The people of Tielingbao at the end of the Northwest Railway have been waiting for this railway to be pierced. Many enterprises, people, and mines gathered here, all of them can only put their ambitions down for the time being because of this belated railway, and wait for the railway to be completed before making plans.

For example, the coal burial belt outside Tielingbao could not be effectively developed due to the lack of a large number of heavy machinery. The scope of this coal burial zone is not small, about two kilometers long from east to west, about 500 meters long from north to south, the average thickness of the coal seam is 100 meters, and the buried volume is at least hundreds of millions of tons. In later generations, it may only be regarded as a small and medium-sized coal mine, but in this era, it can produce more than 300 tons of coal per day, and it is definitely not a small coal mine.

Although the quality of the coal in this coal storage belt, which is named Tieling Coal Mine, is still very poor, it is still in the metallogenic period, and it will not have much value in future generations, but in the east coast where the coal quality is generally poor and everyone can only use it, it is also a huge wealth and has extremely high mining value.

In particular, the coal seam of Tieling Coal Mine is thick, shallow and rich in coal gas, and the shale layer is also rich in shale oil, which can refine some liquid fuels that are very rare in China, and its economic value cannot be underestimated. Therefore, in the eyes of Ma Jia, director of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau, the Tieling Coal Mine is treated as an equal status with manganese ore, iron ore and gold mine, and in the future, this coal mine will provide most of the production and domestic coal for the entire Tieling Industrial Zone, which is one of the pillars of the development of the region.

After all, even after the Northwest Railway is completed in the future, due to the lack of double lines, there are a lot of people and materials that need to be transported. As a result, its capacity is bound to be extremely tight. In such a case. If you can transport less things from the outside world, you can transport a little less. In particular, if a considerable part of the bulk material such as coal can be solved locally, then the transportation pressure of the Northwest Railway will be greatly reduced.

In addition to the coal mines, there are several large and small iron ore veins in the Tieling mining area. However, according to the technicians of the laboratory department of Tieling Special Steel Plant, the taste of iron ore in the area is uneven, some are higher and some are lower, but overall the taste is low, about 40%. This taste of the ore. In many areas of this era, it was not even recognized as iron ore. The Metallurgical Institute of the Academy of Natural Sciences has spent a lot of time and financial resources in Changshan Iron Mine over the years, and has made heavy technical improvements to the beneficiation method. That is, the iron ore is made brittle by roasting (above 600 degrees), and the hematite is magnetized by the reduction of gas or carbon.

This method has been introduced to the Tieling mining area, and the staff of the special steel plant have successfully made the poor iron ore meet the requirements of the smelting process through the procedures of roasting, reduction and sintering. This is of great significance to alleviate the transportation pressure of the Northwest Railway, save low-grade iron ore, and reduce production costs.

The coal-iron consortium in the Tieling mining area has basically shown its prototype under everyone's dismal management and scientific and technological research. According to the plan of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau, the bureau intends to completely develop the mining area in ten years. It is expected that the total investment will be about 6.5 million yuan, with an average annual investment of 650,000 yuan.

As soon as this figure was reported in January, it frightened the members of the Executive Committee. Six and a half million silver dollars. What a huge investment! Even if it is divided into ten years, it will cost 650,000 a year, which is already equivalent to two-thirds of the annual maintenance cost of the army in 1648. Just for some manganese steel, millions of dollars will be smashed into it for ten consecutive years, which can't help but pour cold water on the heads of a group of industrial parties who were still fanatically supporting the country's development of special steel and non-ferrous metal smelting.

6.5 million is absolutely impossible! The 11 members of the Executive Committee were unanimous this time, and they immediately sent an investigation team led by Qi Wangping, director of the Personnel Department of the Executive Committee, to the Tieling mining area to investigate and audit the local finances, and then bargained with the local government, so they reached a preliminary agreement at the end of January and reported it to the Executive Committee: The original investment plan was invalidated, and the new plan was to invest 4.5 million yuan in 10 years, with an average annual investment of 450,000 yuan.

