The extremely abnormal climate that began last year caused severe drought in Jiangxi and even some surrounding places. This also cast some shadows on the Chu Empire, which was undergoing rapid industrial development.
But it's just some shadows.
The Dachu Empire was not like the previous Ming Dynasty or any feudal dynasty in ancient times. Its productivity was extremely low. Even if the rulers were willing to provide disaster relief, they did not have enough capabilities in the face of natural disasters.
But the Da Chu Empire is different. The Da Chu Empire is an empire that has officially entered the first industrial revolution. The application of a large number of mechanical equipment has greatly improved the productivity of the Da Chu Empire.
Although the Chu Empire has not been able to solve the problem of hybrid rice and chemical fertilizers, the increase in productivity has still brought great help to agriculture.
For example, more and better farm tools. As important tools in agricultural production, farm tools play a very important role in food production.
Good and sufficient agricultural tools allow farmers to cultivate more land at the same time. Even if the unit output cannot be increased, they can increase the total food production by planting more land.
In addition, the sufficient national strength of the Da Chu Empire also allowed the Da Chu Empire to possess various water conservancy facilities, roads and other transportation facilities that were unmatched by the ancient feudal dynasties.
Especially water conservancy facilities are everywhere.
Although the current water conservancy facilities of the Great Chu Empire cannot be compared with those of later generations, or even far inferior, they are many times better than those of the traditional feudal dynasty.
Taking this drought as an example, if we had put it in the past Ming Dynasty, even in the prosperous times of the early Ming Dynasty, if there were no civil strife and the court would provide relief as much as possible, there would probably have been a large-scale famine, leading to countless people starving to death.
Because the productivity of the pre-Ming Dynasty was simply unable to prevent large-scale grain output, and it was also impossible to transport large amounts of grain from other places to disaster areas in a convenient way.
But the Chu Empire can!
It is not that the large number of water conservancy facilities built in the past have not played a role. On the contrary, the large number of water conservancy facilities built in the past few years have played a great role. Otherwise, many places would not have reduced production this year, but would have lost all revenue.
Relying on powerful water conservancy facilities, many areas that suffer from ordinary droughts can still rely on water storage reservoirs, diversion canals and other methods to ensure the watering of the most basic crops.
In some areas with severe drought, water conservancy facilities can also be used to ensure the production of some crops. Large-scale production reductions are inevitable, but it does not mean that all local crops will be lost.
In this season, it is extremely rare to even be able to save part of the food, so there is no need to mobilize food on a large scale from other places.
Even though transportation in the Da Chu Empire was more convenient, the cost of large-scale transportation of grain was still very high.
The basis for transporting grain also benefited from the water conservancy facilities spread across the country in the Chu Empire.
The Dachu Empire was very large. Although central Jiangxi suffered from severe drought, there were many places with good weather, especially in the main grain-producing areas of Jiangnan and Huguang. Although the rainfall was overall less, it benefited from the local Good water conservancy facilities are basically not affected by drought.
Although the agricultural production of the Dachu Empire does not yet have the conditions to completely resist large-scale and severe extreme climates, it has no problem with some ordinary floods or droughts.
However, if the grain output in these main grain-producing areas is not affected, a large amount of grain can be supplied to the outside world.
According to the proposed plan, the Dachu Empire Grain Corporation will withdraw a large amount of grain from its stockpile and then transport it via waterways to severely affected areas in central Jiangxi to ensure stable local food supply.
As long as enough food is transported and the food is available locally, the next thing will be easy to solve.
The Dachu Empire has a complete set of comprehensive relief programs, which are the result of more than ten years of experience.
Various relief-for-work projects will be launched in clusters in disaster areas or adjacent areas to recruit local people to work and earn income, and then use the income to purchase grain transported by grain companies from other places to feed the family.
Although it is a bit harder, you will never go hungry.
At the same time, Luo Zhixue issued an order to exempt many severely affected areas from the unified agricultural tax. At the same time, he also implemented limited agricultural tax exemptions for areas affected by certain disasters.
We should try to reduce the burden on the affected people as much as possible. We cannot allow them to reduce their food production or even stop their harvests, so why not ask them to collect a unified agricultural tax?
This will quickly plunge the affected farmers into bankruptcy.
The government of the Dachu Empire wants to prevent these disaster-stricken farmers from going bankrupt as much as possible and help them survive this difficult year for the coming year.
In addition to various conventional relief measures, the government organized a group of large government-run or private enterprises from other places to go to the disaster-stricken areas to recruit workers.
There is not enough local food to eat, the fields cannot be harvested, and the cost of transporting food from outside is too high. The empire's top officials also hope to transfer part of the local surplus population to industrial cities.
