In the morning, Chongzhen came to Xinuang Pavilion as usual, started breakfast, and then started eating while listening to the recent situation report. This is the only time of the day when people in the Jinyiwei system can see the emperor.
Today there are not only people from Jinyiwei, but also the head of the Ministry of War. They are all here to report the situation.
Although Chongzhen's fiscal revenue has not improved greatly in the past two years, it has not continued to deteriorate.
In particular, the economy of the North Zhili region has made great progress. Over the past two years, the number of refugees has been decreasing. Industrial development is like a sponge, absorbing all the refugees. It's like a bottomless pit, absorbing as much as you come.
Yang Fan is overhauling railways and roads. More than a thousand various workshops and factories have also developed from scratch. The reason why workshops have developed one after another. Mainly related to steel.
Steel is the backbone of industry.
A country, food, and steel. If we have these two things, all problems will be easy to solve.
Zunhua's annual steel production now exceeds one million tons. Pig iron, wrought iron, and steel each account for one-third. Especially after Yang Fan acquired the land in northern Hebei where most of the later iron mines were located. Due to the adoption of new mining methods, the efficiency increased hundreds of times, and a large amount of iron ore was mined.
There are also many coal mines in this generation. Due to the development of the steel industry, coal mines have also sprung up in large numbers.
At present, tunnel support mining has become the mainstream. Drilling holes and blasting, and using a large amount of gunpowder to blast the tunnel face for mining are also widely used. Technologies such as steam engines for pumping water and removing gas are also widely used.
Now, there are more than 200,000 miners. As a result, all the trackers in Tianjin disappeared. Fortunately, Yangfan's railways and steam engine tugs were put into operation in large numbers. There is no need for a tracker to go upstream. These trackers changed their careers and became workers.
This is a great benefit for these people, even though the factory is very tiring. But it was much better than stretching naked in the freezing cold river in late autumn. Trackers can't work for more than a few years. It's too harmful to the body.
Yang Fan's Xincheng Gunpowder Factory produces the best formula, black gunpowder with white sugar added, and the mining effect is very good. The power is suitable for coal blasting and mining. Coupled with tunnel coal mining technology, productivity has been greatly enhanced.
In coal mines, railway tracks are laid and small mine cars are used, and steam engines are used for winch traction. Large amounts of coal were transported out of the mines, and production increased more than ten times, or even hundreds of times.
The original hundreds of mining and smelting workshops also began to use new blast furnaces.
Yang Fan began to spread some low-level technologies to the Ming Northern Steel Alliance, with the main purpose of increasing pig iron production. Provide sufficient raw materials for open hearth steel.
These small workshops were integrated and eventually merged into twenty joint-stock companies. They mainly use blast furnaces to produce pig iron and wrought iron. Yang Fan's Xincheng Steel Plant mainly produces steel.
Now Wei Bancheng, as the chairman of the Northern Steel Alliance, has more than ten times more prestige and power than before. There are currently twenty joint-stock companies in the steel industry. More than a thousand metal processing factories are members. President Wei has almost become a representative figure.
His family now focuses on investing in the mining and pig iron smelting industries. He owns more than 400 large blast furnaces and 20 iron-making companies, six of which are controlled by the Wei family.
Yang Fan is now supporting a class of industrialists. These people are currently providing upstream and downstream support for Yang Fan's steel plant. Yang Fan's huge steel output must have a complete supply chain and downstream product channels.
We have basic industries, and there are so many types of steel processing industries.
Yang Fan began to spread metal processing technology and disclosed the design and production processes of thousands of agricultural implements, tools, and knives. Production equipment is also provided. Yang Fan only invested in technology and equipment, and also provided worker training.
In fact, Yang Fan does not need to invest in each of them. He mainly holds a part of the shares to play a technical control role. Prevent some technologies from flowing out of Beizhili.
As a result, more than a dozen industrial categories and more than a thousand various steel product factories sprung up in Shuntianfu, Beizhili. A wide range of products ranging from farm implements, tools, to knives and more. Each of these products is of better quality, better usability, and cheaper than Daming's current products.
Business has also developed
, merchants who sold these products to various parts of the Ming Dynasty also made a fortune. Attract more people to get involved. The logistics industry has also developed. After all, these heavy metal products need to be transported.
The most sold steel product is actually nails, which no one expected.
In reality, nails are used in many more places than bolts. Many businessmen, seeing business opportunities, bought land everywhere in Beizhili to build small reservoirs and dams, and purchased hydraulic machinery from Xincheng Machinery Factory. Various products are pressed through molds. Especially the production of iron nails.
In the past, to produce a nail, a blacksmith needed to hammer it out. Nails are very expensive.
The reason why ancient China invented the mortise and tenon structure was because of the price of nails.
The mortise and tenon structure is not easy to decay, is not a rigid connection, has room for movement, and can resist earthquakes. The benefits are many. However, it has a fatal problem, that is, the cost is too high.
First of all, it is time-consuming and labor-intensive to make the mortise and tenon joints. The technical requirements are extremely high, and it is almost impossible to install them. The cost of training a qualified carpenter is very high. Mortise and tenon joints also pick wood. Not all woods are suitable for mortise and tenon joints. They are all hardwood or better miscellaneous wood.
If it is to build a palace, it is okay to build a public building for the government. Building a house individually is very expensive. If you can use nails, it is simple and efficient, and can greatly reduce the cost of building a house.
But the nails hammered by hand are huge in size and use a lot of iron, so they are definitely not cheap. In the West at this time, nails could be used as money for payment. Because this thing is so versatile. Use it everywhere.
During production, each iron nail requires the maker to raise a fire, then burn the rough iron material until it is red hot, and then place it on the anvil to forge it into a thin iron rod. After that, the thin iron rod needs to be cut with tools. The iron rod is cut into small iron rods of the same length, and then the small iron rod is heated again, pierced at one end, and hammered into a pointed shape at the other end. It is then polished, reheated, quenched, hardened, and annealed to obtain a final rod. nails.
After Yang Fan introduced the hydraulic forging hammer, he could use the hydraulic pressure machine to make thousands of nails of different sizes and models at once every time he hit it with a mold.
Because of the huge market for iron nails, a large number of investors joined in.
Yang Fan issued prospectuses for five iron nail companies on the exchange and completed the fund raising in just ten days. These nail factories use water machinery to produce nails, steel nails and metal fasteners of various sizes and materials.
Because of the huge production capacity of the steel industry, thousands of metal processing products have been developed downstream.
At present, steel and steel products are completely a seller's market. As long as you can produce it, you can sell as much as you can. Definitely not unsaleable.
In the first two hundred years of capital development, there were no economic crises. Surplus will only appear after the spread of large-scale machine industry. It cannot be used domestically, but also abroad.
There are already Dutch armed merchant ships going to Nagasaki Port to trade with Yang Fan's merchant house in Nagasaki.
When they left Nagasaki, many of the ships were loaded with nails and nails. This stuff is a hot commodity when shipped back to Europe. As soon as the ship arrived at the port, it was sold out within a few hours.
Because many dealers were waiting at the dock, the auction started directly.
These factories brought millions of taels of tax revenue to the court a year. It also absorbed hundreds of thousands of refugees and turned them from refugees into industrial workers.
The emperor was very happy to see that the business tax had been increased from 300,000 taels a year to 1.5 million taels. He noticed it too. Shuntian Prefecture and Tianjin actually contributed one million taels of commercial tax. You must know that the business tax in Ming Dynasty is very low.
Generally, it is 30% tax, which is equivalent to a tax rate of 3.3%.
