The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 604 When Luo Yaoguo Met Grandmaster Moore (Please vote, please subscribe)

On October 19th of the seventh year in the Tianli calendar, on a brand new train platform on the eastern foot of the Xuzhou Liguoyi Iron Mine.

Sir Bonham put down the silver-coated monocular telescope. The last afterimage in the lens was a large machine that had just been unloaded from a train. He vaguely remembered seeing a similar machine at last year's Paris Exposition. It was called a "steam hydraulic press". It seemed that it could be used to press pure steel rails. He didn't expect that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's Xuzhou Iron and Steel Plant would have an identical device so soon!

He pulled out his alligator-covered notebook and wrote in the "Industrial Equipment" column: "Found a steam-hydraulic press, at least one!"

After finishing writing, Wen Xian did not close the notebook immediately, but just stood there staring at the records in the notebook.
Bai Siwen, who was standing next to him, glanced at his notebook and found that the "Industrial Equipment" column was already filled with words - they had just arrived at the Liguo Iron Mine Railway Station and had not yet reached the Xuzhou Iron and Steel Plant!
Xuzhou was only one of the two major industrial centers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (the other one was Shanghai). If he wanted to complete the entire investigation, Wenxian would probably have to fill up an entire notebook.

Luo Yaoguo’s investment in industry is simply astonishingly huge!

"It's time to eat, it's time to eat!" a foreman of the porters at the station shouted while beating a gong. The porters who were unloading cargo from a train coming from Haizhou Bay Wharf stopped their work and walked towards the temporary restaurant built with wooden boards nearby.

In the wooden barrels carried by several chubby cooks, freshly steamed mixed flour buns were steaming, and pork stewed with vermicelli exuded an alluring aroma. The young men who had just come out of the rural areas of Shandong or Huaibei had done manual labor for a whole morning and were already starving. They ate with their mouths agave, and it was so delicious!
The foreman yelled, "Eat quickly, because after you finish eating, we still have ten carloads of refractory bricks to move."

A worker responded cheerfully: "Boss, that's another ten truckloads of bricks. That's going to cost you more!"

The foreman laughed and said, "When have we ever lost money to you? Just work hard. The house in Xuzhou Steel City Lane 1 is about to be sold. You can pay in installments. Hurry up and save up a down payment and buy a two-bedroom apartment. Then you can get married!"

When talking about saving money, buying a house and getting married, the station was immediately filled with cheerful laughter.

It turns out that moving bricks can also be very happy
Moore sat on a bench on the platform, holding a notebook in his hand, and quickly recorded: "The workers here don't have the whip of the supervisor, but they have enough food and relatively generous wages. There is no fatigue and numbness in their tone, but full of hope." He turned to Friedrich and whispered: "This may be another possibility for industrialization - without the organization and capital of capitalists, workers can still create huge productivity. Obviously, labor is the most important factor in productivity!"

Friedrich nodded and wrote in his notebook with a fountain pen: "Although the workers here only earn one-third of their counterparts in London, China's low prices allow them to enjoy more living materials than London workers. This may be the code for the industrialization of late-developing countries!"

Bai Siwen stood aside and said coldly, "How can such a large factory, mines and railways be opened without millions of taels of silver?" He shook his head and muttered in a low voice, "Where did Silla get so much silver? They must have robbed it from Beijing! What's the point of refining so much steel? Isn't it still used to make guns, cannons and warships? In the final analysis, they still have to rob!"

The glass windows on the second floor of the waiting hall of Xuzhou Liguoyi Station were buzzing with the vibration of the steam locomotive. The European metallurgical master Besemai opened the production log with a cast iron cover with his fingers covered with graphite powder: "Your Highness, the No. 0.08 converter has produced 0.12 furnaces of molten steel this week, with a single furnace capacity of tons, and a total output of tons - the sulfur content has dropped to %, and the phosphorus content is %. Your prediction about the basic furnace lining is really accurate!"

Luo Yaoguo stroked the newly quenched steel sample, and the sunlight reflected fine lines on the fracture of the sample: "What is the life of the furnace lining?"

"The alkaline furnace lining is wearing out 1860% faster than expected." Beisemai took out a piece of honeycomb refractory brick fragment from his work clothes pocket. "The lining needs to be replaced every furnaces. But the newly discovered magnesite in Jiawang Mine has solved the big problem!" He placed a piece of gray-white ore in front of Luo Yaoguo. "With the limestone slag making method proposed by His Highness, we have finally solved the problem of dephosphorization. I estimate that next year our No. converter will be able to achieve an annual design capacity of tons of steel! If the construction of No. and No. converters goes smoothly, the steel output of Xuzhou Iron and Steel Plant will reach tons in !"

Fifteen thousand tons is so little! For Luo Yaoguo, who is used to the production of more than one billion tons of steel, fifteen hundred thousand tons of steel is really not enough!
"Mr. Besemay, my country is big, very big. To build it well, we need a lot of steel!" Luo Yaoguo said to the steel expert around him.

"How much do you need?" Besemai adjusted his monocle - he knew that this "angel" would often say things that would surprise people, so he had to adjust his glasses.

