Luo Zhixue went to Tianjin Lida Textile Company for an inspection. The inspection was only superficial. It was more to convey to the outside world that the empire attached great importance to the light industry represented by the textile industry. In fact, there was nothing interesting to see during the inspection.
After all, no matter how much you brag about the textile industry, it is just a low-tech, labor-intensive industry.
The importance of the textile industry lies in people's livelihood!
On the one hand, the textile industry is related to clothing, an important livelihood industry. The textile industry occupies a large category of clothing, food, housing and transportation.
Whether they can dress warmly and well, directly affects the living standards of the people in the empire.
At the same time, the textile industry's low technical threshold, wide adaptability, small investment, and large market base allow the textile industry to flourish in an all-round way. Whether it is in economically developed places such as Guangzhou, Songjiang, Tianjin, etc., a large number of textile industries have been focused on. Small and medium-sized cities also have a large number of textile companies.
Even Heyuan Prefecture, a poor mountainous area in northern Guangdong where Wang Tu is in charge, has a complete textile industry chain, from spinning to weaving, printing and dyeing, and garments.
This has made the textile industry the first choice for industrial development in many places, especially economically backward areas.
If you can’t make steel machinery, you can’t make textiles?
Is this thing difficult? Just build a few spinning machines and looms and hire dozens or even a dozen workers. The spinning machines and looms don't even have to be powered by the latest steam engines. , you can just buy a second-hand old steam engine.
Therefore, in the north and south of the Chu Empire, the textile industry was the most common type of industry.
At the same time, it is also the industrial type that drives the largest number of jobs in terms of industrial output value in the Dachu Empire. It is also the leading industry that drives the development of a large number of industries.
Behind the textile industry are a large number of machinery, chemicals, steel, shipbuilding, railways, shipping and other messy industries.
This is why when agricultural countries engage in industrialization, the textile industry is often the first choice as a breakthrough point.
In the original time and space, Britain, which was the first to industrialize, relied on the textile industry, and subsequent countries such as France and Germany also relied on the textile industry at the beginning.
Japan, a backward country, basically relied on the textile industry during the Meiji Restoration and the following decades.
When we waited until the end of the 20th century when it was time to open up, we focused on the textile industry at the beginning.
Don't tell me that heavy industry is better. Steel and other things are the basis of industry. Everyone knows the truth. The question is whether it can be done.
Without the foreign exchange earned from labor-intensive industries like the textile industry, how can you purchase machinery and equipment? Without mechanical equipment, how can you practice steel?
How did Japan develop industry during the Meiji Restoration period in modern times?
The model is very simple. One is to rely on their self-produced raw silk and export the raw silk to the United States and other places to earn foreign exchange.
At the same time, cotton is imported from India and other places, and then processed into cotton cloth using domestic cheap labor, and then exported to China and other places. After earning foreign exchange, it goes to Europe and the United States to purchase machinery, equipment and even warships.
Raw silk and cotton, these two major textile industries supported the industrial source of Japan during the Meiji Restoration.
Without the textile industry, Japan in modern times could not even afford machinery and equipment, so how could it develop heavy industry.
It is worth noting that in modern times, our industrial model was highly similar to Japan's, and our exports mainly relied on raw silk... Moreover, the two sides are each other's biggest competitors in the international raw silk market. This fierce competition means that one can win or lose. Divide into life and death.
From an economic perspective, the series of wars between China and Japan in modern times were the inevitable result of competition with each other. Wars caused by commercial competition lasted from the late Qing Dynasty to World War II.
Even in the late 20th century, for a long time after our reform and opening up, we still relied on the textile industry and other low-end labor-intensive industries to produce products, and relied on labor cost advantages to open up the international market and obtain foreign exchange.
800 million shirts for 1 plane is this model.
The following countries, such as Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, are crossing the river by feeling China's stones, and they are pursuing the same economic development model, which is to prioritize the development of labor-intensive industries such as textiles and electrical product assembly, and utilize the accumulation of demographic dividends. industrialized capital.
This economic model, in the words of economists, is: demographic dividend...
In plain English: selling cheap labor!
So when talking about demographic dividend, don’t be proud...
Looking at today's Great Chu Empire, of course it is different from the backward countries in the original time and space. The Great Chu Empire does not need to use cheap labor in exchange for foreign exchange.
The Great Chu Empire valued the textile industry and the large number of jobs it could generate. The low threshold could support industrial development in more places.
As for things like exporting to earn foreign exchange...actually, that's just incidental.
