Wanli is indeed a chicken thief, and he has completed the major event of coal mine franchise without making a sound.

He also accidentally set up the world's largest printing house.

The textbooks of the North and South Lecture Hall, Songjiang Lecture Academy, Beiyang and other places are all printed and published by Wanli Book Company; Now he has formulated the rules for the imperial examination to be added to the "Epidemic Codex" on the front foot, and the back foot has the power to complete the printing of this set of books.

"Competing with the people? I have competed with the people for profit, the miner's salary, the coachman's foot money, and the price of coal in various places is high and low depending on the road, but on the whole it is 30% cheaper than before I transferred to the three feudatories, and I said that I will go home and take a good look at my report when you go out of the palace. ”

"What, Wanli Bookstore? Wanli Bookstore, you can't even say it, the total price of the five volumes of the "Epidemic Codex" is five coins of silver, the same price in the world, the farther I send it, the more I lose money, all rely on the return trip from Beijing, no one in the world is too expensive, and I don't expect the bookstore to make money. ”

Wanli is considered to be a vertical and horizontal slur in the court, for this data emperor, no one can beat his data in the bickering, others say that they compete with the people for profit, he put out the coal prices of the year before last, last year, and this year, and sent out a wave of dimensionality reduction blows at a glance.

In the past, the court argued that it was to grasp the moral high ground and grasp one by one, but now just let the people benefit, Wanli has already raised himself to the level of all over the ground on the moral high ground, and he is invincible in the world.

After all, to be honest, there is no one who is as sincere as him who does not make money.

Who does business if you don't make money?

It's just him, as long as he doesn't lose too much money.

The emperor was puzzled by the different starting points of the people, and the plague had passed, so he jumped out of the Forbidden City, which had annoyed him, and went to play in the Tsinghua Garden, where he met Xu Guangqi, who was in charge of the iron factory.

Xu Guangqi had just returned from Wu'an County, Zhangde Province, where he opened 14 iron factories for Wanli in one go, but there were many iron mines there, and he also encountered the problems that Chen Mu encountered in Asia - iron furnaces and craftsmen were unwilling to work for maximum production efficiency, and everyone thought that it was against the sky and not conducive to sustainable development.

Fortunately, behind this side is the little emperor, who speaks a little better than Chen Mu in Asia.

"It's settled?"

"Solved, in the end, we are not using conscription, we have given wages, we should worship the kiln god, worship the kiln god, Your Majesty's edict will be issued, and the craftsmen will understand." Xu Guangqi took a deep breath, and felt a great sense of living up to the trust, and said: "Now that it is on the right track, nine of the fourteen iron factories need to transport the ore out of the mountain because the location of the mine is not conducive to casting, and the minister has chosen the most suitable location for the remaining five iron factories to build an iron casting bureau, and every year sixty percent of the iron material is used for casting rails, and the rest are processed and transported to Beiyang - all in the minister's report." ”

"In addition, the prospectors are also prospecting in Zhenbao Town, Shuntianfu, and Wanquan Dusi, and the area around Beizhili is really a blessed land."

Wanli shook his head with his hands behind his back: "What do you say, you report to me in detail." ”

"In the area inside and outside the Great Wall, there are many iron, gold, fluorite, limestone, and quartz; Suncheon and Zhenbao Town, soil powder, talc, mica, quartz, limestone and iron ore; As for the area of Shunde and Quang Binh in the south, there are many iron mines; Quang Binh Province and Zhangde Province to the west, iron ore and coal mines, everything. ”

"These ores from south to north, Beiyang can be processed, but the capacity can not keep up, the terrain in the Beizhi area is flat, the water network is staggered, and the bridge has to be built, and the bridge is built to build the railway."

Xu Guangqi was extremely serious when he said this, he took out a map from his bosom and handed it to the emperor, drew a tic-tac-toe on it with his hand, and said: "The minister suggested that Your Majesty surround Beijing and build such four tic-tac-toe railways. ”

Wanli looked at the map, raised his hand and gestured to the east of Beijing and said: "This road is already there, which means that I still have to build three more roads?" With so many mines built, can Beiyang afford it? ”

"Yes."

"Beiyang has the world's leading armament bureau, and the best craftsmen go there, guarding both the estuary and the sea, and Nanyang is also purchasing from Beiyang for the deck of a steamship, at least the iron ore can be eaten."

The deck Xu Guangqi is talking about is not a ship deck, but a steel deck riveted and hung by a steamship on the outside of a wooden hull.

The steamship is a little faster but limited than the average sailing ship for short distances, and the characteristics of eating coal make its speed advantage of being faster less obvious, but its low environmental impact, regardless of the wind blowing, the steamship can run, which gives it a great advantage on long voyages.

But it is more fragile and requires a thicker hull.

Generally speaking, it is not a big problem for a sailboat to be pierced by a thick hull on the waterline by artillery, but this is fatal for a steamer, whether it is a gas pipe or a boiler, as long as it is hit by a cannonball, lying on the ground is a trivial matter, and not being able to treat people in the cabin is a major matter.

Better protection requires a thicker hull, and a steamship with two or even four of the largest models of the Huode Xingjun has a much smaller load capacity than a sailing ship, and to seek better protection, you have to use steel plates - of course, the iron sinks much, but the composite of a certain thickness of wooden hull with a certain thickness of iron hull is better than the protection of shells than a thicker wooden hull.

In particular, the iron shell has excellent protection against rockets and flowering bombs, which is the kind of flowering shells that are cut out in advance with different lead lengths and then stuffed into the muzzle of the gun and blasted out again.

The researchers of Nanjiao Wutang were idle and bored, and tried the large Shenwei machine arrows on the wooden ship, and the rockets with sharp iron heads could pierce the sailboat as long as they were lucky, and they had a certain lethality to the ship's materials; And the ignited flowering bombs were embedded in the hull of the ship, and the destructive power can only be described as terrifying.

Therefore, newly built steam ships often choose this protection method.

"I know, go back to the cabinet minister and discuss with the Ministry of Industry, the plague has just passed, and my hands are a little tight."

Wanli's words are profound, in fact, a plague made him spend all his pocket money.

He learned very well from Chen Mu, like Chen Mu's meeting in Nanyang, the income from the initial establishment of the Nanyang Military Government was divided into several parts, some encouraged education, some encouraged the development of science and technology, some were saved for the emperor, some were handed over to the imperial court, and some were kept for disaster relief.

Wanli's money is the same, he has quietly reserved a place for the money, and he has kept several copies for an expense, for example, for disaster relief, he kept five copies, three of which were retained last year, and the other two were 50,000 taels each, which were used to help the victims outside the imperial court.

And this year's plague is not a disaster relief, Wanli has no experience in this kind of thing before, so he rewarded doctors and gave money to the people, and he used his own pocket money.

He has been thinking about whether to take a little bit of the other money left behind to help himself.

After all, this year has just begun, and he has already spent all his pocket money.

"Alas, in the eleventh year of Wanli, I'm not having a good time, why can I get some more money?"