Chapter 23
My Empire Chapter 23
2020-11-03
Chapter 23 23 GambleAfter sending away the messenger who came to ask for weapons, Chris knew that he should develop his weapons more urgently Equipped.
He has been building up his industrial base for a long time, and now is the time to test his strength.
So, on the tenth day after the messenger left, Chris held a plenary meeting to discuss the direction of the next stage.
At the meeting, Chris first asked Gourlow about the popularization of education, because he knew clearly that in order to develop the industry of the system, the reserve of talents must be paid attention to.
Before, like Chris, who personally took the lead in staying up late and working overtime to make weapons and equipment alone, was impossible to support large-scale wars.
Hearing Collins' question, Gurlo adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose and said, "According to the development needs, we have built 30 primary schools and 9 primary level middle schools. Using the movable type printing technology, we have produced a large number of textbooks and distributed them to all students for free."
"It only takes one year, we can cultivate many talents, when the time comes, the factory There's enough talent to use." He said, pushing a report to Chris: "We've bought a lot of teens from the neighborhood, and they've been very good at raising them."
"It's really good to have money. Willful..." Hearing that even the population of this world can be collected with gold coins, which is like an expansion, Chris thinks that being rich is really a very pleasant thing.
In fact, there are many problems that can be solved with money. In order to support its own industrialization process, Serris City purchased a large amount of industrial raw materials from the surrounding three regions, but basically did not export anything of value.
Gourlo imported a large amount of cotton and stone from the Arrant Empire, cotton was used to support the textile industry and the production of some fried medicine recipe noodles, and the stone was completely used for the infrastructure of the entire Alanhill dukedom.
According to Chris's request, the crushed stone was stored for future use in railway subgrade laying, while the whole stone was used in the construction of the factory building. Almost at all costs, countless factories have been erected, and many of them have no time to install machinery, so they can only measure the size and leave them in place.
Similar to this kind of construction that only invests without expecting returns can be found in the vicinity of Serris City, but there are also projects that are put into production and profit. For example, the two newly built cement factories are currently the busiest factories. Manual cement manufacturing has been going on around the clock, but there is simply not enough cement produced.
Everything that was procured was used in the construction of Alanhill and nothing was wasted. The products of the cement factory and the stone are used to build buildings, and the minerals are used to smelt into metals - the quality of life of civilians in the entire dukedom is improving at a speed visible to naked eyes, and the hundreds of thousands of gold coins brought by Dez, Also disappearing at a speed visible to naked eyes.
"I'm trying my best to buy food." Deans, who was almost out of exhaustion, reported: "Our population has at least doubled in the past two months...
…The food reserves are definitely not enough, so we must prepare in advance.”
His report fully proved how the money is gone: food procurement is definitely a major direction, in order to feed more and more people With a large population, food can only be ensured by purchasing. This is by no means a one-shot deal, as Alanhill dukedom is bound to be more populated next year.
The population must be gathered because there is a shortage of people, and sufficient food must be provided because the population must be gathered. This is almost an endless cycle. Most of the time, in order to allow the surrounding civilians to immigrate to Alanhill, Chris will also order food subsidies for all residents.
Now he has enough manpower and enough troops, but the pressure is passed on to Deans, who manages the population and civil affairs. This middle-aged man is so busy right now that he doesn't even have time to sleep. All are pitiful.
Stryd's side wasn't much better: "I just got back from the Higgs side yesterday...the kerosene over there...well, no, it's the 50% increase in the price of oil. The biggest problem is that the output of this thing is not that big. We have money, and we can't buy much in stock."
Although alchemy is consumed in this era, in most cases, Kerosene is only a weapon used to defend the city, so the output is also small, and the demand is not large. Now that Chris is consuming a lot of oil and planning to reserve more, it's a bit of a tough guy.
The bald-headed Mr. Stryd bought almost all the kerosene in the Higgs Kingdom, but he didn't get enough of Chris' request—not even a fraction.
Because the number of purchases and the number of products sold are too many, Alanhill's current situation is that what is sold plummets, and what is bought soars. In order to grab the speed of development, such an annoying thing, Alanhill dukedom can only recognize it by pinching its nose.
"The construction of the factory is very fast! After all, most of Alanhill's expenses are piled up on the industry I am responsible for." Smith, who is already the best engineer in Serris City, said.