Because the main market for a series of industrial products of the Dachu Empire is domestic, the export share is actually very small...
After all, the Chu Empire had a population of several hundred million, and it was still a country that had initially completed industrialization, with a huge urban population.
This means that the consumer market is extremely large.
This is true even for the military industry, which has very huge export profits. Ordnance exports seem to be several times more profitable, but in fact the total amount is actually very small compared to the huge industrial output value of the Dachu Empire...
The military industry of the Dachu Empire mainly relied on the domestic army's own procurement needs.
For example, the navy builds so many warships every year, and these warships are extremely expensive.
The navy's purchase price for a Yingtian-class battleship with a full load displacement of 6,300 tons is approximately 830,000 Chu Yuan.
The navy's purchase price for a 2,800-ton Jinzhou-class cruiser with a fully loaded displacement is approximately 450,000 Chu Yuan.
The navy's purchase price for a 1,560-ton Baling-class frigate with a fully loaded displacement is 280,000 Chu Yuan.
This is only talking about the three major categories of capital ships of the navy. In addition, there are also large quantities of other ordnance and equipment purchases. The army often places orders for thousands of artillery pieces, and when it comes to replacing rifles, the orders are in the millions.
The production scale of the new 23-year-old percussion rifle, a model used by infantry alone, has reached 1.5 million units. In addition, a large number of old flintlock muskets have also been modified.
Therefore, relatively speaking, although arms exports are profitable, to put it bluntly, they are just pocket money. If we really hope to make money from exports, a large number of domestic arsenals will starve to death.
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Likewise, the textile industry is no exception.
This is an industry with strong internal demand, vast market, and low investment threshold. Therefore, the Dachu Empire has always attached great importance to the development of the textile industry in the past twenty years.
This is also the main reason why Luo Zhixue went to Tianjin Lida Textile Company to inspect when he was inspecting in Tianjin.
As for the inspection itself, it wasn't very interesting.
A group of people are pretending to be acting there, what’s so interesting about it.
But after arriving at Tianjin Song Glass Company, the inspection was different.
Tianjin Song's Glass Company does not occupy a large area, the factory building is not very large, and the number of employees is not large, and a considerable part of its employees are R&D personnel and technical engineers.
Pure low-end ordinary workers actually account for a small proportion.
This is completely different from industries such as the textile industry, which are intensive in low-end labor.
However, although the scale of the company seems small, the output value is very large and the gross profit is extremely high.
When Luo Zhixue heard the person in charge of Song Glass Company say that in the first two quarters of this year, their major businesses had completed sales of more than 5 million yuan, he couldn't help but said: "Your output value , more than some large factories with thousands of people!"
At this time, a naval general next to him couldn't help but said: They have to buy tens of thousands of dollars for a navigation telescope. It's strange that the production value is not high.
The Navy is very resentful that their company's products are so expensive.
It is expected to be equipped with the main telescope on the Yingtian-class battleship, and the asking price is 27,000 Chu Yuan!
Damn, anyone who sees this price will think it’s expensive.
It's a pity that the Navy still has to hold its nose and buy it, because the large-scale monocular navigation telescope of Song Glass Company is really good. It is installed on the observation deck of the battleship. When the weather is good, the lookout soldiers can use the telescope. Discover targets tens of kilometers away and accurately identify them.
And it can only see so far, not because the telescope of Song Glass Company is not good, but because the battleship's observation deck has a limited height and cannot see further due to the curvature of the earth.
Other ordinary navigation telescopes and even ground military telescopes are not cheap either.
Just from telescopes, the Song Glass Company can earn more than one million a year... After all, in the field of telescopes, whether for military or civilian use, the Song Glass Company occupies the main market share.
In addition, Song Glass Company also occupies a considerable market share in the field of microscopes and other special glass products such as experimental glassware.
And these things are very expensive.
Experimental equipment is not cheap.
However, while Song Glass Company has large sales and high gross profits, its R&D investment is also very large.
They invest a lot of manpower and material resources in research and development all year round.
For example, if you want to build a new high-magnification microscope, ordinary glass will not work. You need glass made with a special formula.
Then glass processing is also a very troublesome thing, because the optical field has very high requirements for the flatness of the lens, and the lens not only needs to have high flatness, this thing itself is also a concave and convex product.
How to process an ultra-high-precision flat surface in a convex or concave lens, and it also requires industrial mass production. Even if it is not feasible, it can also be produced in small batches by manual and mechanical methods.
This technical requirement is very high, and it belongs to the high-precision field.
