On February 13, the second year of Chengshun in the Great Chu Empire, Luo Zhixue did not stay in Wuchang City as usual, but took the time to go to Daye, a hundred kilometers south of Wuchang.
The purpose of going to Daye is very simple, just to inspect many factories in Daye County.
Since taking over Wuchang Prefecture in the early winter of last year, the Da Chu Empire began to integrate the iron mines and copper mines in the Daye area, and established two core smelting plants, the Great Smelting Iron Plant and the Great Smelting Copper Plant.
Immediately afterwards, a series of factories such as Hantian Arsenal and Hantian Machinery Factory were established.
Around Dayeli's iron ore, copper ore and other minerals, an industrial base integrating mining, smelting, machinery, and weapon forging was established.
Of course, this industrial base has nothing to do with civilian use. All factories were established to manufacture weapons and equipment such as guns and armor.
Only when some factories have spare production capacity will they be supplied to the private sector.
Among them, the large iron smelting factory mainly sells iron materials to the outside world, and the Hantian Machinery Factory sells various iron farm tools, cooking utensils, etc. to the outside world.
After all, the Da Chu Empire controlled a lot of areas and had a lot of people under its rule. They also needed various iron products in their daily lives, agricultural production, and handicraft production.
In particular, agricultural tools, knives, and cooking utensils are indispensable.
Without these things, farming life would be impossible!
Therefore, even though Hantian Machinery Factory mainly supplies various mechanical products to various defense factories, it has to set up a special division to produce various types of civilian iron products and copper products for the private sector.
It’s funny to say that I thought that the farm tools produced by Hantian Machinery Factory were of good quality and not expensive. In addition to supplying and selling them internally, some of the farm tools and knives were purchased by smugglers and transported to northern Jiangxi and even Jiangnan. Trafficking.
This sales volume is actually not small!
Do you think the court will ban this kind of business transactions...
They stopped checking, and even wished that more iron products would flow out of Huguang.
The traditional control of iron products in the Central Plains dynasties often prohibited the export of iron products to other countries. It was rarely said that they would prohibit the import of other people's iron products.
The export of iron products to the outside world is prohibited, especially the export of iron products to the grassland people. This is because iron is the highest level strategic material in the grassland. If you buy the iron materials here, they will use them to cast weapons.
As for internal import, this is not a problem. Even the Ming court wanted those merchants to sell all the iron products of the Puppet Chu, so that the Puppet Chu army would not have enough iron products to cast weapons, and they clearly In turn, the army could free up more iron products for casting weapons.
However, they obviously underestimated the iron output of the Great Chu Empire, and even more underestimated the demand for iron materials in the defense industry of the Great Chu Empire.
The Dachu Empire has integrated Daye's mining and smelting industries, and there are 50,000 to 60,000 miners supplemented from various channels alone...
Including a large number of prisoners of war, refugees, young people from nearby areas, etc.
Coupled with the large number of local miners, this has doubled the number of miners in the Daye area many times.
At the same time, the Dachu Empire also built a large amount of infrastructure in order to dig more ore and better transport the ore. For example, in order to better transport iron ore, the Daye Mining Bureau of the Dachu Empire directly laid timber in the mining area. The rails are made and transported by rail cars pushed by horse-drawn horses.
And we are still building wooden tracks between various mining areas and large iron smelting plants.
Things like trains won't be available for a while, but it's still possible to build a wooden rail car.
In terms of smelting, in addition to adding more workers and engaging in human sea tactics, the large iron smelting plants of the Dachu Empire also used more various types of machinery and equipment.
This meant that the level of the mining and smelting industries in the Great Chu Empire was still sluggish, but its output had increased significantly.
Not to mention when it comes to the stage of forging various iron products, the production efficiency of Hantian Machinery Factory and various arsenals that use various mechanical equipment, especially hydraulic machinery and equipment, cannot be compared with that of primitive and traditional manual workshops. .
After several months of construction, the factories in Daye have now taken initial shape, and some have begun small-scale trial production.
Among them is the most core factory in the entire Daye Industrial Construction, Hantian Arsenal, which has begun production.
Standing in front of Daye Industrial Base, Luo Zhixue looked at the large factory building in front of him, while Yuan Gaofeng, the Minister of Industry next to him, introduced Luo Zhixue:
“In compliance with His Majesty’s decree, when we built factories in Daye, we learned from the construction experience of factories in Xiangyang and concentrated them in the same place to reduce the cost and time of land leveling and better solve the problems of water supply and transportation. It can also better speed up the flow of raw materials and parts between factories!"
“This is how we have this industrial base!”
"Many major factories in the entire base are built along the river. At the same time, we have dredged and redirected the two small rivers here, and introduced the Yangtze River water to drive hydraulic equipment!"
"On the shore, we have built three docks. One of them is the charcoal dock, which is specially used to receive and store charcoal transported from various places. Whether we are making iron or forging, we need a large amount of charcoal. Currently, it has been shipped from Huguang Charcoal has been widely collected and purchased from various places, and the quantity is sufficient for us to use!”
