In the eleventh year of Chongzhen, late April.

Sichuan, Chongqing.

More than 100 miles east of Chungju, there is a piece of primeval dense forest that is inaccessible to people, and at this moment it has become a very busy and lively large-scale construction site.

A large number of trees were cut down.

A large number of valleys were filled with earth and rock.

There are also mountains that have been chiseled through or hollowed, so that they cannot become an obstacle to people's progress.

Ma Xiaodou, 18 years old this year, one of the countless ordinary road construction workers, has been working on the construction site for more than half a year since June last year, and has become a skilled worker who has mastered a lot of work skills, and can get a high salary of 280 yuan a day.

Laborious.

To be honest, the work of building roads is very hard, absolutely heavy physical labor.

Not only do you have to carry those heavy building materials, you need to dig rocks, you need to brave the wind and rain, you also have to bear the risk of work-related injuries, and even accidentally lose your life, there are more than one or two.

Even so.

The number of workers working on the road construction site can only be seen increasing, not decreasing, and there are only a few cases where they choose to quit their jobs.

Almost all of them are full of energy, open up one mountain after another, and extend eastward at an astonishing construction speed of four or five hundred meters per day, and it is expected that in about a year, they will be able to cross the Wuxia Gorge and reach the relatively flat Huguang territory, so as to complete this most difficult construction work.

It's just that by the time the project is completed, how many workers will die due to work-related injuries and illnesses, and how many workers will never return to their hometowns.

But no matter how hard it is, no matter how hard it is.

For Ma Xiaodou, it is impossible for him to give up this hard-won job, and he will not have the idea of lying down, but he will work hard, study with all his potential, and secretly vow to seize this opportunity, not to make a name for himself, to get rid of poverty and become rich, and not to consider returning to Shizhu's hometown for the New Year!

Poor.

The poor life in the past, brought Ma Xiaodou's memory is too profound, from childhood to adulthood, he seems to have never eaten a full meal, his stomach is always in a state of semi-hunger, and then in order to eat more, bird eggs on the trees, fish in the river, beasts in the mountains, and even edible leaves, grass roots, wild fruits, all the food that can be eaten, will try his best to obtain, even if many times, it is better to lie down to reduce consumption.

Later, the Shizhu area was developed, Qin Lao introduced the textile industry, Ma Xiaodou's sister Ma Yujiao, because of her ingenuity, successfully entered the Shizhu clothing company, became a garment worker, got a very good salary, at the end of the year, but also to everyone in the family, have made two bodies of clothes, fashionable style, after wearing the body is very warm, Ma Xiaodou and his family, for the first time to experience what 'warm' is what it feels like.

It's just that my sister's salary alone can't bring earth-shaking changes to the family, the problem of dressing has been solved, and in terms of eating, the food is still not very rich, and you can eat most of the time, but it is impossible to eat a full meal.

And he worked the construction site because he saw the hope of changing his destiny and improving the current situation of family poverty, and he also saw the hope of realizing a well-off life that Mr. Qin often talked about.

And use his spare time to follow the staff of Xujiazhuang to learn words, so that he can get rid of illiteracy and become a person who can read and write.

The end of the day's work.

Ma Xiaodou, who returned to the living area, took out a pen and paper, and found a way to write a letter to his family, intending to have someone send it to his home to report his safety, so that his parents, sister, and sister could relax and not worry too much.

Ma Xiaodou wrote on the letterhead:

"Dad, mother, sister, sister, on the twentieth of this month, my salary was paid again, last month I was full attendance, an additional reward of 500 Wen, plus the normal salary, a total of 8620 Wen, I used up 480 Wen, net savings of 8140 Wen, I will send this money, together with the letter, let my father and mother save this money, if you add the money saved in the previous months, add up, there should be 55 silver dollars."

"I will continue to work hard, my goal is to be able to save 150 silver dollars to build a new house in my family, and find a way to save a dowry of 30 silver dollars for my sister, so that she can marry a family with better conditions, and live a better life in the future, without looking at the faces of others, no matter what she does, she has confidence."