Because the high-precision machinery and equipment on the market cannot meet Song's company's high-precision lens processing needs, they even invested heavily in developing high-precision lens processing equipment themselves.
Because the machining precision of the mechanical equipment is very high, it was even slightly modified to make high-precision machinery and equipment that can process other products for sale to the outside world.
Therefore, Song Glass Company not only engages in glass, but also engages in precision machinery and equipment.
When you enter their production workshop, you can see that their style is different from other factories. The production workshop is very clean and tidy, and there are not many workers, who all operate machinery and equipment.
Even larger than their production workshops are their several R&D buildings.
Its main R&D building has five floors. It is a steel and concrete building with a very large area. It is divided into many different R&D departments and laboratories.
All kinds of experimental equipment make people feel full of technology at first glance!
Even Luo Zhixue, who has the soul of future generations, couldn't help but feel shocked when he saw this scene.
Just looking at the interior of this R&D building, it’s hard to believe that it was in the late seventeenth century. According to Luo Zhixue’s limited historical knowledge, this place is probably similar to the R&D institutions of large companies in the twentieth century. Come on.
With such R&D hardware and hundreds of R&D personnel, no wonder Song Glass Company is so strong in the field of optics.
After an inspection trip to Song Glass Company, Luo Zhixue felt satisfied with today's inspection, and he was even more looking forward to the subsequent inspection in Tianjin.
Tianjin is an important industrial town in the north. This place is not just home to Song Glass Company and Lida Textile Company. Strictly speaking, although these two companies are not bad, they can only be regarded as younger brothers in Tianjin.
The large local enterprises in Tianjin are still those large government-owned enterprises directly under the Ministry of Industry, such as Hebei Arms Company and Tianjin Machinery Company.
Hebei Arms Company is one of the five major arms companies in the Chu Empire. It has more than a dozen research institutes and eighteen arsenals of different types. It is a comprehensive arms enterprise with product lines ranging from battleships to bullets.
When Luo Zhixue inspected Qingdao before, the Qingdao Naval Arsenal he saw was owned by Hebei Arms Company.
Tianjin Firearms Factory is the largest firearms production factory in North China, supplying 30% of the firearms in the Chu Empire, ranging from rifles to lances, pistols, etc.
Tianjin Artillery Factory is also the largest artillery factory in North China. Its product line includes a series of army field guns. It also produces some front-loading rifled guns for the navy. Its Type 28 75mm front-loading rifled gun has entered the Chinese market. The Navy's equipment list has produced hundreds of them, and they are widely equipped on a series of newly built battleships, serving as the secondary guns of cruisers, frigates, small patrol ships, and the main guns of gunboats.
Even the Army couldn't help it. It built more than thirty field cannon versions and formed a test artillery regiment to study the tactical application of front-loading rifled guns in ground combat.
However, after research by the Army, they still believe that the current rifled guns have huge problems. The cost is too high, and most importantly, the quality of the barrel is too poor. The rifling is easily polished and the barrel life is too short.
Unless the barrel life of rifled artillery is greatly improved, otherwise, it is impossible for the Army to use rifled artillery on a large scale like the Navy.
The navy can tolerate one or two hundred rifled guns with a barrel life for the sake of range and power. That's because the navy's warships rarely fire guns.
But the Army is different. The Army's artillery is used very frequently during battles. After a big battle, hundreds of artillery shells are fired at every turn.
If the lifespan of the gun is too short, the artillery will be scrapped before a battle is over. How can we still fight?
These two major arsenals were also the key inspection targets of Luo Zhixue during his inspection in Tianjin.
Luo Zhixue inspected arsenals more often in the past, but he usually went to the Dangtu Industrial Base, which is very close to Jinling City, to see the local Dangtu firearms factory and Dangtu artillery factory.
There are relatively few arsenals in other places.
This is the first time to see the northern arsenal, so Luo Zhixue is looking forward to it. Hebei Weapons Company also attaches great importance to it and has made corresponding preparations early.
This kind of preparation is not about safety preparation. After all, it is an arsenal, and security precautions are very high on weekdays.
The preparation work of Hebei Arms Company is mainly focused on several new weapons.
Therefore, after Luo Zhi learned about the Tianjin Firearms Factory and the Tianjin Artillery Factory next door for a brief inspection, he came to the test range of the Hebei Weapons Company next to the arsenal.
At this time, the open space at the test range was filled with a variety of weapons and equipment, including active weapons that had been equipped on a large scale by the military, as well as various new weapons from Hebei Weapons Company, and even concept weapons.
This is a weapons show!
