Tongzhou Industrial Park covers an area of more than 30,000 acres, with hundreds of large and small factories!

Hundreds of factories, the most important is naturally the iron-making area and the military manufacturing area.

The seven elders are all great Confucians in the world, moral articles are written first-class, poetry and poetry are the first-class characters in the world, they study the subset of scriptures and history, familiar with the four books and five classics, if placed in later generations, that is the absolute expert in Chinese studies.

However, it is precisely because of decades of studying the classics that the current generation of scholars is extremely lacking in the ability to accept new things, and this phenomenon even continues to the Republic of China!

Take Lin Zexu, who was known as the first person to open his eyes to the world in the late Manchu Qing Dynasty, made a lot of ridiculous things, not to mention the Ming scholars hundreds of years ago.

This is the limitation of Confucianism, at least in Zhu Houwei's eyes, although Confucianism is not useless, it is obviously inappropriate for Confucian scholars to stick to politics, and the most important thing they should do is to study learning, rather than using rigid thinking to govern the world, and then spurn all non-Confucian learning.

Let the court become a Confucian one-word hall, this is the original sin of Confucianism!

If you want to pioneer and innovate, want to ask for the same while reserving differences, and want the Ming Dynasty to advance by leaps and bounds, then Confucianism can be used, but it must not be reused.

Seven or eight horse-drawn carriages carrying Zhu Houwei and the seven elders of the cabinet headed towards the industrial park, and the first stop was the steel mill.

The area of the steel mill, which covers the most extensive area, is full of green plants and busy workers, but when the emperor comes, no matter how busy he is, he has to leave everything in his hand and honestly kneel on the side of the road and wait for the car to drive over.

"Let the workers do what they should do." Zhu Houwei commanded, and Ren Xing sent a fart to pass the word.

The car stopped outside the steelmaking area, Zhu Houwei and the seven elders of the cabinet got out of the car and walked, and as far as the eye could see, there were dozens or hundreds of blast furnaces emitting billowing black smoke, one furnace after another, and it seemed that they could feel the heat wave far away.

"How much does Yang Aiqing know about ironmaking and steelmaking?" Zhu Houwei looked at Yang Tinghe and asked.

Yang Tinghe was stunned for a moment, and after a little thought, he smiled bitterly: "The old minister knows very little about this, only that there was a steel frying method in the Han Dynasty, and in the Northern Qi Dynasty, there was a steel filling method, and the most common steelmaking method in the Ming Dynasty today seems to be the Suzhou steel method......"

Zhu Houwei smiled noncommittally, Yang Tinghe knew that these steelmaking methods were not strange, but it was obvious that he only knew what they were and didn't know why, so as soon as Yang Tinghe came up, he said that he knew very little, after all, as a Confucian scholar, it was not a shame to know much.

"Frying steel, filling steel and Suzhou steel is indeed the mainstream steelmaking method, but no matter which one, its disadvantages are also obvious, such as the output is too low, Daming now has an annual ironmaking output of only 20 million catties, and then iron forging steel, the output is even lower outrageous.

There are too many places in the world that need to use steel, from the farm tools of the people's homes to the swords, guns, swords and halberds in the hands of the soldiers, and the output of 20 million catties of iron smelting is a drop in the bucket for the Ming Dynasty.

In addition, the quality of the steel made by these steelmaking methods is still poor, and the steel contains too many impurities and carbon, resulting in the steel itself being too brittle.

Through thousands of tempering, the impurities in the steel are forged out as much as possible, so as to improve the quality of the steel itself......"

The seven old ministers of the cabinet were dumbfounded, and what the emperor said made them feel like they were listening to a book from heaven......

But then again, when the Son of Heaven was still a prince, he was six or seven years old when he was a tinkerer, and he also bought a compound in the capital, and dozens of craftsmen were recruited in the compound, and they were busy all day long......

Therefore, for the Son of Heaven to understand the matter of iron smelting and forging steel, none of the elders of the pavilion are strange, and it can even be said that if the Son of Heaven does not understand, the elders will be strange.

"I ordered the craftsmen to improve the method of smelting iron and forging steel, and there are these things that you Aiqing see now, this method of steelmaking is called crucible soil...... The blast furnace, the temperature of this furnace is extremely high, the molten steel refined by this method has fewer impurities, and the carbon content is very low, and the steel ingots refined almost have the effect of thousands of tempers......

The quality of the steel is one thing, but not the main thing, what is the main thing? It's the yield! The output of steel smelted by more than 100 crucible blast furnaces here can reach 30 million catties a year! ”

Zhu Houwei said that the elders basically couldn't understand it, but the numbers could still be understood.

30 million catties!

This means that in this steelmaking plant, the pure steel that can be produced in a year is as high as 30 million catties!

It's pure steel, not iron!

It's unbelievable!

The seven elders don't have a very clear idea of the annual raw wrought iron output of the Ming Dynasty, but the Son of Heaven just said that the annual output of raw wrought iron in the Ming Dynasty is almost 20 million catties, and the output of pure steel is negligible.

Now the output of pure steel is 10 million catties higher than the iron produced by the entire Ming Dynasty in a year, so how much iron does it have? Ten thousand catties or tens of thousands of catties?

It's incredible, it's unimaginable......

However, the Seventh Elder didn't think that this was the Son of Heaven's nonsense, because there was no need, because such a lie could not withstand scrutiny at all, as long as he had the heart to verify it, it would take less than two days to find out clearly.

The cabinet is the center of power to govern the world, and none of the seven old men is a fuel-efficient lamp, and in a blink of an eye, he thought of the great value contained in it.

Daming lacks iron, or there are too many places that need to use iron, and it can be said that no amount of iron may be enough.

Now this small steelmaking plant can have such a terrifying output, if it is used reasonably, it will directly benefit the world!

Compared with the shock of the seven elders, Zhu Houwei was much more indifferent, and there was even a trace of helplessness in the indifference.

The output of 30 million catties of pure steel, in this era, don't say that the Ming Dynasty is killed, I am afraid that it can directly beat the total production of pure steel in the world, but it is not enough! Far from enough!

Is 30 million catties a lot?

It does sound like a lot, but if you convert it, 30 million catties is only 15,000 tons, and then converted to every day, which means that the actual daily output of this steelmaking plant is only 40 tons......

In later generations, even the most vegetable ultra-small steelmaking plant, the annual steel output will not be less than 100,000 tons, when the new China was first founded, it was poor and white, but when the big steelmaking movement was set off, the annual steel output of the country was also 8 million tons!

As for the new century, even a medium-sized steelmaking plant will produce tens of millions of tons of steel every year, and as for large steel plants, the annual steel output will be as high as tens of millions of tons!

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