"I will definitely marry a daughter-in-law, I will find one when I am about twenty years old, it is still a little early, Xu Jiazhuang does not recommend that we get married too early, more than twenty years old is the most suitable, twenty-two or three is no problem, in short, my main idea now is to make money, make money, women's words, did not appear in my mind."

"Opportunity, I saw a lot of opportunities on the construction site of the railway, I also heard that Xujiazhuang will definitely not only build three railways, but will build more roads in the future, and will need more steel workers, welders, carpenters and masons, but my dream is to become an excellent blaster, the demand for blowing up mountains and opening roads is too great, whether it is mining, building straight and efficient railways, the demand for blasting is very large, almost every mountain in front of it has to be blown up, and a qualified blasting engineer, the minimum monthly income is eighty silver dollars, I am now just an ordinary dispensing staff, I am a trainee, and after passing the assessment and successfully becoming a regular, I can only get a salary of 350 Wen per day, which is much higher than now......"

"Daddy, I miss you, I also want to go back home, help you work, sit together to eat, talk about some things at home, many times, I dream of home, but, I am a man, it is time to be independent, and I want to become a pillar to help support our family and bring more good changes."

"In short, the future is full of hope, the moment of reunion will come sooner or later, and when I have a small achievement and return home, I will be more filial to you."

Finish writing the letter.

Ma Xiaodou wiped the moisture from the corners of his eyes, put it in the envelope, handed it to the mail team, and then returned to his bed and fell asleep.

……

The other side.

As the person in charge of the Sichuan section of the 'Haichuan Railway'.

Qin Liangyu has felt a lot of pressure recently.

The white silk on his head has increased a lot.

I had to work sixteen or seventeen hours a day, dealing with endless affairs, and I felt more tired than marching and fighting.

The burden in my heart is heavier, always worried that I am incompetent and not able to do well, can not complete each project node with high quality without delay, worried that the project may be overrun, and the supply of materials is insufficient, etc., and found that 500,000 road repair workers have reached the limit of her ability to control, but she still has to recruit another 300,000 young people to make the construction speed of the 'Haichuan Railway' in Sichuan reach the expected state, and strive to achieve the railway opening to traffic by the end of next year.

Otherwise, every day of delay, Sichuan's development will be delayed for one day, and it will be difficult to catch up with the pace of development in the Jiangnan region.

After all, it's more than 20 million silver dollars.

I don't know how many people's savings and hard work are included in it.

If you don't do it well, don't think about it for eternity, and it's possible to leave a stink for 10,000 years.

For her, this project can only succeed, not fail, and there is no other way to go.

Therefore, for the sake of his reputation and the more than 20 million businessmen in Sichuan, Qin Liangyu could only write a letter to the owner of Xujiazhuang, asking him to send it in the form of a telegram, asking Xujiazhuang to help:

"The owner of the village is fine, the old body Qin Liangyu is disturbed, forgive the sins...... Recently, we have encountered a lot of difficulties. ”

"If you want to speed up the construction efficiency of railway sections in Sichuan, you must supplement a lot of resources in three aspects."

"One is human resources, especially excellent management talents, we are very lacking, it is difficult to organize workers well, resulting in some people are busy and tired, the other part of the people are quite idle, often nest work, but the wages in hand are about the same, resulting in the overall enthusiasm is not too high, it is difficult to maximize the use of manpower, this is the fault of the serious lack of ability of the old body, just to send a number of organizational talents, good help management, improve the efficiency of all aspects."

"The second is the serious shortage of explosives, which allows us to only use the way of axe and chisel fire to solve the mountain in front of us, the efficiency is even lower, invest thousands of people and tens of thousands of people, solve a mountain, often the workers are tired, but the progress is extremely slow, we must transport a large number of high-performance explosives, in order to overcome this problem, improve the efficiency, in addition to excellent blasting talents also have to ask for more, wages are not a problem, we can afford it."

"The third is the shortage of grain, although Sichuan produces a lot of grain, and has a bumper harvest for several consecutive years, but the consumption of hundreds of thousands of heavy manual labor workers is much more than the grain consumed by ordinary farmers, and buying grain in the vicinity on a large scale will lead to a sharp rise in grain prices...... That's really, really important. ”

"As for steel, cement, and river sand, these are not too big problems, Sichuan can be self-sufficient, as long as there is a lot of grain and meat, it can organize a large number of workers, let them go to find mines, and then send them to factories for processing, steel, cement, river sand, etc., there will also be ...... I finally understood why food is the foundation of everything, and as long as you have enough food, you will soon have everything. ”

"In short, I hope that the owner of the village will help the old man, respectfully!"