The audience was Luo Zhixue and the large number of military generals who came with him.
Hebei Arms Company is preparing to rely on this opportunity to get another batch of weapons orders from the military.
Luo Zhixue is also well aware of Hebei Arms Company's ideas, but he will not stop it, and he even welcomes it!
If you have any good things, don't hide them, bring them out to me. As long as they are good, are you afraid that I won't give you an order?
So as soon as he arrived at the test range, Luo Zhixue smiled and said to Dai Yong, the general manager of the Hebei Weapons Company: "Dai Aiqing, if you have any good things, bring them out!"
Dai Yongyan, who was nearly fifty years old, looked like a loyal and honest man and said: "Then I have the courage to show my shame!"
After saying that, he quickly stepped forward to the open space in front: "Your Majesty, please see, this is the latest breech-loading rifled gun developed by our company."
When I heard the term breech-loading rifled gun, I looked at the rear of the gun in front. It was indeed different from the front-loading rifled gun. It had several more parts.
Luo Zhixue was shocked immediately.
The Hebei Arms Company kept silent and actually developed a breech-loading rifled gun, a killer weapon?
Breech-loading artillery, like many weapons, is not a new concept. Europeans began to use breech-loading smoothbore cannons in the 16th century. However, at that time, the method of mother-and-son artillery was commonly used, which is what later Chinese people often used. The familiar Franco cannon, this thing is an imitation of the Portuguese breech-loading cannon.
But this thing has no future. Because of serious air leakage and serious lack of power, it can basically only be used as a light artillery, and it will soon be completely eliminated by the front-loading smoothbore cannon.
The Dachu Empire has also continued the research and development of breech-loading artillery, and has also developed improved models of Franco machine artillery, trying to process it with better technology to obtain better breech-loading smoothbore cannons.
Unfortunately, this series of attempts were unsuccessful.
The same rifled artillery is nothing new. The Chu Empire began to think about developing rifled weapons more than ten years ago. However, bronze artillery is not wear-resistant, and steel materials have not been able to achieve breakthroughs, so there has been no actual progress before. .
It was only in recent years that as the domestic steel industry continued to progress and relatively good steels were produced, steel was used to produce rifled gun barrels. However, the performance was still not good, the wear resistance was very poor, and the pressure bearing capacity was poor. Not great either.
In order to solve many problems such as wear resistance and pressure bearing, the front-loading rifled guns currently used by the Dachu Empire Navy actually use composite material barrels...
The inner layer is made of steel and the outer layer is made of wrought iron.
Only in this way did the navy have large-scale front-loading rifled guns.
Although the current technical level of rifled guns is not very good, with defects such as high cost and short service life, it is still available, so many artillery developers are thinking about starting to develop breech-loaded rifled guns.
But Luo Zhixue had never heard of any technological breakthrough before. Last year, Jiangnan Arms Company tried to develop a breech-loading rifled gun... It seemed good at first glance, but the air leakage was so serious that The limited range is very short, and the power when firing armor-piercing projectiles is not very good!
Coupled with other technical flaws, the barrel even exploded on the spot during the test firing!
Well, Jiangnan Weapons Company has once again taken their so-called breech-loaded rifled gun back and remade it. God knows when they will be able to come up with a perfect product.
The current Da Chu Empire still has a relatively large technical gap if it wants to develop a breech-loaded rifled gun. It cannot even produce a pure steel high-performance barrel, and the breech design is not good, and the materials are not up to standard. Most of the ones that come out have serious air leaks, lack practicality, and in extreme cases, they may explode your chamber.
Now Hebei Arms Company suddenly said that it had a breech-loading rifled gun, which made Luo Zhixue curious. Is this bragging or a real technological breakthrough?
Luo Zhixue immediately watched them with great anticipation and even let them conduct a test launch.
But when Luo Zhixue saw that their breech-loading rifled cannon used a breech block with a spiral tail structure, well, that's not the point... The point is that the shells fired very well. The shells were fired smoothly and there was no air leakage. .
However, when preparing to test-fire the second shell, several strong artillerymen couldn't unscrew the tail screw bolt no matter how hard they tried, even with a big hammer.
Luo Zhixue couldn't help but rolled his eyes.
Feeling: This is a one-time thing. One look at it and you can tell that there must be a flaw in the breech design of this thing, otherwise it would not even be possible to remove the breech after the artillery is fired.
At this time, Dai Yongyan, the general manager of the Hebei Weapons Company, stepped forward and said with an embarrassed look: "The testers used too much force when they tightened the tail bolt. In addition, the internal chamber pressure was relatively high when the artillery was fired, which caused the gun to jam. died!"
