Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1374 Capacity Expansion Period ([-])

September 1664, Baicaogou Township, Taiping County.

Baicaogou, as the name suggests, is a valley where a large number of herbaceous plants are planted.Of course, it is more accurate to say that it was originally the place where people from the east coast transplanted Chinese medicinal materials and some other American, African or European herbal crops. Because of the excellent environment, it has been there for many years.But I don’t know whether it’s due to environmental changes or different soil elements. Except for a small part of these transplanted crops that are almost the same as those in the original place and can be used, most of the rest have some changes in their medicinal properties and the content of active ingredients in herbs. , using them to configure medicines, the effect is really unsatisfactory.Therefore, it has basically been in a semi-abandoned state until now, and people on the east coast have to continue to go back to the old way, that is, spending huge sums of money every year to import finished medicinal materials from overseas.

However, today, when the scale of medicinal herb planting is shrinking, Baicaogou Township has ushered in a new opportunity for development. A team of technicians sent by the Ministry of Energy came here, intending to investigate a small coal mine mined here by the Pingan Mining Bureau. Expand capacity to meet the increasing domestic demand for coal consumption—no way, with the increasingly widespread use of steam power systems across the country, the country’s coal consumption is increasing year by year, and the output and transportation volume are serious. Can’t keep up with consumer demand. Although the Ministry of Energy suppresses the price of coal so that it will not soar, you still can’t meet the real demand. What people should use coal still has to use coal, and market demand will not disappear out of thin air. So contradictions always exist.

Furthermore, the amount of coal used in daily life is gradually increasing.Especially in the prairies on the east coast and the southern cone with few trees, the common people have a huge demand for briquettes, even coarse coals, and coal gangue, so that these fuels are in short supply. Harvested wheat, soybean, or corn stalks are bundled and piled outside one's own walls for supplementary fuel.

It can be seen from this that the bottleneck of coal production and transportation capacity has seriously restricted the production and life of the people of the East China Republic!So, now you can see that the Ministry of Energy has decided to increase the mining of Baicaogou Coal Mine to increase domestic coal production. He Township) production capacity bottleneck - this coal mine has been the main coal supply base in the country for 30 years because of its convenient transportation. The part of the layer has been dug out long ago, and what is left is deep coal that requires large-scale machinery and lifting equipment to operate effectively. It is doomed that its production capacity cannot be effectively expanded (even compared to the early stage, there is a certain decline), so this is the reason for this. With the decision of the Ministry of Energy to mine the Baicaogou Coal Mine.

The Baicaogou coal mine, located near the small city of Butia in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and the coal mines in the small city of San Jerónimo (of course it had not been discovered by the people on the east coast at this time), were still in Brazil until the 20th century. The coal mines with the largest output have reserves of more than billions of tons, which is extremely astonishing—the fly in the ointment is that the coal produced by these coal mines is still low-quality coal with high sulfur, high ash, high dust, and low calorific value, so it can only be used To generate electricity or to burn coal for daily life. Of course, on the east coast plane in the 17th century, these coals could also be used as fuel for civilian steam engines, raw materials for gas lamps, and so on.

The government of Taiping County was also very pleasantly surprised by the discovery of coal mines in the Baicaogou area, because it meant that the local government’s income would increase substantially. However, the Ministry of Energy has not invested heavily in this coal mine since then, and only dispatched some personnel. and equipment, the trial mining of this relatively shallow coal mine with large reserves has an annual output of only [-] tons. Rather than mining, it is more about cultivating talents, which makes the Taiping County Government very depressed-they are really concerned about this The expectations of the coal mines are too great, because the real example of Meihe Township is there. The coal mining industry has brought exciting prosperity to the originally penniless agricultural township.

And these bureaucrats also moved out the reasons for protecting forest resources, namely: "We are not very concerned about the issue of coal production at present. Effectively reducing the use of charcoal can protect our country's precious forest resources..."

