of more than 60 million pounds in Qixing Town in the Qingshui River Basin, minus the total investment of the three east-west railways of 57 pounds, and then subtract the inventory replenishment of more than 50 million pounds in the Songjiang strategic reserve, and then subtract the hundreds of thousands of pounds here and tens of thousands of pounds there, and the funds that can stay in Li Fushou's hands do not exceed 3 million pounds.

At this time, he had to spend 620,000 pounds for the gift project, and Li Fushou's heart was so painful that he twitched, but there was nothing to do, the money still had to be spent.

By June, a second installment of up to £500,000 would be paid.

When the battleship "Majestic" was outfitted in December this year, it still needed to pay the remaining balance of 320,000 pounds to the British Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, otherwise the Royal Navy would not have been able to get the warship, and almost all this money would have to be spent in 1883.

In view of the large-scale battle to be held in April, the pension of the casualties of the war is a large amount of money, and the money in hand can no longer be spent to prevent the recurrence of the situation of making ends meet.

Whenever there is not enough money to spend, Li Fushou will think of the koi copper and gold mine, and his heart is full of money!

Brass mined out of copper penny, can directly enter the market circulation, silver mined out of silver made of silver shilling, the same can directly enter the market circulation, gold directly into the bank reserves, the issuance of Huitong gold bills into social circulation, so much money into the society, will certainly boost the entire Queensland economy to a higher level.

Once the mine is in operation, the annual revenue will be in the tens of millions of pounds.

When the time comes, you won't have to worry about the money and not enough to spend, count the days, almost this time next year, there will be more than a million pounds in the account every month, and you can wake up laughing when you dream, don't be too chic!

The second report is also costly, this is the Queensland Coast Guard to build four 8,800-ton "Blue Dragon" class heavy cruisers, the first ship named "Blue Dragon", the plan will be laid in July, the initial investment of 360,000 pounds.

Li Fushou frowned and thought about it for a while, and signed the "suspension of execution" opinion on the report.

The "Qinglong" class heavy cruiser is an important type of warship in the Hongshan Shipyard to achieve a ship-building capacity leap forward, the slipway construction period is 11 months, and now under the guidance and training of German experts, a large number of skilled workers have the construction qualifications, and what is lacking is actual combat.

as planned;

The Hongshan Shipyard will build two heavy cruisers, the "Green Dragon" and the "White Tiger" of 8,800 tons, in July and December this year, and after proving its own construction capabilities, it will begin to build the next three sister ships of the 10,000-ton "Majestic" class battleships for the Royal Navy of the British Empire.

Therefore, the "Qinglong" class heavy cruiser is an important project that must be launched, but in view of the large-scale battle of Borneo in April, this important project with low timeliness requirements can be postponed until the battle is over.

The third document is good news, the Goodyear Rubber Company, which was established in May 1882, has been officially put into production after a year of preparation, and has now received large orders from North America, and is off to a good start.

The U.S. order is 200,000 sets of bicycle pneumatic tires (including inner tubes) and 10,000 sets of horse-drawn carriage tires (including inner tubes), worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Goodyear Rubber's largest customers are tractor tires from Cargil Steam Machinery and General Machinery, and innovative pneumatic tires greatly reduce the amount of natural rubber used, reduce the price and improve comfort.

At present, the bottleneck of the company's production is the shortage of raw materials, which restricts further development.

The company's natural rubber comes from rubber plantations in Malaya, the Straits Settlements, but is in short supply to cope with the rapidly growing demand.

As a solution, large-scale planting of natural rubber plantations has begun on Shangri-La Island to address the supply of raw materials.

But at the earliest, within 10 years, the dependence on imported natural rubber will not change.

In the natural environment of a suitable tropical rainforest, the growth cycle of rubber trees should be at least 7~8 years before the first rubber tapping can be carried out, and the initial yield will not be high.

The great development of natural rubber plantations, or after the vigorous development of the automobile industry, a large user, the demand is not large at this stage, so the supply of natural rubber plantations is very limited, mainly concentrated in the Straits Settlements of Malaya, northern Thailand and Cuba, of which Malaya occupies more than 7 percent of the natural rubber production, is the main production area of the world's rubber production.

Li Fushou thought about it for a while, and immediately recruited a secretary to give clear instructions on the large-scale development of natural rubber plantations;

It is required to formulate a detailed plan, formulate a feasible plan from the aspects of natural rubber plantation planning, resettlement arrangements, and professional management organization configuration, and implement it as soon as possible.

Counting from the fingers, it will be ten years before this batch of natural rubber forests can produce rubber on a large scale.

If you don't start arranging it now, where can you find so many natural rubber resources when the time comes?