With fewer local people, the pressure on food will naturally be reduced.
Companies in Liaodong and other places with sparsely populated areas are the most enthusiastic about this kind of thing, especially those mining companies, smelting companies and machinery companies in Liaodong Province. Because the population in Liaodong and other northeastern regions is generally insufficient, they have been working all year round. In order to solve the problem of difficulty in recruiting workers, they often, under the organization of the government, go to places with a large number of people but few places in the customs, or in disaster-stricken areas to recruit workers.
Although the recruitment cost is relatively high, it is also relatively easy to recruit, and many people can be recruited in one recruitment.
In addition to corporate recruitment, the Immigration Department is also involved. They organize manpower to recruit a large number of immigrants in the disaster areas, either domestic settlers or immigrants overseas. Whether you go to remote areas in the country or overseas territories, the Immigration Department All are welcome.
For immigrants from disaster areas, the immigration policy is more favorable than ordinary immigrants.
With a multi-pronged approach, although this large-scale drought is serious, Luo Zhixue believes that it is still generally controllable.
For the people in the disaster area, whether they work for work, go out to work, or simply immigrate, suffering is inevitable, but at least they can survive.
For those ancient dynasties in the past, this kind of thing was unthinkable... Regardless of whether the monarch was good or bad, regardless of whether the dynasty was clear or not, it was impossible.
Because even if they want to provide disaster relief, they cannot do so due to productivity constraints.
And this is also the most direct and also the greatest benefit that the first industrial revolution brought to the Dachu Empire, or to be precise, to the ordinary people of the Dachu Empire.
Even though they are still at the bottom of society, it is easier for them to survive because of the overall improvement in productivity.
This is like people in ancient times working hard all day and not having enough to eat. However, although people in developed countries and a few developing countries in later generations scold this and that every day and have many dissatisfactions, it is really not easy to starve to death... ...Even if you have no hands or feet, you will still have quite complete social welfare if you are alone and will not let you starve to death easily!
Why?
Because after productivity has been greatly improved, for the entire society, the cost of feeding one person has become very low, even negligible.
Under such circumstances, even if most of the wealth will be occupied by a very small number of people, the little bit that is exposed can still feed countless people.
Ancient people's dissatisfaction mainly came from their dissatisfaction with survival, and they wanted to live.
The dissatisfaction of future generations is not dissatisfaction with survival, but dissatisfaction with the quality of life. They want to live better.
The reason why the needs and dissatisfactions of ancient people and modern people are different is because of changes in productivity.
After you have eaten enough, you will be able to think about living in a big house and giving your children a better education.
People don’t think about this when they have nothing to eat…
The productivity of the Dachu Empire was still thousands of miles away from that of later generations, but compared to ancient times, it was much stronger.
Therefore, the social status quo of the Great Chu Empire emerged: people are generally still working hard to have enough to eat, and often do not have enough to eat. Quite a few people at the bottom are still in a state of malnutrition for a long time... but it is not a large-scale epidemic. of famine.
Comparing it vertically with ancient times and later generations, the Great Chu Empire was inferior to the superior and more than inferior!
But if you want to compare it horizontally with other countries of the same era, the Chu Empire can beat them!
Looking around the world, no country can ensure that people still have food to eat and avoid large-scale famine when millions of people are affected by disasters.
Not only was there no famine, but looking further, they took this opportunity to forcefully upgrade infrastructure in the disaster-stricken areas!
A large number of relief-for-work projects were launched in the disaster-stricken areas. People in the disaster-stricken areas received temporary salary income to support their families. The government spent money but also saved the military expenditure of dispatching the army to suppress the disaster. At the same time, a large number of relief-for-work projects were launched. The projects are mainly water conservancy and transportation projects, which means that the level of contemporary infrastructure will continue to improve.
This will greatly improve the ability to fight against natural disasters in the future.
The Chu Empire's method of constructing water conservancy facilities to combat natural disasters is actually very simple. If one reservoir is not enough, build two reservoirs. If two reservoirs are not enough, build three reservoirs!
If one diversion canal was not enough, two were dug.
If one well is not enough, dig two.
If there are not enough water trucks, we will get more water trucks. Even if they are not used now, they can be stored as disaster relief materials and be used next year.
In short, we are trying our best to improve our resistance to natural disasters.
The only disadvantage of this method is that it is too expensive... But these expenses are nothing to the Chu Empire. After all, this is a huge empire with a central fiscal revenue of more than 100 million.
This amount is only the central fiscal revenue, not the local fiscal revenue.
