Volume 1: The Rise of Elanhill Chapter 0023: Big Gamble
After sending away the messenger who came to ask for weapons, Chris knew that he should develop his weapons and equipment more urgently.
He has spent a long time building up his industrial base, and now it's time to test his own strength.
So, on the tenth day after the messenger left, Chris convened a general meeting to discuss the next stage of development direction.
At the meeting, Chris first asked Gurlo about the popularization of education, because he knew clearly that if he wanted to develop industry systematically, the reserve of talents was an issue that must be taken seriously.
Before, the model of individually hand-making weapons and equipment, where people like Chris personally took the lead and worked overtime all night, could not support a large-scale war.
Hearing Collins' question, Gurlo adjusted his glasses and said, "According to development needs, we have built 30 primary schools and 9 junior high schools. Using the movable type printing technology you provided, we have produced a large number of textbooks and distributed them to all students for free."
"It only takes one year for us to train a lot of talents. By then, the factory will have enough talents to use." He said as he pushed a report to Chris: "We bought a large number of teenagers from nearby, and it is easy to train them."
"Having money makes you so willful..." After hearing that even the population of this world can be recruited with gold coins, and that the world is expanding like a cheat, Chris feels that having money is a very pleasant thing.
In fact, there are many problems that can be solved with money. In order to support its own industrialization process, Seris City purchased a large amount of industrial raw materials from the three surrounding regions, but basically did not export anything valuable.
Gurlo imported large quantities of cotton and stone from the Alante Empire. The cotton was used to support the textile industry and the production of some explosives, while the stone was entirely used for the infrastructure construction of the entire Principality of Ailanhill.
According to Chris's request, the crushed stones were stored for future use in the paving of the railway roadbed, while the whole stones were used in the construction of factory buildings. Almost at all costs, countless factories were built, many of which had no time to install machinery and could only be left vacant after being measured.
There are many such projects that only invest but do not seek returns near Seris City, but there are also profitable projects. For example, the two newly built cement factories are currently the busiest factories. The manual cement manufacturing has been going on day and night, but the cement produced is not enough.
Everything purchased was used in the construction of Ailan Hill, and nothing was wasted. The products of the cement factory and the stone materials were used to build buildings, and the minerals were smelted into metals. The quality of life of the civilians in the entire principality was improving at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the hundreds of thousands of gold coins that Des brought were also disappearing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"I'm desperately trying to buy food." Deans, who was almost exhausted, reported tiredly: "Our population has at least doubled in the past two months... The food reserves are definitely not enough, so we must prepare in advance."
His report fully proved how the money was gone: food procurement was definitely a major direction. In order to feed the growing population, food could only be ensured to be sufficient through procurement. This was definitely not a one-time deal, because the population of the Principality of Ailan Hill would definitely be even greater next year.
Because of the lack of people, the population must be gathered, and because of the need to gather the population, sufficient food must be provided. This is almost a vicious circle. Most of the time, in order to allow the surrounding civilians to immigrate to the territory of Ailan Hill, Chris would also order .
Now he has enough manpower and enough soldiers, but the pressure has been transferred to Deans, who is in charge of population and civil affairs. This middle-aged man is so busy now that he has very little time to sleep.
The situation in Strid's side was not much better: "I just came back from the Higgs Kingdom yesterday... the kerosene there... er, no, the price of oil has increased by 50%. The biggest problem is that the production of this stuff is not that large. Even if we have money, we can't buy much spot goods."
Although alchemy was consumed in this era, in most cases, kerosene was only used as a weapon to defend cities, so the production was small and the demand was not great. Now Chris was consuming a large amount of oil and was planning to reserve more, which was a bit unreasonable.
The bald-headed Mr. Strid bought up almost all the kerosene in the Kingdom of Higgs, but he still couldn't meet Chris's requirements - not even a fraction of it.
Because the number of purchases and sales is too large, the current situation of Ailan Hill is that everything sold plummets, and everything bought soars. In order to catch up with the speed of development, the Principality of Ailan Hill can only accept this annoying thing with a pinch of the nose.
"The construction of the factory is very fast! After all, most of Ireland Hill's expenses are piled on the industry I am in charge of." Smith, who is already the best engineer in the city of Seris, said.
