Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1435 Baoding Area ([-])

Carload after cartload of disgustingly foul-smelling sludge was dug up.The Dingjun county town sewer renovation project, which has lasted for nearly three years, has entered the final stage. At this time, the total number of workers active on the construction site has exceeded 3000, which is extremely surprising.However, among the 3000 people, the vast majority are still non-citizen laborers from Ireland and Italy, and the number of residents in the county who have been arrested by the government is even less than 1000. The impact is evident here.

"Sewage must not be discharged into the Takwari River!" Shao Yaoguang, who came to the site to inspect the progress of the project, said categorically: "This is not only for environmental problems, but has already threatened our health. The inspection team of the Ministry of Health The officials told me that the increasing number of cases of dysentery and cholera in this county in the past two years has a great relationship with the pollution of drinking water. The Takwari River is the mother river of tens of thousands of residents in several nearby counties. It cannot be ruined like this. !"

Just at the end of last month (March), the inspection team of the Ministry of Health ended its health inspections in nine counties in Jiaohe, Baoding, and Beiyazihu. At the conclusion, Dingjun County was criticized mercilessly because This county, which has always been known for its developed handicraft industry, has been dumping industrial waste water and domestic sewage into the Takwari River, which not only pollutes the drinking water for people and animals in the county, but also has a very bad impact on downstream counties such as Yiling and Dingxi. Therefore, He was heavily criticized by the inspection team.

As the deputy commissioner who actually presided over the work in Baoding area, Shao Yaoguang also served as the county magistrate of Dingjun County. After being criticized by the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Health, he felt a little uncomfortable. After the meeting, he brought many followers and went to the At the construction site of the sewage treatment facility, which is entering its final stage.If possible, he also wants to see if he can end this annoying project a few months earlier, even if he spends more money for it-more than 200 people died in a previous cholera, and the local residents can't bear it. They are all still fresh in their memory, if they are temporarily levied a tax of several thousand yuan to speed up the progress of the project, their resistance will not be too great.

Most of the Sewage River (a small tributary of the Takwari) that used to run through the city has been dug into deep ditches, and the sludge and garbage transported for it has piled up almost in hills outside the city.Later, the residents, who were really unbearable by the smell, filled the sludge full of bacteria and viruses into some stagnant ponds and swamps under the organization of the government, and then they gave up.

"Finally, we don't have to see the rubbish that covered the river when the water was high, and the foul-smelling sludge that was exposed when the water was dry." Wearing a pair of high riding boots, the county magistrate Shao Da stood at the edge of the somewhat messy construction site, Pointing to the sewage river that has been transformed into an underground drain with his right hand, he said: "I now have confidence in the environment of our city in the future. Sewage facilities are really too important for urban life. However, I hope everyone During the construction, special attention should be paid to reserve enough space on both sides of the culvert, because the water supply facilities may be built in the future, and the construction of the gas lighting system may also need to lay pipes next to the underground culvert. Of course, this will be a long time later. , But now we have to look forward to development, understand? You will talk to Mendes and Batino in a while, and this matter must be taken seriously."

The officials of the relevant departments who heard this immediately responded with no promises. In fact, they had already had similar considerations before.Although Dingjun County may not be able to afford the construction of water treatment and water supply systems, nor can it afford the cost of the second-generation gas lamp system developed by the East Coast Gas Company, and it is even more deterred from the expensive streetcar system, but this does not mean that It means that Dingjun County will never develop these facilities that are related to the living standards of urban residents. Therefore, it is indeed very important to make reasonable plans for the future in the early stages of urban development.

