Volume 3: The Land of Jingchu Chapter 300: Slow Development General's Mansion
Pork has become very common in Yangzhou. Except for some old stubborn people, even many wealthy families have accepted pork, and these "main dishes" are naturally indispensable at the New Year's banquet.
At the New Year's banquet in the fifth year of Jian'an, in addition to pork, there was another main dish - cement.
It’s not about asking everyone to eat cement, but about showing the effect of “cement”!
This magical "soil" that quickly dried after adding water and stirring quickly attracted the attention of the civil and military officials in the General's Mansion.
The military commanders thought that they could quickly build a "small Wubao" when setting up camp in the future, while the civil officials thought of renovating houses and adding city walls...
Brick and tile buildings in the Eastern Han Dynasty still used yellow mud as an adhesive, and their strength and durability were not very high.
City walls, including the Qin Great Wall, are mainly made of rammed earth, with very few sections made of stone.
Normally, lime mortar mixed with lime and sand was used as an adhesive only after the Song Dynasty. During the Ming Dynasty, lime mortar was mixed with glutinous rice juice and used as an adhesive to build the Great Wall of Ming.
With cement, the city walls can be converted into brick and stone structures. In terms of military use, cement can be directly transported to cast bunkers!
"My lord, how much does this 'cement' cost?" Lu Kang was the first to ask.
Old Lu was also worried that if he didn't ask about the price first, the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the Privy Council would all ask for money, and the Ministry of Revenue would not be able to bear it even if it was bled dry!
"It's very simple to manufacture. After three years of keeping it secret, it can be opened to private operation. Counterfeiting is not cheap now, but... there are a lot of raw materials. If the mining scale is expanded, the cost will be low." Bai Tu said.
Lu Kang breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this, then looked at Lu Su with a smile.
Although the white map did not mention the specific cost, it said very clearly that it required “mining”.
Well, that is to say... the Ministry of Civil Affairs has to mine it themselves!
Whether it will be enough by then, let’s go to the Department of Annoyance!
Especially since the Ministry of Civil Affairs itself is a big consumer of consumables. Now we ask you to mine them yourselves. Let’s see who you can ask for payment!
"This year is the fifth year of Jian'an. We will strive to use cement in the second half of the year. In the seventh year of Jian'an, we can start using cement to build the main city walls. In the ninth year of Jian'an, we can use cement to build roads in the city and the main roads from the port to nearby cities. In the twelfth year of Jian'an, we can start using cement to build official roads." Bai Tu talked about his vision for the future.
When they heard that in a few years all official roads would be repaired with this magical tool, many people understood the cost of this thing - it must not be high, but no one cared about it before, so the raw material mining was not strong!
Of course, everyone has now adapted to Bai Tu's statement.
The so-called 12th year of Jian'an, when people began to build official roads with cement, was just the "beginning". Not to mention completing all the construction, it would take several years for the main official roads to be completed. It also did not mean that the previous city roads and main roads from ports to nearby cities had been completed in the 12th year of Jian'an.
It just means that by the 12th year of Jian'an, the grain produced for cement was enough for everyone to use...
"My lord, didn't we say before that roads can increase people's wealth and strength? Since cement can be obtained so easily, why not mobilize the labor force of various counties and add the mining of cement raw materials to the inspection projects of the Ministry of Personnel? We are not afraid of heavy burdens!" A chief clerk of the Ministry of Personnel said to Bai Tu, patting his chest.
The other departments around him, especially the prefects, county magistrates and other chief officials from various places, looked at him with increasingly unfriendly eyes.
Are you still human?
You are not afraid of heavy burdens...
You, who are here for inspection, have a heavy burden on your shoulders!
Of course, there were also many people who were anxious to build roads. After seeing the effect of cement, especially those whose raw materials and products needed to be transported over long distances, and those who contracted mines, they were eager to pave the roads as soon as possible.
"It's good that everyone has this intention, but now each county and township probably also has its own burdens. Hard work can bring benefits to the people, but manpower cannot be overdrawn easily." Bai Tu actually acted as a brake.
There is no way. The price of getting everything on track is that a large number of manpower has been squeezed out and arranged clearly.
It is no longer possible to easily gather a large amount of manpower under the pretext of disaster relief and focus on a certain project as before.
At the same time, this is also the real advantage of the General’s Mansion!
Did Cao Cao think that he could just imitate Bai Tu’s military equipment and financial resources?
Even if Bai Tu shared the blast furnace iron smelting and steel pouring methods with him, the Prime Minister's Office had no foundation in other aspects. How many nails could it produce just by exploiting the people's power?
The Ministry of Works and local regulatory offices, including the salt fields, have recently captured a number of spies from the north and even Jingchu.
While Bai Tu was telling everyone to be careful about security, he was not in a hurry...
The profits from salt and iron, after all, are just a disguised way of collecting taxes from the people. In the Central Plains under Cao Cao's rule, the people's strength has already been overdrawn, and giving him a means to collect taxes will only bring limited changes.
As for asking Cao Cao to squeeze out manpower to repair the waterway at this time? It would be better to let him surrender directly...
For the General's Mansion, the constraints on development are coal, or population and manpower.
If the Qi machine can be further improved and put into civilian use, it will further squeeze out the industrialized population and make up for the lack of coal. Otherwise, relying solely on charcoal... Even if Bai Tu cuts down the Greater Khingan Range, it may not be enough for industrialization.
There are also high-yield crops, which can also increase population.
Apart from this, the only conceivable way to alleviate population and manpower shortages is to liberate the productivity of other regions.
For example, if Jingzhou is captured, the total population can be doubled. As long as the Yangzhou model is started in Jingzhou, after two or three years, there will be a large amount of manpower that can overflow from agriculture and be invested in industrial construction.
As long as the progress bar of industrialization can be pushed up, Baitu has no idea how to lose. Whether it is agricultural civilization, nomadic civilization, or fishing and hunting civilization, no matter how many horses they have or how ferocious their blood is, they cannot fight against industrial civilization.
"It's the twelfth year of Jian'an again..." Lu Lingqi frowned.
Because it was a New Year's banquet and not a New Year's party, Lu Lingqi sat next to Bai Tu and no one said anything.
The reason why Lu Lingqi sighed like this was that many of the plans of the General's Mansion seemed to be based on the twelfth and thirteenth years as important nodes.
For example, the first batch of students who graduated from the township school to the county school, who were truly trained from childhood, graduated; the promotion of pig and poultry breeding and fertilizer use, and the inclusion of per capita consumption of vegetables, fruits and meat in the assessment of local officials; the planning covered the entire Yangzhou, and the second phase of the large-scale water conservancy project was completed; the steel production was basically stable, the military service rotation was fully realized, and the double twelve plan of building twelve large ports in the twelfth year of Jian'an...
"Yeah, what a coincidence!" Bai Tu also exclaimed.
The 12th year of Jian'an was also an important year in history. In this year, Cao Cao completely recovered Hebei and defeated the Wuhuan who attempted to move south. Gongsun Kang presented Yuan Shang's head to Cao Cao as a token of his submission. It was also in this year that the old white-faced man in Jingzhou fell ill and was unable to manage affairs. The Cai family colluded with the Nanjun family to monopolize power, and even the eldest son Liu Qi was not allowed to visit him.
It was also the year before the great war that truly determined the Three Kingdoms situation began...