Holding a report on the industrial process, he said to Chris: "We have built ten blast furnaces and started using new timers to smelt steel, which has increased efficiency by dozens of times. The qualified rate of steel is already satisfactory, and there is no problem in using it to produce new 75mm caliber infantry guns."
"However, there are some unsatisfactory aspects." He pointed to a line in the document and complained to Chris: "The amount of copper is seriously insufficient. We have smelted 1 million copper coins, but it still cannot keep up with the speed of copper consumption."
Sufficient copper can be said to be the calcium tablet of modern industry. A large number of problems that could not be solved in the early days of industry were solved by using the good metallic properties of copper. This metal also has an incredible conductivity, making it the best choice for electric and telephone lines.
"The copper problem can only be solved by increasing purchases," Chris said with some frustration, "Also, find a way to use iron as an alternative."
During World War II, Germany was also a country with a serious shortage of copper. When the Germans were stretched to the limit, they could only use iron to make bullet shells. Although iron shells are not as good as copper shells in terms of bullet extraction performance, it is better to have bullets than no bullets, right?
Therefore, without any better solutions, Chris could only lower the usage requirements and let the factory start mass production of iron shell bullets. Anyway, the soldiers on the front line should understand the occasional jamming problem - as the saying goes, it's better to have something than nothing, right?
Glancing at Wageron, Chris raised his hand to signal that he didn't need to introduce the military training situation. Because he had just visited the military camp yesterday, the situation was not ideal. "I will discuss your problem with you alone later!"
"Yes !" Wagron reluctantly gave up the idea of exposing his family's dirty laundry. In fact, a lot of funds have been invested in military training recently, but there is a severe shortage of talent in the army. He has been running around, but he can only barely keep the training going.
Because the focus of Ailan Hill's construction recently was not on the military, no one wanted Wagron to report. He was quickly passed over and Gurlo continued to talk about the extremely important issue of education.
It is not an easy task to make a society move towards industrialization. In practice, it is much more complicated than Chris thought.
Even though he had countless books and knowledge to guide specific actions, the huge amount of work accumulated was still a daunting project.
Now, the original Seris surroundings, including Alante in the south, Tubao in the north, and the Higgs Kingdom in the west, all benefited from the crazy development of the Principality of Ailan Hill that violated the rules. They earned a lot of gold coins from Ailan Hill, which once made the border area extremely prosperous.
But who could have imagined that Ireland Hill, which had already been burdened with too many unreasonable contradictions, had made up its mind from the very beginning to use a war to transfer all domestic contradictions, open up the market, and complete a gorgeous transformation!
As long as the defeated country can pay for its own development, this illogical leapfrog development can be established. Ailan Hill will be able to eliminate the disaster and gain a brief opportunity for development.
Of course, if things continue to develop in this way, Ireland Hill will still have to expand outward and attack the next neighboring country - just like a glutton, it will not stop until it has eaten all its neighbors.
"The next thing we need to do is to build the arsenal as soon as possible! No matter what method we use! We must prepare for a war!" Chris looked at his confidants and said.
He folded his hands over his chest, thinking carefully about the decision at this moment: "If we continue to live like this, we will only end up collapsing."
"Yes, I just did a calculation. If we can't get a huge sum of 300,000 gold coins within half a year, we will be insolvent... and we can declare bankruptcy." Des is sensitive about this aspect. It was he who reminded Chris to pay attention to the problem of insufficient funds before the meeting.
If the internal digestion is slow and other new industries are developed, it is not impossible for the Principality of Ailan Hill to digest its own industrial achievements. However, that would only slow down its own development speed and waste precious time.
Including Chris, Des, Deans and others all knew that they seemed to have a more irresponsible, or better choice - war!
The reason is simple: since war can be won, why not use war to solve problems? From the perspective of being winnable, war brings alluring benefits!
As long as the war can be won, Ailan Hill can expand its territory, have a larger population, offset part of the debt, and reduce the pressure on the border...
All these things were very tempting. For the first time, Chris experienced the feelings of those war maniacs: this kind of gamble, which can roughly determine the win or loss after careful calculation, is so tempting that people can't help but want to bet.
Unlike the others, Chris had a lot at stake and a huge chance of winning. Neither Des nor Chris had even thought about losing the war—in fact, they didn't need to think about it, because if they lost the war, they would definitely not live to see it.
