There are many types of minerals, and coal, iron and oil are the most important.

Russia, Pakistan, China, Australia, India, Canada and the United States, with high iron ore reserves in seven countries;

Coal mines are China, the United States and Russia, and the coal quality in Asia, Europe and North America is good;

The distribution of oil is very concentrated, the Middle East, Russia, the United States, China, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

……

Franz still remembers this passage in geography class in his previous life, and it can be summed up as a shortage of minerals in Europe.

On the one hand, the development time is too early, and many resources are exhausted in the 21st century; On the other hand, there are really not many mineral reserves.

With the exception of Russia, all European countries are mineral-poor countries, or have a single distribution of mineral resources. A typical example is Germany, where there is a shortage of almost everything except coal and iron ore.

This is still the envy of many countries, the two most basic elements of the industrial age are possessed, and the French next door are still short of coal?

Austria, by contrast, is a happy country, perhaps with a slightly larger territory and almost all mineral resources. It's just that this reserve is a little out of reach.

Of course, this is also in a relative sense. Compared with European countries other than Russia, Austria's mineral resources still have an advantage.

These resources laid the foundation for Austria's industrial development, and by 1870 Austria surpassed the British for the first time in steel production, ranking first in the world with an annual output of 6.48 million tons.

Of course, the advantage is not obvious, only 20,000 tons more than the British. The main factor contributing to the rapid growth of steel production in Austria is the growing demand in the domestic market.

A local market of more than 30 million people and a local market of more than 70 million have both completed industrialization, and the demand for steel is obviously greater than the latter.

In fact, this output is still not enough to meet the market demand, and in addition to the domestic market, the African colonies are also large consumers of steel.

According to the Ministry of Industry, Austria's steel demand will double in the next decade, with up to 1.5 million tonnes of steel required.

Seeing this data, Franz had a headache. At present, Bohemia's steel production has reached a bottleneck, and the rate of production growth has slowed down, and it wants to expand production capacity quickly unless it makes technological innovations.

However, this is not very realistic, the revolution in steel technology has only recently taken place, and it is almost impossible to make another breakthrough in the short term with the existing industrial technology.

Bosnia and Herzegovina's second steel production base, despite its rapid development, still has a long way to go to fill this vacancy, and it will not be reached at all within ten years.

At present, most of Austria's major steel companies are concentrated in Bohemia (later the Czech Republic), accounting for 63% of the country's steel production.

In addition, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Linz, Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, Galicia, Silesia and other regions are distributed.

The main reasons for this are manifold, and the steel plants in Bavaria, Württemberg and Saxony are historical legacies that have not been developed due to limited resources.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the industry started too late, the government is still busy building roads, and although the steel companies have settled down, they are limited by transportation and cannot exert their maximum production capacity in a short time.

Galicia is not taken seriously enough by the government to compete with Bohemia; Silesia it was the pot of the Prussians, they ran away and left behind the mess, the Vienna government had just cleaned up.

The human factor can be overcome, and the most troublesome is the distribution of resources. There are a lot of coal and iron mines in Austria, but unfortunately they are not concentrated.

If iron and steel enterprises want to develop, they must move closer to the origin of raw materials, which has caused a situation of flowering in all directions.

In Franz's view, the capitalists were right. Since you want to invest, the main purpose is to make money. If you are far away from the origin of raw materials, the competitiveness of the product will naturally not be guaranteed.

Today, the centralization of heavy industry is no longer suitable for Austria. The supply of resources in each place is limited, and you can only supply one million tons of steel raw materials, and you can't smelt two million tons of steel.

In order to meet the growing domestic demand, it has become inevitable to open several more industrial bases. With the exception of Germany, where resources are concentrated, almost every major industrial country has multiple industrial bases.

After carefully reading the information, Franz made a decision: "There is no need to do this multiple-choice question, with the development of the country, the demand for steel will only increase."

It is better to add a heavy industry base today and another heavy industry base tomorrow, and it is better to develop it at the same time.

Serbia, Silesia, and Galicia all have the potential to develop into heavy industry bases, so let's list them together!

In other areas, as long as there are coal mines and iron mines at the same time, the transportation is relatively convenient, and they can also be developed.

The government formulates corresponding policies, finds ways to solve the transportation problem, and finally leaves the development to enterprises and the market. ”

In this era, all governments of the world were laissez-faire in industrial development, and what kind of industrial development became was basically determined by the market economy.

In fact, the Austrian government is already intervening in the market economy by administrative means, but it is doing it more obscurely.

Just look at Russia next door, as Europe's most resource-rich country, steel production is less than one-twentieth that of Austria.

It's not that the Russian capitalists don't see business opportunities, it's mainly that the traffic is too pitted. The tsarist government did not solve the traffic problem and asked them to build their own roads to get there, who would dare to make this deal?

It was only after the tsarist government attached importance to transportation that Russian industry began to develop in earnest. Unfortunately, the Russian Empire was too large, and this road was too difficult to build.

Before the First World War, the Russians had only built more than 70,000 kilometers, which was already the result of the efforts of successive tsars.

Before the crossing, Franz also often complained about the traffic of the Russians, and when he arrived in this world, his concept changed.

The roads of the Russian Empire were really difficult to build, and the technical difficulty and construction cost of building railways in the land of ice and snow were much higher than those of European countries, but the tsarist government was a poor ghost.

"If you want to get rich, build roads first", this sentence is not wrong at all. However, there is no money to build roads, which is tragic.

What is even more tragic is that the Russians not only have high construction costs, but also the maintenance costs are much higher than those of European countries. Even if the railway is completed, there is no guarantee that it will be open to traffic all year round.