Maybe it’s their “noise” that has played a role. In short, the work team of the Ministry of Energy has now come to the Baicaogou Coal Mine, and plans to double its production to meet the domestic coal demand that is about to blow out in the next few years— —In history, before the industrial revolution started in 1750, England already produced 700 million tons of coal a year, but the current production on the east coast is barely more than one-tenth of that. Although there are differences in population, industrial production capacity and other aspects, However, the current serious shortage of production is also a reality (not to mention that the calorific value of these coals is far less than that of coal of the same weight in the UK), coupled with the stimulation of large orders from the United Provinces, it is time to increase investment in the coal industry the point.

After the technicians from the Ministry of Energy came to the Baicaogou Coal Mine, they first inspected the existing production facilities and their operation, and then issued a report to the Ministry of Energy, pointing out that considering the thickness of the veins and the surrounding soil conditions, , which is undoubtedly a low-cost, easy-to-mine coal mine.The only concern is probably that the mined coal needs to be transported to the northern botanical garden wharf through a distance of more than 30 kilometers, and then shipped to other places, but in general, the logistics cost is still not high, which is completely acceptable.

Therefore, the large-scale development of the Baicaogou Coal Mine was decided. This project was invested by the Ministry of Energy (the first phase investment was 30 yuan, which was allocated from about 120 million yuan in cash brought back from the Far East), and the Ministry of Construction undertook the construction. , The super-large project escorted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs will start large-scale infrastructure construction in late September this year, such as steam cranes, winches, water pumps, ventilators (through steam engines to release steam to ventilate underground), underground special fans, steam picks, etc. The equipment—mostly produced by Ping’an Coal Machinery Factory—has already arrived at the northern botanical garden wharf one after another, and is being transported to the mining area by a horse-drawn truck track. When most of the production capacity is developed next year, it is not impossible to believe that the annual coal production in the east coast of the country will be close to 9 million tons.After all, there are too many places where coal is used on the east coast now, and it is not much worse than Britain in 100.You know, there were no steamships, steam trains, gas lamps, etc. in Britain at that time.

And the annual output of 100 million tons of coal, how to transport has become a big problem.Taking the capacity of the state-owned inland waterway transport company to be more than 3 tons, the coal needs to be transported [-] times by all their ships, not to mention that the company usually has a large amount of ore, building materials, grain and other bulk goods. The transportation task is over, and it is simply impossible to complete the task without expanding the size of the fleet.

Some people may say that there are some private inland waterway shipping companies in China now, such as the Jiaohe Shipping Federation formed by shipowners in the Jiaohe area, such as the courier liner company and other enterprises, and private small punting, rocking boats, etc. Scull boats (which are more common along lakes and rivers) can also provide a considerable amount of transportation capacity, but the problem is that these add up to only a few thousand tons of transportation capacity, and their efficiency cannot be compared with that of state-owned inland water transport companies. To be able to carry out transportation in nearby areas, as for the large-scale transportation tasks across regions, it still depends on the four to five hundred small inland river steamers of the inland river transportation company.

Therefore, it is inevitable for inland water transport companies to further increase their fleet size in this wave of capacity expansion. Otherwise, you will see the spectacular piling up of goods on major domestic river and sea terminals in the next few years. The scene—in fact, it is almost like this now. Of course, there are reasons for the lack of infrastructure such as docks, and at the same time, there are factors such as insufficient fleet capacity.Now it is almost time to invest huge sums of money for improvement. It is conservatively estimated that over the next two to three years, more than 50 yuan in cash will be invested in the state-run inland water transport company, and an additional 30 yuan will be used to improve major river terminals. Otherwise, the bottleneck of transportation and logistics will always restrict this large expansion of production capacity.

