open sea

Chapter 1013 Change
Tianjin, Beiyang Military Government Yamen.

The most important thing in the Ming Dynasty in the seventh year of Wanli is nothing else. The cabinet decided that every two years from now on, a second assistant and three censors will be selected to tour the world. The cabinet member who toured the thirteen provinces of Nanjing for the first time is Zhang Han. .

Even with Zhang Juzheng's brilliance, it is difficult to be nuanced about the changes in the world, and he can only be aware of them later.

At the beginning of the seventh year of Wanli, when Chen Mu left half of the five-year plan for Northern Zhili, it was inevitable that Huangzhuang, Wangzhuang, prefectures and county magistrates, both in the official documents submitted to the court and in the private letters of private greetings I mentioned one thing unambiguously - the black smoke along the coast of North Zhili all the year round.

Black smoke is not just black smoke.

In the eighth year since the advent of the steam engine, from Beiyang Military Port in Tianjin as the center to Zunhua, Jizhen in the north, Shanhaiguan in Yongping Prefecture in the east, and Laizhou in Shandong in the south, a massive change occurred without anyone noticing it. Swept everywhere.

And the popularity and scale of industry in Northern Zhili surpassed that of Guangdong. The direct cause of all this was not manpower, but natural disasters.

Tianjin is located at the lower part of the Jiuhe River. Last year, the Haihe River flooded violently, turning the vicinity of Tianjin into a land of floods, destroying almost all farmland, grain farms, and increasingly prosperous factories. The newly developed oil extraction industry and textile industry were destroyed. The famous glass factory was also destroyed, and there were countless casualties and disappearances of the people in the early stage.

Even the recruiting officers who rushed to the Yamen of the Beiyang Military Mansion were killed by the flood, and a whole new recruiting department of thousands of households disappeared without a trace under the flood.

The plague and famine that followed took the lives of tens of thousands of people.

This is already the result of the imperial court's efforts to rescue the disaster.

The Beiyang Banner Army was dispatched to 600 disaster-stricken counties to maintain law and order. The Nanyang Military Government transported all 260 million shi of rice and grain to the victims. The medical team went to various places.

When the disaster was over, the Banner Army opened a cemetery under the Jiguo Pagoda, and buried 67 coffins and 440 tombs.

Some doctors didn't even keep their hair, and only a few things commonly used in military hospitals were placed in the tomb.

Grief is unavoidable, and the livelihood must continue. The merchants are in a hurry to recruit skilled long-term workers and craftsmen, but they are displaced for hundreds of miles. How can they achieve their wishes in a short period of time? .

On the one hand, they sent people to the best craftsman academy in Nanjing to hire graduates at high prices, and on the other hand, they paid a lot of money to buy the nearest steam engine—the Huode Xingjun A model in the sixth year of Wanli.

This name is given by the emperor himself, but it is not the little guy in the Forbidden City who burned up, flew into the clouds, smoked his mouth and sniffed smoke, and ran all over the yard outside the Qianqing Palace. The name of that guy has now been changed seven times, and he is pulling the emperor to catch up Lu Wang walked below.

The Huode Xingjun A steam engine in the sixth year of Wanli is a real big guy. The first Wanli six years is the model, the middle Huode Xingjun is the name, and the last type A means that it is the largest of the four finalized models of this year. shape.

There are more than [-] parts in size, and the whole assembly is [-] feet high, [-] feet long, and weighs [-] kilograms. It roars endlessly when it is started, and the power can be adjusted in four preset levels under [-] Lang force through the valve. , to meet different needs.

This big guy is supervised by the Steam Bureau of the Ministry of Industry, and each one must be assembled by the buyer after the first trial. The first chisel printed on the bottom must be nailed by the Minister of the Ministry of Industry.

In fact, the scope of application of Type A Huode Xingjun is not wide. Due to various reasons such as transportation and Nanyang Military Bureau, no one comes to order in the south. Only the largest textile factory in Beizhili and Beiyang can use it in the north. It was only used by the Military Weapons Bureau, Qi Jiguang Jizhen Zunhua Iron Works, and several hubs of imperial telegraph traffic.

But it is the most prestigious. The Ministry of Industry produced, transported, and assembled 46 Type-A Huode Xingjun within a year after it was finalized in the sixth year of Wanli. Enough to mobilize corvee to build two wooden track roads for carriages with a length of 280 miles from Beiyang Military Mansion to Tongzhou.

But in fact, merchants who bought Wanli six-year-old type A in the folks did not boast about this thing, because it is not at all superior to the five-year-old type A. It has the same power and even makes people feel a little smaller. Prices have skyrocketed.

There is no other reason, because in the fifth year of Wanli, three Type A units were damaged within a year, and the most serious one exploded in the Beiyang Ordnance Bureau. More than ten craftsmen and workers were injured, one was killed on the spot, and six were disabled.

The six-year-old Model A has mainly enhanced safety, and is naturally more bulky.

There are more commercial models B and C circulating on the market, which can be used in mines, various factories, and even workshops with more than ten people. He can't be more powerful than Yashiro at most, but he is more popular.

As for the smallest D-type, that is, the Huode Xingjun that Emperor Wanli used as a mount in the palace, it is basically not sold in the market. The profits harvested from the middle two models are used to mass-produce the smallest D-type, which is used for It is issued to the common people, but it is much simpler than the emperor's mount.

In order to solve the problem of manpower shortage after the disaster, the Ministry of Industry issued more than [-] sets of D-shaped Huode Xingjun to [-] counties of Hejian Prefecture in the sixth year of Wanli. It is called a charcoal-eating horse by the people.

However, what is interesting is that the proliferation of Huode Xingjun of various years and models in Beizhili not only did not impact the handicraft industry, but also made wood, iron, coal, mining and other industries and their derivative industries become more and more popular due to the production of supporting mechanical tools. Unprecedented prosperity.

Then, the news reached the ears of the high officials in the court, they knew nothing about the black smoke, and this led to Zhang Han's tour of various provinces.

Because the black smoke is all the problems brought about by the great changes.

Relatively limited to a 'small area' of a province, industrialization has brought about land mergers, population movements, and agricultural decline. Although industrialization has avoided the old problems of land mergers, it has also brought more new problems.

Dense courtyards serving industries formed new villages one after another, and the major factory areas became closed and extrajudicial places for the imperial court. During the barbaric growth, various factory owners implemented family law in the factory area for better management.

Lack of officials to plan cities and towns, the transport capacity cannot keep up with the speed of dense living, the poor living environment and almost no medical security have brought about a high incidence of diseases. new challenge.

However, the Wanli Emperor in the Forbidden City need not worry about all this. When the first snow fell in the winter of the seventh year of Wanli, he wore a velvet pajamas of a tiger warrior from Asia and installed a gun that could hit a pound of bullets on the back of Huode Xingjun. Fran cannon.

However, after the Huode Xingjun, which had progressed to the speed of a turtle, degenerated into a snail, the emperor was not satisfied. He replaced it with a heavy gun imitated from Spain and improved the "Franz machine type". Then he patted Huode Xingjun, who was tightly wrapped in the courtier's scarlet satin robe, and smiled with satisfaction.

After the emperor's research, the speed of mounts decreased significantly in winter, which proved that wearing clothes is very important to everyone.

Of course, in order to save the dog, no, in order to save the emperor's life, Huode Xingjun, who had just been appointed as the third-rank Zhaoyong general, changed and changed the valve on his body and lowered it by one gear.

(End of this chapter)