From the perspective of profit alone, heavy industry cannot be compared with light industry at all. Taking clothing and cosmetics as examples, it is no joke that manufacturers can make tens or hundreds or even thousands of times the exaggerated profits.

But if we were to completely remove the value and role of heavy industry from the process of industrialization of a country, what would be left?

In a word, industrialization without heavy industry is like a castle built on the beach, which can be said to fall at the touch of gold.

After decades of deindustrialization since the late '70s and early '80s, Americans have had to look for ways to distract their citizens from the so-called external threat theory and regain their decline by plundering more frantically.

The role of heavy industry is that it can process industrial raw materials into semi-finished products, which can then be used in light industrial factories.

In addition, the former can also produce a variety of parts and hardware equipment through mechanical manufacturing to deliver supplies to the supply chain.

In general, only when a country has truly established a relatively complete set of heavy industry system, can it complete the first step without being stuck.

The outbreak of the First Austro-Vietnamese War meant that Austria was on the verge of industrialization.

Over the years, with the construction of railways and the boom of industrial development, a large number of steel mills have thrived within the empire like the revival of the sleeping earth after a spring rain, and steel production has also risen.

But this scale was still a drop in the bucket for the widening demand gap, and the top officials of the imperial government, frustrated by snowflake letters from factory owners, merchants, and capitalists, had to consider importing steel from countries such as Luxembourg and Prussia to fill the domestic shortfall.

The amount of capital required for the development of heavy industry has always been large, and the long payback period and slow results have also been a great test of the patience of the rulers.

This is also why most of the first countries in Europe to industrialize relied on colonial plunder, the most typical of which were Britain and France.

Of course, countries that cannot follow the path of external colonial expansion have to rely on internal squeezing to obtain valuable funds, such as the hairy bears of later generations.

However, with the development of industrialization and the increasing demand for capital, modern financial industries were created to help finance heavy industry, such as Belgium and Luxembourg and the United States.

(The Americans are very pitiful, but they are also the first to reverse harvest European capital.) ）

Historically, the U.S. government and its homegrown conglomerates have gone on a frenzy to raise money from Europe, and have repeatedly insisted that their potential is much higher than that of Belgium.

Then they invested in some projects, and the rest of the resources were invested in real estate.

Later, when there was a series of economic crises, these projects went bankrupt in turn, and at this time European capital tried to withdraw from North America, but the cunning Americans, in order to pass on the economic crisis, took various means to limit and refuse capital outflows, and then fell into the trap with the British.

The British, who were not willing to be lonely, certainly did not sit idly by and watch other countries suffer from this happen, so almost all of Europe was dragged into the water and became victims of various degrees of economic crisis. This is the tip of the iceberg of the economic crisis discussed in the previous book, so I will not repeat it here.

But in any case, the ultimate beneficiary is the United States, and the capital does end up in their hands, and our protagonist Franz only takes the opportunity to get a piece of the pie because he knows about this past.

Anyway, at that time, Europe fell into a surplus of capital, and this leek was not cut in vain. And this account will not be counted on the heads of the Austrians, after all, it is the Americans who directly introduced the bill to forcibly keep the money bags of those Europeans.

Moreover, no one has ever retaliated against them in history, and not even a symbolic sanction has been introduced, so Franz has taken advantage of it with peace of mind.

A fourth way is to slowly promote industrialization through their own markets, such as Prussia and Austria.

However, the future Prussians successfully counterattacked with the help of the British, and even though they later received a huge amount of war reparations from the French, they still did not change their congenital deficiencies as lame.

Compared to their northern neighbors, the Austrians had a much more miserable path to industrialization. The lack of help from foreign capital and the frenzied flow of domestic capital to Franco-Prussian countries have led to an extremely slow pace in their industrialization.

(Historically, there have been French consortia that intended to support Austria, but were stopped by order of Napoleon III.) ）

In this life, due to the birth of Franz, a fierce man from the sky, Austria obtained a part of its overseas colonies to help it expand its trade circle, but it is a bit too wishful thinking to expect that a few regions in this region can allow a large country to complete industrialization.

In addition, due to the tossing of his own butterfly, foreign capital can be said to be basically out of contact with Austria. Neither John the Bull nor the Gallic Chicken wanted a Central European empire to become powerful by the revival of its power.

Countries such as Prussia and Belgium, which were still in the process of industrialization, had no spare power to help. As for the huge furry bear in the east, he really wanted to lend money to this important ally of one of the three northern courts, but he really had more than enough to do it.

Now, both domestic and external markets can be said to have expanded to the limit. If you want to expand further, you can only rely on war or colonization.

But for Franz, who has always been prepared, sitting on the two major markets of Germany and Apennines is where Austria's confidence lies.

However, in addition to the four paths that have appeared in history, there is also a fifth path that can be chosen as a traverser, and that is scientific and technological innovation.

"Science and technology are the primary productive forces." Franz was convinced of this.

The mainstream steelmaking method in Europe today is still the crucible method, which was invented in the 18th century. In this method, the carburized iron is cut into small pieces and placed in a closed clay crucible, heated outside the crucible, and the iron continues to absorb the carbon in the graphite and melt into high-carbon molten steel, which is cast into small ingots and then forged into the desired shape.

This was the first method of producing liquid steel in European history, but the disadvantage was that it was small and quite expensive.

In addition to this, there is also the bubble steel method; It is to use a good iron rod and heat it with charcoal in a furnace for ten days, so that the carbon content increases, and after reaching a certain hardness, bubbles appear on the surface, which is called "bubble steel". And if you want to improve toughness and strength, you need to work heating and hammering.

Although there was already a "bubble steel" method using wrought iron carburizing and a "cast steel" method for crucible steelmaking, the production of "bubble steel" took 10 days of carburizing, and the output of "cast steel" was only a few tens of kilograms.

Moreover, both methods have the disadvantages of high cost, unstable quality, low efficiency, and limited yield. A large amount of scrap steel enters the market and is then made into low-quality steel cannons. It seriously hindered the development of military science and technology at that time, after all, every test of artillery could become the last in life.

At this time, the production of steel was less than one-fortieth that of iron, and the price varied widely. At that time, steel prices were around £60 per tonne, while pig iron cost only £3 and wrought iron cost only £9.

At that time, in order to cope with the shortage of steel production, the Europeans invented a third steelmaking method, which was the mixing method.

This method has even been praised by the great teachers as a great advance in human history, but it is only the same path that the East has followed for 2,000 years. The mixing method is just an upgraded version of the Han Dynasty steel frying method, and it does not fundamentally improve the efficiency of steelmaking.

In the magical age of the nineteenth century, there was nothing that only you could not think of, and there was nothing that this group of people could not do. The miraculous steelmaking method that spanned thousands of years has once again become the mainstream of society, and people can't help but sigh at the wisdom of the ancients and sigh for the people of that time.

(End of chapter)