"The other two are ordinary docks, used to transport iron materials, iron products, and weapons and equipment!"
"Beside the Charcoal Wharf is our ironworks. To the north of the ironworks is our Hantian Machinery Factory, and further north of the machinery factory is our Hantian Arsenal!"
"There are sixteen other various factories in the surrounding area!"
"In the industrial zone, we have built wooden tracks connecting the terminals and warehouses of various factories. The transportation of goods is very convenient."
Following Yuan Gaofeng's explanation, Luo Zhixue and his party also entered the industrial zone and walked along several wide main roads.
Although Luo Zhixue had previously known about the situation in the Daye Industrial Base from various reports, even the construction of every major factory had been personally approved by him in advance.
But reading the description on paper gives people a completely different feeling than seeing the large-scale factory in person.
"The scale of Daye Industrial Base is much larger than Xiangyang Industrial Base!"
Luo Zhixue looked at the many huge delivery rooms and the several tall chimneys in the large iron smelting plant ahead, and couldn't help but ask: "How much iron production capacity can this large iron smelting plant have now?"
When Yuan Gaofeng heard this question, he immediately raised his chest and said in a proud tone: "Your Majesty, now the first phase of our large iron smelting plant has been put into operation, and the current production capacity can reach 50 million kilograms per year! "
"The second phase of the factory is still under construction. When the second phase of the project is completed and put into operation in the second half of the year, our annual iron output can reach 100 million kilograms!"
“In addition to supplying the local arsenals and other factories in Daye with these iron materials, part of them will be transported to Xiangyang for consumption by the Xiangyang arsenal and other factories, and a very small part will be supplied to private workshops to make civilian agricultural tools and knives. , cooking utensils, etc!”
After Luo Zhixue heard about the current production capacity of 50 million catties and the future production capacity of 100 million catties, the smile on his face slowed down.
Don't look at the fact that 50 million jins is only less than 30,000 tons when converted, and the estimated production capacity of 100 million jins in the future is less than 60,000 tons.
Compared with later generations, this data is not worth mentioning even in modern times.
But you have to know that this will not be the case in future generations, or even during the modern industrial revolution.
Before the industrial revolution, iron production was very low. The iron production in the late Ming Dynasty was estimated to be only 40,000 to 50,000 tons. This is the total of all the messy production in the country.
At the same time, Europe and other regions were no better, or even worse...
And the Dachu Empire can achieve its current iron output of 30,000 tons with just one large iron smelting plant!
Not to mention, there is actually more than one large iron smelting plant in the Daye area. This large iron smelting plant is only a government-run iron plant directly under the Ministry of Industry. In fact, there are still some private iron factories and workshops that are still preserved in the Daye area. These The workshops are large and small, and the quality of the iron they produce varies, but when taken together, it is estimated that they can have an annual production capacity of several thousand tons.
After all, Daye used to be the most important iron and copper production base in the Huguang area and even the entire middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River. There were many iron-making workshops in this place.
Later, the Dachu Empire integrated the local iron-making workshops, but it could not be said that all the iron-making workshops were integrated. Therefore, there were a large number of private iron-making workshops in Daye.
The iron production capacity of these workshops will eventually be used by the Chu Empire.
A large amount of iron production capacity is the basis for the Chu Empire to manufacture various types of weapons and equipment on a large scale, and at the same time, it is able to supply large quantities of private iron products.
Nowadays, the Great Chu Empire even lets smugglers sell their iron products to areas controlled by the Ming Dynasty. Well, not only does it not care, the official even supports this behavior.
After all, the Great Chu Empire purchased large quantities of various strategic materials, including saltpeter, sulfur and even salt, through trading firms such as the Li family's Fenghe Trading Company.
It costs money to purchase these materials, and it costs a lot of money.
The Da Chu Empire can't just spend money on purchasing and not export products, otherwise it won't be able to survive at all.
Huguang originally had a large amount of material that could be exported to make money, and that was food.
However, for its own use and to prevent its own grain from being used by the Ming court, the Chu Empire strictly prohibited the export of grain. Any grain merchant who dared to transport grain out of the country would be directly and decisively confiscated and exterminated!
Food can no longer be transported out of the country, and other bits and pieces are not enough to fill the trade deficit. Now that there are iron products with higher value and equally huge demand, this trade deficit can be reversed.
Textiles also undertook this task. The Chu Empire established several textile factories in Xiangyang and Hanyang. In addition to its own use and sales in Huguang, the cotton yarn and cotton cloth produced were stable in quality and cheaper in price. It began to flow into Jiangxi, Nanzhili and other places through Fenghe Commercial Bank and other commercial banks.
It's just that the current textile technology is so-so. That is, relying on large-scale assembly line production to improve a certain production efficiency and reduce management costs can barely lower some costs for external sales.
To be honest, in fact, the cloth produced in Hanyang and Xiangyang of the Great Chu Empire did not have much advantage over the local cloth in the Jiangnan region.
Regarding this point, Luo Zhixue already has an idea.