He took a report on the industrial process and told Chris: "We built ten blast furnaces and started smelting steel with a new type of timer, and the efficiency improved dozens of times. The qualified steel The rate has been satisfactory, and there is no problem with producing the new 75mm infantry gun."
"However, there are some things that are not satisfactory." He pointed to a line in the document to Chris Complained: "The amount of copper is seriously insufficient. We have smelted 1 million Copper Coins, but we still can't keep up with the consumption rate of copper."
A sufficient amount of copper can be said to be the calcium sheet of modern industry , A large number of unsolvable problems in the early industry were solved by the good metal attribute of copper. This metal also has sky-high conductivity, making it the perfect choice for wire and telephone lines.
"The problem of copper can only be solved by increasing purchases." Chris said a little depressedly: "In addition, find a way to use iron as an alternative."
During World War II, Germany was also a country with a serious copper shortage. When they were stretched thin, the Germans even had to make the bullet casings out of iron. Although iron cartridges are not as good as copper cartridges in terms of pumping performance, it is better to have bullets than no bullets, right?
So, under the premise that he couldn't think of a good solution, Chris could only lower the usage requirements and let the factory start mass production of iron-cased bullets. Anyway, the soldiers on the front line should understand the problem of occasionally getting stuck - or that sentence, something is better than nothing, isn't it?
Glancing at Vagron, Chris raised his hand to signal that he didn't need to talk about military training. Because he only went to see it yesterday, the situation in the barracks is not ideal: "I'll talk to you about your problem in a while!"
"Yes!" Vagron reluctantly gave up his plan to expose his family scandal. , There is actually a lot of money invested in military training recently, but the talents in the army are too scarce, and he can only barely keep the training going.
Because the focus of Alanhill's construction recently was not on the army, everyone didn't want Vagron to report it. He passed him quickly, and Gurlo went on to talk about the incomparably important question of education.
It is not an easy task to make a society move towards industrialization. In practice, it is more complicated than Chris thought.
Even if he has countless books and knowledge to guide specific actions, the accumulation of a lot of work is still a daunting huge project.
Now, the surrounding area of the original Serris, including Arrant in the south and the earthen fort in the north, as well as the kingdom of Higgs in the west, have benefited from the crazy development of Alanhill dukedom against the law. They earned a lot of gold coins from Alanhill, which once made the border area very prosperous.
But who would have thought that Alanhill, who has already been burdened with too many unreasonable contradictions, has made up his mind from the very beginning to use a war to transfer all the contradictions in the country, Open the market and complete a gorgeous transformation!
As long as the defeated countries can pay for their own development, this kind of illogical jump development can be established. Alanhill will be able to eliminate the scourge, and gain a short-term opportunity for development.
Of course, if it continues like this, Alanhill will still have to expand and attack the next neighbor - just like a gluttonous glutton, until it eats all its neighbors, it will not stop.
"The next thing we have to do is to build an arsenal as soon as possible! No matter what method we use! We have to prepare for a war!" Chris looked at his confidants and said.
Both of his hands clasped to their chests, thinking deeply about the decision at this moment: "If we go on like this, we will only end up breaking down."
"Yes, I just did it. According to a statistic, if we can’t get a huge sum of 300,000 gold coins within half a year, we will be insolvent... we can declare bankruptcy.” Dez is more sensitive to this aspect, and he reminded him before the meeting. Chris should pay attention to the problem of insufficient funds.
It is not impossible for Alanhill dukedom to digest its own industrial achievements if it digests slowly internally and develops other new industries. But that only slows down your own development and wastes precious time.
Including Chris, Dez and Deans and the others know that they seem to have a more irresponsible, or better alternative - war!
The truth is really simple: since war can be won, why not use war to solve problems? From the perspective of being able to win, the war brings alluring benefits!
As long as the war can be won, Alanhill can expand its territory, have a larger population, offset some of its debt, and reduce the pressure on the frontier...
So much more , are very attractive in front of them. For the first time, Chris felt the mood of those war madmen: after careful calculation, this kind of gamble can roughly determine the winner or loser, it is too tempting to want to bet.
Unlike everyone else, Chris's stakes are huge and the odds are huge. Neither Dez nor Chris had even thought about losing the war—in fact, they didn't need to think about it, because they certainly wouldn't be able to live to see the outcome of losing the war.
(end of this chapter)