Luo Zhixue also knew that under today's technical conditions, it would be too difficult to create a practical breech-loading rifled gun. Even if the test failed, he would not blame them. He immediately said with a gentle expression: "It doesn't matter, scientific research Well, failure is the mother of success, it doesn’t matter if you fail once, you will always succeed if you work harder in the future!”
Luo Zhixue gave some words of comfort, but Dai Yongyan stepped forward again and said, "But we have three breech-loading rifled guns with different firing modes, and there are two more in front. Your Majesty, come and take a look?"
Luo Zhixue can still speak, so keep watching!
As a result, there was a leaky artillery piece that no one could even recognize. An army general nearby started firing on the spot. With this firing, most of the gun crew members would probably be killed on the spot...
There is another one that is even more outrageous. It fired just fine, and the breech block could be removed smoothly. However, the second test firing was not started for a long time. When I asked, good guy, it was said that there was a slight crack in the tail of the gun. , did not dare to conduct a second test launch.
Luo Zhixue was convinced when he learned that such an immature thing dared to take it out and test-fire it in front of him... No wonder someone at the Ministry of Industry said that Dai Yongyan was not an ordinary person and had some mental problems.
Just when Luo Zhixue thought it was over, Dai Yongyan ran out again, looking like a loyal and honest man and said: "Your Majesty, our company has also developed a breech-loading rifled rifle, do you want to take a look?"
Luo Zhixue was not surprised after hearing this, but asked cautiously: "It won't explode this time, right?"
This is a public inspection, and a lot of people are watching. If there is an explosion, the impact will be too bad.
After hearing this, Dai Yongyan quickly waved his hands and said: "No, no, we have conducted several live ammunition tests before, and it will not explode. Moreover, we used newly developed paper shell ammunition and used better Rubber gasket, air leakage problem has been solved..."
Dai Yongyan said so, but Luo Zhixue still remained skeptical!
Breech-loading rifled guns are not that easy to fix, especially the air leakage problem that can never be fixed.
This is just one of them. Another bigger problem is the processing technology. It is not designed by you, but it can be done in the laboratory, and then it can be industrialized and mass-produced and equipped.
Just like the front-loading rifled gun, the front-loading rifled gun using Mini bullets was actually developed by the Dachu Empire many years ago, but it has not been able to enter large-scale service in the army. As of now, there are still only nearly The Guards are equipped with more than 20,000 in batches, plus a small number of special units of the Army, mainly hunters.
The total equipment scale is only about 40,000 to 50,000 pieces. Compared with the huge size of the Chu army, this amount of equipment is nothing.
The reason is very simple. The processing precision required by the Mini rifle is too high, and the material requirements are too high, resulting in the cost being too expensive... The military said it could not afford a front-loading rifle that cost hundreds of dollars...
Breech-loading rifled guns face similar problems, even more serious, because they also have to solve the air leakage problem.
Luo Zhixue himself knows the advantages and disadvantages of these new weapons. He also knows which weapons are good and what the future holds. Otherwise, he would not have a team to support the research and development of various new weapons.
The twenty-five-year-old muzzle-loading rifle cost Chu Yuan a sky-high price of more than 100. He asked the Guards to purchase more than 20,000 of them, and also asked the Army to set up a special muzzle-loading rifle for hunting troops.
The purpose is to allow Dangtu Firearms Factory to withdraw funds to continue research and development, strive to significantly reduce costs in the future, and ultimately realize large-scale equipment of rifled weapons.
So today, he had the same attitude. Even though he knew that the so-called breech-loading rifle on the opposite side was actually like that, he still watched the live ammunition shooting.
But when the live ammunition shooting started, Luo Zhixue found that this thing was quite interesting. Not to mention the accuracy and range, the rifled rifle was not even close.
What Luo Zhixue cares about is this breech-loading rifle from Hebei Arms Company. Although there is still air leakage, it is not too serious. Only when frequent shooting causes the rubber ring to age, the air leakage problem will become more serious, and The shooter can also directly replace the rubber gasket.
In addition to the problem of breech dirt caused during shooting, which cannot be solved due to the defects of the paper shell bullet itself, which will cause air leakage to become more serious after long-term use, this breech-loading rifled rifle is already considered good in Luo Zhixue's opinion , and even batch equipment can be put into use.
The only question is, can this thing be produced in batches and relatively cheaply?
If it was just a laboratory concept rifle, it would mean nothing to the Chu Empire...