Shao Yaoguang wandered around the construction site for more than two hours without avoiding the stench, and witnessed those non-national laborers from Ireland go deep into the muddy and smelly river beach without any sanitary protection measures, just using a shovel to remove a big lump The pile of sludge was dug into the rattan basket.They dug so deep that rattan baskets full of sludge had to be pulled up with pulleys and booms.At the bottom of the underdrain excavated and cleaned by them, there are many masons from Italy who are leveling the foundation and then building the underdrain with mortar mixed with cement, yellow sand, and lime. They are going to use bricks to seal the underdrain. , this is also conducive to sending people to clean up the bottom of the ditch in the future - after a long time, the suspended matter and sediment in the sewage will easily settle at the bottom of the ditch. This is almost inevitable and must be cleaned regularly. Send someone to clean up.

And the work of cleaning these sewage ditches is naturally done by non-national laborers. Few people on the east coast with higher incomes are willing to do this kind of low-level work that will greatly damage their health-the workers who clean up the sewers It is easy to be infected with various diseases, such as jaundice and bleeding disease, etc., so this kind of work is at the "lowest end" even among non-citizens—and, moreover, the sewers are often filled with explosive or toxic gases. There have been tragedies in the sewers of some cities on the prairie on the east coast, and many non-national laborers were killed and injured each time, so that the government had to raise wages to attract enough manpower to clean the sewers.

In addition, in order to reduce such tragedies, government departments have racked their brains to think of some ways.For example, it is forbidden for residents to throw some inappropriate substances into the sewer, because this may cause chemical reactions to generate some toxic gases; another example, recently, Wang Huadu, the boss of the East Coast Gas Company, came up with a way to replace the gas lamp system. The main principle of connecting with the sewer is that the gas lamps installed on the street draw air from the sewer to burn, which ensures that the sewer can be in a state of continuous ventilation, and once the ventilation is successful, the threat of poisonous gas and explosive gas will disappear invisible up.

This ingenious idea has already attracted the attention of the upper echelons of the government, and it has been successfully installed and remodeled beside a certain underground sewage river in Dongfang County, the capital, to test this idea.I believe that if this idea can stand the test for a long time, then the gas lamp system will definitely become the standard configuration of municipal construction projects in various places in the future. Become an integral part of the life of urban residents on the east coast, not as optional as it is now.

According to Shao Yaoguang's intention, next to the sewer drain that Dingjun County is currently renovating, there is also a space reserved for the installation of gas lamp system pipes in the future.Moreover, in order to promote their system, the East Coast Gas Company also agreed to supply and install at a preferential price, so why should the Dingjun County Government hesitate?It is a fool not to take advantage of the advantages!

At noon, Shao Yaoguang and other cadres from the county and district administrative offices took three carriages, slowly left the busy construction site, and drove towards the center of the city.After lunch, Shao Yaoguang personally held a meeting in the regional administrative office to discuss the town's sanitation work, and an official from the inspection team of the Ministry of Health attended the meeting.

"... Slaughterhouses, cattle pens, pig pens, fertilizer mixing plants and other heavily polluting institutions must move out of the urban area as soon as possible and find another site in the suburbs. This is not a negotiation, but an order. There is no room for bargaining. I hope everyone Make it clear." After listening to the opinions of his subordinates at the beginning, Shao Yaoguang said in an unquestionable tone, which undoubtedly made some stakeholders frowned quietly, but there was nothing they could do about it.

In fact, it is fair to say that these "smelly" places such as the ones mentioned above were not located in the urban area at first, but in the suburbs.However, who made Dingjun Town's handicraft industry develop too fast in recent years, and the number of craftsmen, businessmen, and even low-level workers and their families who moved to the city increased too fast?The increase in population and enterprises naturally led to the continuous expansion of the urban area to the periphery, and eventually turned the original suburbs into a new urban area, which naturally reduced the overall sanitation level of the urban area.

But now it seems that institutions such as slaughterhouses and fertilizer mixing plants have to follow in the footsteps of the "inventory" of the great excrement merchant at the time, and have relocated to places far away from the city, and this time they may move It is a little far away, and I will go to the other side of the Takwari River to avoid the rapid development period that may occur in Dingjun County.

