The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 690: Fool, the key to the problem is not abolition and anti-Chinese sentiment, but tariffs!

The Kingdom of Korea, Dongwang Palace in Pyongyang.

Nan Ben Inako closed the carved wooden door, blocking the cold wind from the Taedong River from the newly built magnificent Dongwang Palace. Maria spread a stack of documents on the sandalwood table, and the wide cuffs of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's ochre yellow robe swept across the pages: "King Gan, please look, this is the pig iron production of the United States last year."

Hong Rengan leaned over to take a closer look, his finger pausing on a string of numbers with many zeros: "830,000 tons? Our Seoul Iron Works is only one twentieth of theirs!"

"Yes, our Xuzhou Iron and Steel Plant only produced 500,000 tons of iron last year." Maria pulled out a pencil from her sleeve and sketched on the paper: "They also used the Beisemei converter to make steel. Last year, they produced 60,000 tons, which is comparable to our Xuzhou Iron and Steel Plant. Their steel production this year is estimated to exceed 100,000 tons, and pig iron will definitely exceed 1 million tons!"

100,000 tons of steel, 1 million tons of iron
Daozi's hand holding the tea tray trembled slightly. Her King Dong had worked hard to develop the industry of the Kingdom of Korea in the past two years, but compared with the United States, it was really not worth mentioning!

Maria picked up the teacup and took a sip. "In fact, the biggest gap between our steel and the United States is not ours. The coal, railways and the number of spindles in textile factories are far behind! Last year, the United States mined a total of 1400 million tons of coal. I don't know if China, North Korea and Japan combined have 400 million tons? It's only a fraction of theirs. They already have nearly miles of railways, which is nearly miles in Chinese miles! No. in the world!"

"Ten Thousand Miles of Railway" Hong Rengan took a breath of cold air.

Kusumoto Inako's face was a little pale. She had known for a long time that the United States had strong industrial strength, but she didn't expect it to be so strong! The Kingdom of Korea is still worried about the cost of the 1000-mile railway from Busan to Pyongyang. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom spent a lot of money on the railway over the past two years, but by the autumn of the ninth year of the Tianli calendar, only less than 4000 miles of railway had been built, only 4% of the United States!

"King Wu said that the west of the Rocky Mountains may be able to stand on its own in thirty years. But right now," she moved her finger to the columns of the US shipbuilding industry and merchant ship registered tonnage, "As of 1858, the total registered tonnage of US merchant ships exceeded 500 million tons, ranking first in the world! And the total tonnage of various types of ships newly built by Americans in 1858 was as high as 21.5 tons, second only to the 25 tons of the UK, ranking second in the world. 10% of them were steamships!"

Maria paused and continued, "King Gan, you don't think we can seize the sea control of the west coast of North America with just a dozen Shanghai-class ships and three long-range warships, do you? If the Americans take out 2% of their merchant ships and install breech-loading guns and send them to the west coast, that would be hundreds of warships! Even if all the steamships produced in the United States in a year were sent to the west coast, that would be more than 20 tons, equivalent to Shanghai-class ships!"

In 1859, the United States was far ahead of China, Japan, and North Korea. Although there was no railway across the two oceans and no Panama Canal, it was difficult for the United States to deploy military forces to the Pacific side.

But it’s difficult, not impossible!
As long as the United States is determined, with its strong shipbuilding capabilities and merchant ships of more than 500 million tons, it can transport a -strong army plus a hundred armed merchant ships and several steam warships to the Pacific. It just takes some time.

As for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, even if it was willing to spend a year to fully reinforce its troops on the west coast of North America, it would be limited by its national strength and distance (the distance across the Pacific Ocean is not short), so the force it could deploy would be limited.

Therefore, Luo Yaoguo's "West Coast Policy" is actually exploiting a bug in American politics. We must hold high the banner of "insisting on one America" ​​and not pursuing "one America, one Canada", and we must never engage in a showdown or war with the United States.

At least we cannot go to war until the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom achieves industrialization.

Daozi carefully read the report brought by Maria, and suddenly looked up: "Does Maria mean to evacuate the real group from North America?"

"It's not about evacuating, but about quitting while we're ahead!" Maria said, "There's a Civil War brewing in the United States right now. We, the True Yorkists, are hiding behind the Rocky Mountains and watching the fight. If we show our ambition to split the United States at this time, we might even lure both the North and South, who are preparing for war, to the West!"

"The American Civil War?" Daozi asked, "Was it because of the abolition of slavery?" She was puzzled, "Would white Americans kill each other because of slavery?"

"It's not because of the slaves," Maria shook her head, "but because of the tariffs!" "Tariffs?" Hong Rengan looked at Maria, "Are tariffs that important?"

"Of course!" Maria said, "Tariffs are the key to the purse strings of factory owners in the north and plantation owners in the south of the United States. Blocking someone's financial path is like killing their parents!" She chuckled, "We white people also value filial piety!"