In order to keep the railway open, the railway company had to invest a lot of workers in the winter to maintain it, and many sections of the road only took a few hours before the snow covered the railway.

In this way, the operating costs of the railway will also go up, and the freight will naturally increase. The originally cheap industrial raw materials have become no longer cheap after thousands of miles of transportation.

It is not surprising that the Russians' industry, which had started late and had to face such harsh conditions, coupled with the decay of the tsarist government, did not develop.

It is estimated that Alexander II has not yet thought about these problems, and he is still busy leading the Russian people to open up the wasteland.

No, it has been almost two years since the large-scale land reclamation was underway, and now we should be worried about what to do with the new grain.

If you want to sell your food, you must first be able to ship it. Not to mention the grain of the Ukrainian region, from which the grain exports of the Russian Empire came mainly.

There are also ways to transport grain from the Moscow region by river. Food in the Caucasus, let's build roads first, it's really a headache to have no railways.

The most tragic is the Siberian Plain, where the Russian people who open up the land are tragic, not to mention the harsh climatic conditions, after all, the land given by the tsar has passed.

The problem of transportation is a headache, the river exists, the premise is that your land must be along the river, and the river must be navigable.

Fortunately, Alexander II exempted the tax on newly cultivated land, otherwise the tax collectors would have collapsed. The people have no money in their pockets, so do they collect it or don't collect it when they pay taxes on food?

Perhaps for the Russian people, this is also a happy annoyance. There is no need to worry about starvation anymore, and in a few years, everyone's warehouse will be full of grain.

The time is still short, and the power of the great land reclamation cannot be seen for the time being, but if you look at the big data Franz, you know that Alexander II's reform is half successful.

More grain means low prices, and in addition to being able to fill the stomachs of farmers, it can also feed a large number of workers at the lowest cost.

When everyone is fed, the country is stable. For at least a few decades, the majority of the Russian population will be satisfied.

The only question is whether they can withstand the counterattack of the conservatives, and how can the Russian aristocracy not be tempted by the newly cultivated land?

After the clearing of the wasteland is completed, some people jump out to pick peaches. If land annexation is not contained, the Russian Empire will again be in crisis.

Land annexation is still a matter of the future, and the biggest trouble at the moment is grain sales. If so much grain cannot be sold in the international market, then it will be a lot of fun.

This time will not be too long, and next year or the year after, the Russian Empire will have an oversupply of grain.

So far, the Russians have opened up at least 200 million acres of arable land, which is almost half the amount of arable land in Austria itself.

Fortunately, the Russians' newly developed land is relatively poor, and grain production is relatively low, and in many places only one season of potatoes can be grown.

According to Austria's land output standards, this grain output can directly blow up the international grain market.

In response to the onslaught of Russian grain on the international market, Austria has begun to destock, and many savvy farmers are ready to switch to cash crops.

As for the grain processing industry, it is still Austria's dominance. Taking advantage of its own production and self-consumption, it has beaten many competitors over the years and controlled the terminal pricing of the grain market.

Even if the Russians exported grain, most of it was first exported to Austria, where it was refined and then sold to European countries.

This advantage will not change in the short term. Unless the Russians complete industrialization and develop their own processing industry.

This again involves industry, and it is not a matter of overnight to want to change. Take, for example, the flour processing industry: the flour produced by Russian enterprises is not only costly, but also of poor quality.

Now the flour sold on the market in many cities of the Russian Empire is actually produced in Austria, so we know how competitive the products of Russian enterprises are.

The machinery of this era is not so easy to use, unlike the grinding machines of later generations, which are all fool-like operations, and anyone can master them.

Now the machinery is high-tech, there is no professional and technical personnel, there is no play at all, and the shortcomings of talents are not so easy to make up.

It is not so easy to send people to train skilled workers. In this era, the export of machinery and equipment from various countries has buried a lot of mines.

For example, the machinery and equipment exported from Austria are all in German, and they may be sandwiched in a few local dialects when they reach key places.

Even if you are a professional translator, you will be able to figure out the meaning. So what to do? Naturally, experts are invited, and enterprises can make another profit by relying on the export of labor services in the later stage.

If it is a little black-hearted, it will also set up ambushes in some places, deliberately allowing buyers to continue to earn maintenance fees because they are not aware of improper operation.

This is also why everyone imports the most advanced equipment in Europe, and they have to toss back and forth, so that the manufacturer does not make enough money, and does not want to start work smoothly.

There are even some unscrupulous merchants who sell machinery and equipment at a low price, induce buyers to be fooled, and then use their hands and feet on machinery and equipment, and earn huge profits by later maintenance.

If it weren't for these invisible obstacles, in this era without technical barriers, the industrial production level of all countries in the world could be pulled to the same line.

It's no secret in the industry as a whole, and even many buyers know that there can be loopholes in the deal.

However, they have no choice, this is the tuition fee that latecomers have to pay. If you don't pay it now, you will pay more in the future.

If you want to directly obtain the industrial technology of the great powers and quickly climb to the world's advanced level, it is better to wash and sleep!

The great powers are not charitable, and in order to ensure their technological leadership, deliberately burying nails is just the most routine operation.

Otherwise, this catch-up industrial powerhouse can quickly close the gap as long as it completely replicates the other party's technology.

How could such a good thing be possible? If it had been so easy, it would not have been so many years later, and both France and Austria were chasers of the British.

If it weren't for the outbreak of the Second Industrial Revolution, it is estimated that the superiority of the British would have been able to continue for a long time.