"Of course, as compensation for the relocation of these enterprises and institutions, the county government and the district administration will set aside a separate area east of the Takwari River and build a batch of simple wooden houses. These houses are all for going to work The non-national laborers prepared, after all, such as slaughterhouses, pigpens, cattle pens and other units, the proportion of non-national laborers from Ireland and Italy is relatively high, and they suddenly moved to the desolate area on the east bank of the river, and the living facilities may not be able to keep up." Shao Yaoguang He also said: "In addition, the government will also build a wooden bridge on the Taquari River to facilitate traffic."

Non-national laborers are really too important in the current east coast!On this point, Shao Yaoguang has a very clear understanding, especially in relatively tiring and dirty work such as sewer work, garbage cleaning, and pigsty cleaning, foreign non-national laborers have a relatively obvious advantage, and local residents Couldn't compete with them at all (more precisely, didn't intend to compete with them at all).It can be said that in today's East Coast Republic, there is no reason for the growing population of laborers. The East Coast has become "addicted to dependence" on them!

However, all the members of the executive committee are also sensible people who understand that the number of laborers is always limited, while the market demand for labor is unlimited—especially now that the Anglo-Dutch war is raging and the new vast market With the door slowly opening—and therefore, under their deliberate guidance and the urging of the market environment, the current East Coast Republic really has nothing to say about the popularity of machines. A series of machines that can replace people to work have been adopted in recent years. They were invented one after another, and some of them were even different from the machines of later generations, truly reflecting the wisdom of the people.

According to the "lyrical article" of "Pravda" reporting the progress of domestic mechanized production on the East Coast: "All existing mechanical inventions have greatly reduced people's daily labor! Many cumbersome and exhausting jobs have been eliminated. Machined out or almost on the verge of being out, the heavily forested South Duck Lake watershed is almost invisible to carpenters exhausted from 20 years of using the big rough saws that free them from the drudgery of physical labor out, and at the same time reduce the demand for labor in production.”

"Cutting wheat is a 'noble art,' but you can't say that it takes less effort to hunch over a day's worth of wheat in the endless monotony of harvesting than to manage a day's harvesting machine; A day's labor in an unmechanized iron or coal mine is less labor-intensive than a day's labor in a fully mechanized mine."

Of course, even if mechanized production is popularized to a certain extent, machines cannot replace human beings after all—not to mention that mechanized production also creates some new demand for labor—so the industrial and agricultural system on the east coast always needs to "swallow "A large number of new labor force, especially in areas with more developed industry and commerce.They are either "swallowing" cheap labor from backward areas of the country, or absorbing foreign laborers. Under the current national conditions on the east coast (the gap between the rich and the poor is small, the living standards of the people are not low, and the middle class with consumption power is huge), it is simply There is no cheap labor, even the people in the backward rural inland counties. They have enough food and drink, so why should they dredge the stinking and disease-ridden sewers?Therefore, you can see that in recent years, the number of non-national laborers in the East Coast has risen rapidly from 8 to more than 20. The brokerage company's business is booming.

Dingjun County has a well-developed handicraft industry, and has gradually upgraded to the level of semi-mechanized production in recent years, as evidenced by the central power transmission workshop invested and built by the regional administration!Correspondingly, with the progress of industry and the development of commerce, the demand for immigrant population has also increased rapidly due to urbanization. Whether it is Irish people engaged in so-called "low jobs" or handicraft workers engaged in relatively high-end jobs, Both are needed for urban development. Although the latter may be more important (after all, the United Provinces have placed a large order now), the former is also essential, otherwise the development of the city will definitely encounter bottlenecks , This is almost a certainty - the main officials in the Baoding area have now vaguely realized this!

I've been a little busy recently, and the manuscripts are about to run out. There will be a national football match in two days, but I hereby guarantee that if the first match of the national football team gains more than one point, three chapters will be exploded.

(End of this chapter)