Suddenly, hurried footsteps were heard outside the palace. The guard reported through the door curtain: "The King of the East has arrived!"

O'Connor Lori Manor, Long Island County, New York, USA.

The beechwood in the fireplace crackled, and Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis's hand tightened around the waist of a young man in a maid's outfit. The Japanese girl gasped in pain, but she still kept a gentle smile on her face.

Senator Davis, however, roared at Xianfeng across from him: "How dare the yellow monkeys in San Francisco define what white people are! Do you really think the Star-Spangled Banner is a rag?"

Xianfeng also hugged a Japanese "maid" from the O'Connor family and exclaimed: "When South Carolina declared the federal tariff law invalid in 1832, why didn't it say that the Stars and Stripes was a rag?"

The Japanese girl in Davis's palm suddenly took a breath, then gave Davis an apologetic smile.

“北佬的工厂里用的那些工人的周薪是多少？差不多要10-12美元！”咸丰端起咖啡喝了一口，“折合成英镑是2-2.5镑。而英国工人呢？英国制造业工人的周薪才1英镑，只有美国的4%-50%。而英国工人的手艺和劳动强度，还那个认真负责的精神，哪里是美国工厂里的懒鬼能比的？要不是1828年那45%的关税墙“

Davis's face gradually turned livid. The "hateful tariff" of 1828 almost broke all the plantation owners in the southern United States. If the United States imposed a % tariff on European industrial products, European countries would definitely increase tariffs on American agricultural products! At that time, American cotton would be replaced by cotton from Egypt and India. The plantation owners in the South did not need to abolish slavery at all, they would be abolished themselves!
So in order to counter the high tariffs imposed by the Northerners, the South Carolina State Legislature passed the Repeal Act, declaring the Tariff Acts of 1828 and 1832 "invalid" in the state and threatening to use force to resist federal law enforcement.

The then US President Andrew Johnson passed the "Force Act" in an attempt to authorize the federal army to suppress South Carolina's armed resistance to taxation, and the Civil War almost broke out. Fortunately, Henry Clay, the founder of the Whig Party, stepped in to mediate and introduced a "compromise tax law" that promised to gradually reduce tariffs to 20%, thus avoiding the early outbreak of the Civil War.

"The Republican Party doesn't have a peacemaker like Henry Clay. Both Lincoln and Seward would be moderate on the abolition of slavery, and the tariff would be raised to at least 50%." Xianfeng laughed, "Because as steamships become more and more numerous and larger, the cost of transatlantic transportation is falling rapidly. Without a 50% tariff, no one would buy the inferior industrial products produced by those junk factories in the northern United States. By that time, the British would buy Indian and Egyptian cotton, and French tobacco merchants would look to Turkey for supplies. Do you think the cotton ships in Charleston Harbor will rust?"

O'Connor shook his whiskey glass. Before going to the West Coast to pan for gold, he was one of those lazy, stupid and high-paid workers in the North. It has to be said that they really couldn't compete with the British workers!

In the long run, it seems that workers in China, Japan, and North Korea cannot be attracted by 50% or even higher tariffs. At the same time, because the United States has the most vast plains in the world, the cost of agricultural production in the United States is very low. American agricultural products can beat the whole world! Therefore, if the United States adopts a high tariff of 50% to protect its industry, then American agriculture will become the target of foreign retaliation.

In fact, the high tariffs in the United States mean that the agricultural states in the South suffer losses, while the industrial states in the North benefit.
"Last year, the United States exported $3.4 million worth of agricultural products." Xianfeng quoted the figure that Davis had long remembered, "of which 75% came from the Southern states. Once your cotton, wheat, and tobacco face a 50% tariff from the Europeans, then the Northern factory owners will eat the corpses of your Southern farmers alive."

"What do you Chinese know about federal politics!" Davis blushed. "Seven state legislatures in the South have explicitly opposed high tariffs."

"How did the 1833 compromise tariff come about?" Xianfeng said coldly, "If South Carolina hadn't set up cannons in Charleston Harbor, would Senator Clay have agreed to a ten-year tax cut? But this time, even if you pull out the cannons, the Republicans in the North will not give in! Because the power of the northern industrial states is much stronger now than in 1833! In 1833, the northern free states had a population of only more than 600 million, while your southern slave states had a population of 690 million, including black slaves. Moreover, the industry in the northern industrial states was just starting at that time, and there was no grand occasion like today. But now, the North has a population of more than 2000 million, and your southern slave states have only 900 million, of which 350 million are still black slaves. So, Jefferson, my dear friend, why do you think you can still rely on a few cannons to scare off the Yankees this time? The Yankees have the second largest industry in the world, which is stronger than the industries of France and Russia. Can you scare off Napoleon or the Tsar with a few cannons? So, give up your fantasy and prepare for war!"

(End of this chapter)