The most difficult thing in front of Emperor Wanli was that his empire had never lacked steel, which was stretched thin.

This situation would make any ruler wonder if the empire should not be short of iron.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Ming Dynasty has never lacked iron, in the early years, the government set up an iron factory for iron smelting, and smelted 8 million catties of iron for the imperial court a year, and the Emperor Chengzu was happy enough, and later felt that there was too much useless iron in the treasury, and even the iron class was exempted.

The price of iron among the people is also very cheap, regardless of stone, carpenter or even porter, the daily wage is around five to seven cents of silver, and an axe or hoe only costs three cents of silver, and the idle people only need to work as a short-term worker in their leisure time, not only can they gather a full set of farm tools, but also bring back a cow to their home.

Of course, there is a premise that the society is stable, and once a thief becomes a thief or a rebellion, and the normal production around him is interrupted, everything will definitely not be like this.

Even the amount of military iron and steel that has increased year by year since the establishment of Nanyangwei has not had any impact, and even the iron of the civilian sector is not less in a statistical sense, but also more - most of the iron used by the Nanyang Guard Ordnance Bureau comes from the private mining income of the guards and civilians, and the imperial court cannot receive a penny of iron from that.

The consumption of guns and guns is very small compared to shells, but this does not constitute pressure.

Guangdong has made a lot of guns and shells this year, and the miners are happier when the farmers are slack; Next year, consumption will increase further, more people will see that this is profitable, and iron production will also increase further.

Everything is gradual.

"Until the establishment of the Steam Bureau, the workpieces were apportioned to the provinces to build and be transferred by the government, and the steel monster of thousands of catties was often thousands of catties, and over the past few years, the single Steam Bureau has made 1,340 Huo De Xingjun, 988 above 1,000 catties, and 46 above 10,000 catties."

"Even if it is such a huge amount, the iron consumption is only two million catties, scattered to the provinces, and the apportionment is only tens of thousands of catties per year, not to mention profitable."

Xu Guangqi spread out his palms and talked eloquently in the military room of the Qianqing Palace in the Forbidden City.

He not only sat in front of the emperor, but also Zhang Juzheng, the first assistant who held the highest authority of the empire.

The emperor gave him two missions, but it would have to wait for Jinyiwei to complete the inventory of the Zhuangtian owned by the king of Baoding, so when the emperor encountered a problem, the first thing that came to mind was to ask Xu Guangqi to do this little thing - to help him figure out why the Ming Dynasty was short of iron.

Why is iron deficient?

Xu Guangqi felt that this was an obvious matter, so he went back to the Steam Bureau, copied a copy of the accounts of Huo De Xingjun who had been registered since the establishment of the Steam Bureau, and went to the Beiyang Ordnance Bureau for two days, so he had the capital to give lectures to the emperor.

He knew that the emperor liked to lay out data, so he did his homework, and this homework was to learn mathematics.

Ironically, the way he learned mathematics was by reading Geometry Primitives, which he translated in another time and space.

Xu Guangqi said the previous number, spread his hands and said: "This time to build rails and wooden rails, the provinces can only produce two million catties, the reason is that it is impossible to throttle, make guns, build ships and armor, and use civilian officials, none of which can be saved, and the original iron production will be insufficient." ”

The size of the Ming Dynasty has brought a very serious negative effect, that is, it is difficult to find deficiencies in progress.

In other small countries, according to the progress brought by Chen Mu in the Ming Dynasty, an earth-shaking revolution in productivity has already occurred, and technological progress has always been brought about by demand.

In the face of external threats, you have to build artillery, you need to use iron to build artillery, what if you don't have enough iron, dig deeper - this is a normal situation.

And in Daming, you have to build artillery, and you need iron to build artillery, what if there is not enough iron? Cover the mine with earth and wait—the merchant will bring in the mine dug up from the next county.

There is no need for even a track, because there is an inexhaustible amount of manpower, and compared with the progress of mining and metallurgical technology, the imperial court cares more about the livelihood of the people, and if there is no livelihood, it will rebel.

There were no problems in shipbuilding, no problems in building cannons, and no problems in building steam engines, until the war made the little emperor want to build a railway.

In fact, it is not that there are no problems, but the problems encountered are not problems with raw materials and technology, but only lack of money.

But when it came time to build the railway, the imperial court finally found that the iron production was insufficient, and the shortage was a big gap.

The emperor wanted to repair from Beiyang to Beijing, and then from Beijing to Daning, with a total length of thousands of miles, so he used the method of Beiyang Ye Mengxiong to pave two-way wooden-bottom iron-shell tracks from both sides of the official road, Xu Guangqi calculated the price, and it was not expensive.

The estimated amount is only 750,000 taels - really not expensive.

The railroad track suggested by Ye Mengxiong is not only half less than the railway iron that Chen Mu plans to build in Dadongyang, but also proves in the experiment that it can effectively move forward when walking on the existing 3,000 to 20,000 catties of steam locomotives, and the wooden rails below can well share the weight of the rails.

The problem is that Daming can't get so much iron, and even building a railway in Daming is much more difficult and difficult than building a railway in Asia.

Even if the Ming Dynasty has a lot of iron and craftsmen, and has all the conditions to achieve everything, there are also limitations in the local area, and the people, the government, and the army all have to use iron.

The aborigines of Asia used to live well without iron, and now even with iron, eight catties of ten catties can be put into construction. The local area has to refine twelve catties before one catty can be used.

Zhang Juzheng raised his hand to interrupt Xu Guangqi and said: "You know what you said, since Your Majesty wants you to build an iron factory, you can go, Dongyang Chen Shuai said that Beizhili is full of mines, you go to explore, where do you want to use the mines, just send a message to Your Majesty, no one can stop you." ”

In fact, he understands what the railway means better than the emperor, and the first assistant of the empire is not the emperor who feels that he is celebrating the New Year after being confined in the Forbidden City to Tsinghua Garden, and he has a deeper connection with Ye Mengxiong, because he is the Beiyang minister of the Ming Empire.

Not only did he go to Beiyang to see the railroad with his own eyes, but he even almost boarded the flying fish.

That neuropathic Ye Mengxiong has now repaired the railway from Beiyang to Tianjin Wei, and specially made a six-hundred-pound iron horse, a steam-driven iron-clad wooden wheel iron frame horse, with a steam engine behind the seat, and the wheels that are half stuck on the track are close to falling down as long as they stop because of the heavy body, and they are faster than real horses on the track.

Zhang Juzheng was frightened by sitting on the rail iron horse, so he forcibly suppressed the restlessness of wanting to board the flying fish, and at the same time, Shen decided in middle age that he would never try any equipment that Beiyang had not put into use without permission in his lifetime.

The iron horse did not brake, although the track did not have a sharp bend, but there was no straight road in the whole section of Beiyang through Tianjin, it was all a large arc bend close to a straight line, and the only braking device was the air release valve next to the foot pedal.

It's so exciting, Zhang Juzheng feels that he has passed the age of a plaything.

In contrast, he was more optimistic about those who were large and stable, and could pull carts on railroad tracks.

It was precisely because he was clear that Zhang Juzheng thought that it was useless for the emperor to let Xu Guangqi go to open an iron factory, and the imperial court lacked too much iron, which could not be made up by one or a few iron factories.

In contrast, Zhang Juzheng paid more attention to the Tianshi monk who led the Buddhists into India.

There's no way, it's used to being ...... by Chen Mu In middle age, God will also learn to look to the outside to find solutions to the problems encountered at home.