After such a calculation, the 120 million silver dollars sent back from the Far East is really not enough. The Portuguese war reparations have to be used to pay off part of the debt. The materials looted by the navy and army have to be used to fill the big hole of military expenses. In addition, the little leftover has to be used as severance pay for the disarmament plan that is about to start. How can this money be enough!Moreover, what is even more frightening is that so much cash (including the payment paid by the Dutch) will flow into every corner of the country in the next few years. Although the market size on the east bank has now changed from a small pond to a big river, it is still possible To some extent, it will detonate the domestic inflation situation again, which will have an adverse impact on the economy and people's lives.

On September 1664, 9, several construction teams under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Construction gathered at the Baicaogou Coal Mine. Hundreds of construction personnel on the east coast will join thousands of non-national laborers in this place in the next few months. Work hard, and strive to renovate the mining area, roads, and docks as soon as possible, so as to increase coal production as soon as possible.In addition, Mendez, Valentino, and Goshkin also received strict orders, that is, they must post advertisements in the old continent as soon as possible, and recruit people to work on the east coast. Now is the period of capacity expansion, and the demand for labor is huge. Regardless of 20, people come first.

……

At the moment when Baicaogou has become a large construction site, a work team also belonging to the Ministry of Energy is conducting intense exploration, Mapping work.The reason why they came here was because the nearby residents Xiangxian County—Kaiyuan County, which was established in January 1664, has four townships under its jurisdiction: Kaiyuan Town, Yingtai Township, Chuuniugang Township and Chengji Township. With a total population of more than 1, it was reported to the 51st county-level administrative unit in the country, saying that coal was found when drilling wells in the ground, so it attracted attention, and finally reported to the Ministry of Geology and the Ministry of Energy , Then they sent people down to check.

In fact, people on the east coast don’t know it now. The Candiota coal mine in Brazil is very large in scale, with reserves of about 120 billion tons, accounting for 30% of Brazil’s national coal reserves (mostly located in the three southern states). The amount of coal is extremely large, and it is easy to mine.But on this plane on the east coast, they naturally don't know how amazing the reserves of this super-large coal burial belt extending to the junction of Brazil and Uruguay are, although it is also mostly high in sulfur, high in carbon, and high in dust. Low-quality coal with low combustion value, but it is already a huge wealth that can be used until the 21st century.

What they think at this time is just to conduct surveys in this mining area to determine its scope, burial depth (well, this need not be confirmed, it is almost buried in the open air), and its quality, so as to prepare for the development of the nearby inland areas and daily life. Life provides the necessary fuel.After all, this is already the border of the prairie on the east coast, and there are no large-scale artificial forests planted by the Uruguayans and Brazilians in later generations. Except for grass or grass, it is too difficult to find some fuel, and the lack of fuel will inevitably lead to affect every aspect of production and life.

For example, many kilns of the Kaiyuan County Branch of Dong'an Building Materials Company have intermittent production due to lack of fuel—after all, the amount of firewood available for purchase in the surrounding area, and the calorific value of combustion is also low—seriously affecting various kilns. The production of building materials led to the establishment of several new settlements in the west of Kaiyuan County, such as Fufeng Township (located near the later city of Riviera), Chongxin Township (located near the small city of Tranquelas in later generations), Tonggu Township ( Located near the village of Masoyer in the later generations) and Didao Township (near the small village of Cavera in the later generations), these four townships made it difficult for more than [-] pioneers here to have enough building materials (there is even a lack of timber here. Well...) To build various facilities, people can only live in adobe houses or dilapidated tents, which is very hard.

And it is precisely because of this consideration—and also to reduce the trouble of long-distance transshipment of construction materials and fuels—that the Executive Committee agreed to the Ministry of Energy to carry out exploration and trial mining here to see whether this so-called Chengji coal mine has any potential. No mining value.If there is, then Kaiyuan County Branch of Dong'an Building Materials Company will be blessed, as will the people nearby.And if the reserves of this coal mine are particularly huge, it is not impossible to build a railway from Melo County to the north through this area to communicate with the north and south and transport coal along the way.

During the capacity expansion period, anything is possible!

(End of this chapter)