……

Soon.

Xujiazhuang, Harbour City.

After receiving the telegram, he learned about the predicament Qin Liangyu was facing.

In the study office, Xu Yuan thought about it for a while.

Puzzle.

He felt that Qin Liangyu had given him a few big problems.

Of course, there is no shortage of management and organizational talents, but there are quite a lot of them, but those senior management talents who can easily manage hundreds of people, thousands of people, or even tens of thousands of people, are still more precious, because this kind of group can be regarded as elites, and it takes a long time to train and exercise in order to be independent, to complete the task excellently, and to have a moral character that is not easy to be corroded, otherwise it will become a moth with a huge threat.

A top management elite like this, in Xujiazhuang, will not exceed 10,000.

The number of workers managed by Qin Liangyu is as high as 500,000, and if it is increased by another 300,000 to 800,000, then the supporting management personnel must be at least between 500 and 800 people.

Only in this way can we make perfect use of human resources and greatly improve the efficiency of road construction.

As for explosives, now is not a war period, Xujiazhuang hoarded a lot of high-energy explosives, which can be sent to Sichuan to help open mountains and build roads, but it will be more troublesome to transport them, and the safety factor is not high, the best way is to let Qin Liangyu build an airport over there, and Xu Yuan let the transport plane send batches of explosives over, which is efficient and reliable, and the disadvantage is that the cost is high and a lot of biodiesel is consumed.

Finally, there is grain, to feed hundreds of thousands of workers, meat, it is certainly not possible to rely on transport planes to transport, the amount is too large, but the unit value of grain is not high, this is definitely not a cost-effective thing, the consumption of oil, as well as the wear and tear of aircraft, will be far higher than the value of grain.

The three aspects of the problem are all difficult problems that sound simple but are actually difficult to solve.

Even if it is a wealthy Xujiazhuang, he doesn't dare to pack a ticket to solve it.

What to do?

How can these problems be solved.

After racking my brains for a long time, I also had several discussion meetings with my staff, and after some brainstorming and brainstorming, I finally came up with a few ingenious solutions.

First, in terms of talents, as long as 100 management talents are sent over, let them teach the advanced. Sectional contracting method, that is, give full play to the enthusiasm of the workers, the thousands of miles of railway lines, into hundreds of small sections, each section is clearly marked, so that the workers can be contracted, if they can be completed on time, they will be given the remuneration for completion on time, if they can be completed in advance, they will be given the corresponding rewards according to the number of days in advance, if they cannot be completed on time, they will face punishment and even cancel the contracting right, so as to survive the fittest, let the excellent team stand out, and the team that is not excellent will be eliminated naturally.

Second, in terms of explosives, as long as you take the land route, let the logistics and transportation caravans, send a large number of chemical fertilizers (ammonium nitrate) to Qin Liangyu, and then use these fertilizers to mix with charcoal and sulfur to produce a large number of black powder, and then use black powder for mining, so that the cost will be significantly reduced, and a higher degree of self-sufficiency can be achieved, after all, the charcoal, sulfur and other resources in Sichuan are still relatively rich, and then send a group of outstanding blasting talents, and the explosives problem has also been solved.

In the end, in terms of grain, Xu Yuan plans to transfer 20 transport planes (with a delivery volume of 5 tons) to send a large amount of meat to Qin Liangyu at a rate of 100 tons per day, because 100 tons a day is equal to 500,000 workers, who can eat four taels (close to half a catty) every day and provide a lot of calories. It can also quickly transport the grain from the south of the Yangtze River to Sichuan through the railway line, that is, send a large amount of grain before the food shortage...... As long as the road is built fast enough, the people of Sichuan will not be hungry.

Several of the above schemes.

It was quite perfect, and it solved several problems encountered by Qin Liangyu, which made her quite satisfied, and she expressed her gratitude many times.