Luo Yaoguo thought for a moment and said, "I hope that by the 1890s we can achieve an annual output of 2000 million tons!"

"What? 2000 million tons?" Beisemai shook his head repeatedly. "This goal can't be achieved in a hundred years, no, a hundred and fifty years!"

Luo Yaoguo glanced at him and said, "You are too conservative! One hundred and fifty years from now, a county in China will be able to produce more than 2000 million tons of steel!"

"A county," Beise Mai thought to himself, "It's a good thing I held on to my glasses, otherwise they would have broken.

At this time, the sound of Maria's calfskin shoes hitting the floor tiles came: "Master Karl and Master Friedrich have arrived at the train station. They are now on Platform 3." Luo Yaoguo stopped talking with Besemai, walked quickly to a window, raised the telescope and looked out. Through the lens, he saw two bearded figures on the platform - familiar yet unfamiliar figures!
But one thing is certain, they are really the two ancestors!
"Are they your teachers in heaven?" Maria's voice sounded a little excited.

The heavenly teacher Luo Yaoguo thought to himself: "It would be great if it were true! It shouldn't be difficult for their students to get selected as students, right? They can go to Peking University to study that doctrine again."

"The King of the North has already remembered," Maria said at this time, "Master Karl is teaching him to study with King Hong, King Fengnan, and King Yangdong in the upper study room in heaven!"

This "Wei Judas" is really good at talking nonsense!
If he, Hong Xiuquan, Feng Yunshan and Yang Xiuqing had learned the doctrines from the two ancestors, how could the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in history have been defeated?

Just as he thought of this, Wei Changhui's loud voice came: "Ninth brother, ninth brother, our teacher in heaven is here! Why don't you go downstairs to welcome him?"

The cast iron door of the waiting hall burst open, and Wei Changhui rushed out at the front. The Northern King "Wei Judas" was glowing at this moment, as if he had returned to the days of listening to lectures in the study room of heaven. As he walked, he shouted: "Ninth brother! The two Heavenly Masters are here, why don't you greet them quickly!"

Luo Yaoguo's leather boots were nailed to the bluestone floor, and he looked at the two "heavenly masters" with a sharp gaze. Ten steps away, Moore was looking at the hydraulic press that Besmer had ordered from Britain at a high price. Friedrich's notebook was spread out on his knees, and next to the sketch of the hydraulic press was a German note: "The Chinese have exchanged their hard work for the best machines in Europe - without capitalists."

"My student Luo Yaoguo, nice to meet you." Luo Yaoguo swallowed the three words "Grandmaster" with his Adam's apple rolling. "Greetings to Mr. Ma, Mr. En."

No matter what, Luo Yaoguo had to worship this master!
Moore and Friedrich were shocked by Luo Yaoguo's words, as they used pseudonyms!
How did Luo Yaoguo know this?

"We." Friedrich was interrupted by Luo Yaoguo as soon as he opened his mouth.

"I remember now, that's your name in heaven," Luo Yaoguo realized that he had let the cat out of the bag, and quickly corrected him, "Mr. Moore, Mr. Friedrich, welcome to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom."

Suspect.
Moore and Friedrich had doubts in their hearts!
"Mr. Moore and Mr. Friedrich have something they would like to ask His Royal Highness Prince Wu!" Bai Siwen suddenly spoke up to break the awkwardness.

Luo Yaoguo glanced at the former Qing Dynasty ambassador to Europe - he certainly knew Bai Siwen's true identity, but he was now a member of the Bonham Mission and a guest of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria.

So Luo Yaoguo couldn't let anyone kill him. It wasn't appropriate! Besides, the harm this guy could do was limited.

"Mr. Bai, please ask." Luo Yaoguo said with a smile.

"Excuse me. How can the 500 million people in the world feed themselves?" Bai Siwen looked at Luo Yaoguo. "There is only so much land in the world. People are already hungry. If you develop industry, you have to allocate part of it to grow cotton and mulberry trees. Moreover, workers have high incomes and eat well. They eat more chicken, duck, fish and meat, which consumes more grain. Once the land is distributed equally, the poor families who would have been childless will have the opportunity to marry and have children, and the population will grow faster. Excuse me, how will these tens of millions of people feed themselves in the future?"

"What nonsense are you talking about, you remnant of the Qing Dynasty?" Maria also knew Bai Siwen (she had met him in London), and she yelled on the spot.

Luo Yaoguo also raised his hand to hold the hilt of the knife: "Nanyang has Siamese rice, Javanese sugar, and Manila bananas. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom already has more than a dozen steam-powered grain ships running on the Nanyang route, each carrying one to two thousand tons of grain. In the future, Nanyang will have to grow more grain, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom will have to build more steamships, and the Heavenly Kingdom's immigrants will also move south in large numbers."

Friedrich suddenly interjected: “This is colonization!”

"It is to liberate productivity!" Luo Yaoguo explained, "The reason why productivity in Southeast Asia is insufficient is because there are too few Chinese there. If 5000 million Chinese go to Southeast Asia, production in Southeast Asia will be 100 times more than it is now. It will be a huge market and source of raw materials!"

(End of this chapter)