In this severe drought, in addition to the direct allocation of 5 million Chu Yuan from the central government, some localities in various places that were not affected by the disaster and had relatively wealthy finances also coordinated and donated a lot of funds and materials to the disaster areas.
For example, Yingtian Mansion, the capital city, donated 550,000 Chu Yuan. In addition, Jiangnan, a province with great wealth, even donated 1 million Chu Yuan.
There are also more or less donations from other places.
In the end, the total amount of funds donated by local governments reached more than 5 million yuan, which was more than the direct allocation from the central government.
The disaster relief funds totaling tens of millions of dollars will be used for drought relief in parts of Jiangxi, northern Guangdong, Fujian, and parts of southern Chu, and some will be used for flood relief in Jiangbei.
That's right, while many areas south of the Yangtze River are suffering from drought, the Huaihe River and the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River are experiencing heavy rains... leading to floods in many places.
There was drought on one side and floods on the other, which made Luo Zhixue speechless!
Because the Yellow River diverts the Huai River and flows into the sea, Anlu, Jiangbei, Henan and other places will have local floods almost every year. Even if the Chu Empire worked hard to build the Hongze Lake embankment, it will not help.
The Hongze Lake embankment can only ensure that there will be no large-scale flooding in the Jiangbei area, or to be precise, in the downstream areas... But there is still so much water in the flood season...
During the flood season every year, there is a lot of rain in the Yellow River and the upper and middle reaches of the Huaihe River. This water will eventually flow to the lower reaches of the Huaihe River. The flow of the Huaihe River to the sea is limited, so a large amount of floodwater will not flow out, and eventually it will accumulate and even cause flooding.
The Great Chu Empire has been building various improvements every year without interruption. However, although large-scale floods have disappeared, small-scale floods continue every year.
Until now, every summer during the flood season, Luo Zhixue has been able to keep his face calm when he sees the flood disaster reports from the Huanghuai area, unless it is a very serious flood.
Without him, I would have become numb after seeing too much.
This year's drought and floods have come together, putting great relief pressure on the Chu Empire. The relief funds directly allocated by the central and local finances to the disaster-stricken areas have reached tens of millions. This does not count the price paid by the locals in the disaster-stricken areas themselves for disaster relief. .
Part of these allocated disaster relief funds is used for drought and flood relief, and part is used for post-disaster reconstruction.
In fact, these two methods are basically implemented through work-for-relief.
The main cost of fighting droughts and floods is also to build dams, diversion canals, reservoirs or flood storage areas, etc. These projects are basically carried out in the form of relief for work, and people receive wages to support their families while fighting disasters.
Post-disaster reconstruction is much the same.
As numerous anti-disaster and reconstruction policies have been issued one after another, funds have also been released, which gives Luo Zhixue a lot of peace of mind. Even if there will be problems of one kind or another in the future, there are generally no major problems.
This also gives Luo Zhixue the leisure to focus on other things, such as the industrial mass production application of steam engines that started last year.
Since the Royal Institute of Technology built a practical steam engine last year, the senior officials of the Dachu Empire, under the instructions of Luo Zhixue, quickly launched a series of steam engine support and promotion policies.
The three machinery companies that obtained complete patents for steam engines and were responsible for industrial mass production also showed their talents.
And after more than half a year of hard work, results have been produced accordingly.
The fastest among them is Dangtu Machinery Company!
Dangtu Machinery Company is located in Dangtu Industrial Zone, which is the most important heavy industry industrial zone in the empire.
The most important thing is that Jinling City is right next to it. As the capital of the Chu Empire, Jinling City is also the place where higher education is concentrated.
Royal Institute of Technology, Imperial College, Jinling University of Technology, Yingtian University, and Jinling Higher Normal College are all in Jinling City.
You must know that there are not many universities in the current Dachu Empire. There are only more than twenty four-year universities in total, but Jinling City alone has as many as five.
This does not include the four military academies in Jinling City, namely the Army Officer School that trains low-level army officers, the Army University that trains senior army generals, and the Naval University that trains senior navy generals.
Finally, there is the National Defense University of Technology, which was split and merged from the ordnance department of the Army and Navy Academy. This is a high-level military school specializing in defense technology education and research. Like Army University and Naval University, it is affiliated with the military. The hospital is under the direct jurisdiction of, well, to put it bluntly, it is under the direct jurisdiction of the emperor.
As for the Naval Officer School, due to the special nature of the navy, it was chosen to run the school at the Wusong Naval Base on the coast to facilitate the training of trainees in navigation.
There are so many colleges and universities gathered in Jinling City. Not to mention other aspects, there are quite a lot of science and engineering graduates graduating every year.
The employment directions of these science and engineering graduates, in addition to joining politics and the military, will basically go to major government-run enterprises.
The companies in Dangtu Industrial Zone are close to Jinling City and there are no industrial zones in Jinling City, so they can attract many outstanding talents to join them.
Of course, some other powerful companies will simply design research institutions in Jinling City and recruit talents locally, but even so, the companies in Dangtu still have many advantages.
Dangtu Machinery Company is one of them. They have recruited a lot of outstanding R&D talents, and the company's top management also attaches great importance to the steam engine project, so industrial mass production is progressing very quickly.
While they are conducting various experiments and research, they are building factories, ordering various types of machinery and equipment, or simply designing and manufacturing some machinery and equipment that are difficult to buy on the market.
After spending a lot of money and many people working hard, they finally built a steam engine production line in July of the 17th year of Chengshun, and then manufactured the first set of steam engines.
It is not a laboratory product that is made by engineers in a laboratory, but is produced by skilled workers using mechanical equipment under the leadership of engineers on a production line.
This is much more significant than a prototype made by a senior engineer purely by hand.
Speaking of laboratory products, many laboratory technologies can actually be produced at home. The most typical one is the Steam Engine Research Institute of the Royal Institute of Technology. They were able to hand-knock out a primitive steam engine for you more than ten years ago, but there is no such thing. The method is just practical.
Dangtu Machinery Company has actually manufactured three prototypes in the laboratory for various tests in the past six months.
But the reason why laboratory products are laboratory products is because they cannot be mass-produced... The cost of laboratory production alone is very high. To be honest, it is better to have a prototype for testing at least. Tens of thousands of Chu Yuan.
A price of tens of thousands of yuan is ridiculous. The annual output value of many small and medium-sized coal mines is not that much. If you ask them to sell a steam engine worth tens of thousands of yuan to pump water... people would rather just throw away the mines with serious water leakage. .
The significance of industrial mass production is not how good the performance is, but how to reduce costs!
Even the prototypes produced by Dangtu Machinery Company were not as good as the prototypes they had produced in the laboratory before.
The reason for the lack of performance is that these are compromises made to reduce costs.
In July, after the first steam pump was produced, Dangtu Machinery Company provided free delivery and sent it directly to the mine of Chizhou Coal Mining Company for installation, and provided free installation, debugging and even short-term maintenance.
In fact, this is not all free. Renjia Dangtu Machinery Company also wants to collect various data through the actual use of these steam pumps to provide practical application data for subsequent improvements.
After the first steam pump was installed and started to draw water continuously from the mine, there was a lot of applause.
The 'Dangtu Sixteenth Steam Engine' produced by Dangtu Machinery Company was not the first steam engine in the Chu Empire, nor was it even the first steam engine capable of pumping water from coal mines, but it was the first industrial mass-produced steam engine. Practical steam engine.
Its actual value is very great!
Its successful manufacture and application meant that the Chu Empire had the ability to mass-produce industrial steam engines and put them into use.
This is far more significant to the Chu Empire than some steam engines produced in laboratories.
After the first Dangtu 16-type steam engine was successfully put into use, the other four steam engines purchased by Chizhou Coal Mining Company last year were soon transported to the mine and then installed and used.
In fact, many technical problems arose during this period. The previous prototype worked fine when tested, but after practical application, the steam engine often experienced various failures.
However, Dangtu Machinery Company had anticipated this problem a long time ago and directly dispatched a team of engineers to Chizhou Coal Mining Company. They even brought a complete set of small mechanical equipment and a large number of spare parts to solve various problems on the spot.
Solving problems is secondary, the focus is still on collecting various data.
As long as these problems that arise in actual use are exposed, Dangtu Machinery Company can make targeted improvements and then upgrade the products.
The Chizhou Coal Mining Company did not suffer. Although many problems occurred, they had previously reached an agreement with Dangtu Machinery Company.
We were the first to try it, but you have to provide warranty service, and when the improved products come out, they ask for a huge discount on the trade-in.
In this way, the two parties can be considered to have a relatively happy cooperation. A large amount of data generated by the actual application of steam engines, especially various fault data, is continuously transmitted back to the headquarters of Dangtu Machinery Company.
Subsequently, engineers from Dangtu Machinery Company gradually solved the exposed problems, either changing materials, or improving processing techniques, etc., in order to prepare for the subsequent production of truly reliable and stable steam engine mass production models.
And they believe it won’t take long!
The large-scale technical framework issues have been solved. There seem to be many problems exposed now, but they are all small problems. They may seem troublesome to solve, but in fact they will not take long.
They estimate that by the end of the year, they will be able to complete the corresponding improvements, and then start mass production of steam engines and fully market them.
(End of chapter)