This investment is still a bit high for the Executive Committee, after all, there are many large-scale construction projects in China, such as the Northwest Railway, the expansion of Qingdao Port, the first phase of the construction of Port Blanca, the extension of Highway 2, and the large-scale technical transformation of Ping An Coal Mine. In addition, the war with the Spaniards had not yet ended, and a considerable amount of money had to be prepared on hand, so even though the Executive Committee had recently invested a lot of money in hand, the finances were still stretched thin under the weight of so many projects.

Therefore, it is really not easy to squeeze out hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest in the Tieling mining area every year under all kinds of difficulties. If it weren't for the fact that in the past two years, they have invested four or five hundred thousand yuan in the Tieling mining area, and the Executive Committee and the Government Council are now quite a bit of a tiger, they are really unwilling to use such a huge investment in such an industry as Tieling Special Steel, whose prospects are not yet clear.

Of course, the Northwest Reclamation Bureau also understood that the central government's finances were not rich now, so they did not say anything, but could only show their obedience, and at the same time try their best to reduce some unnecessary expenses in order to save expenses. If possible, they would also ask the Army to go out again and capture some Indians back to work as coolies, which would save a lot of money. In addition, it is best for them to make finished products as much as possible, and at the same time promote them in the country, so that they can have some hematopoietic ability, otherwise they will have to attract many blank eyes from others just by relying on national investment. You must know that if you use a penny more, others will use a penny less, and you account for a huge investment of 450,000 yuan a year, so how many other projects must be discontinued, and how many people will be hated for this!

The estimated $2 million in fees that have been cut is basically out of place in the eyes of the central government. For example, Tieling Special Steel Plant has created a variety of welfare systems for its existing and future employees, which are too high and much beyond the existing standards, including staff housing (far exceeding the housing standards of general enterprise workers), large department stores in the staff community (the store directly purchases goods from the coastal area and sells them at cost price, and the operating losses incurred are subsidized by the special steel plant), employee health expenditures (for the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis, cholera and yellow fever that are rampant in the Tieling area), Company funds (mainly for employees and their families for hospital treatment, employee weddings and funerals, poor employee family subsidies and relief, employee paid leave, etc.).

These miscellaneous welfare expenditures require an average of more than 200,000 yuan a year, which is almost enough to build two more "10 August" class battleships for the Navy. Without him, you Tieling Special Steel Plant has this welfare, how can you make other factories that do not have these benefits embarrassed? At that time, the crowd was so agitated that the Executive Committee had no choice but to abolish this special welfare, because it was impossible for such a model to be rolled out nationwide, and the cost of it would be too great.

Are you kidding! A Tieling special steel plant will have to spend 200,000 yuan a year, and dozens of factories across the country will cost several million yuan if they are all engaged in it, how is this possible! Does the country still want to engage in construction? Do you want to immigrate? Don't get down to business! In particular, your Tieling Special Steel Plant is still in the trial production stage, and it has not produced a dime of profits, and it is all dependent on the state's continuous investment in the construction of funds, and you dare to risk the world's condemnation to engage in this kind of "socialist" welfare, which can only be said to be Ma Jia, the director of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau, is really too to protect the calves.

After these untimely benefits were cut, the workers of Tieling Special Steel Plant could only hope that the factory would make a profit quickly, and then take out a part of the profits to subsidize everyone's life. After all, everyone here basically responded to the call of the state (in fact, most of them were forced by the state), gave up the life in the relatively good coastal areas, went deep into the barren land, and developed the large inland, and everyone made a lot of sacrifices (facing the disease torture of the wild land, being attacked by barbarians, declining living standards, children's education problems, etc.), and now the factory gives everyone some compensation, which is also a reasonable thing.

At the end of last year, the first iron-making blast furnace of Tieling Special Steel was officially put into trial production, and high-quality molten iron was successfully smelted. After that, the workers of the plant devoted themselves to the intense smelting of ferromanganese, and worked overtime in two or three months, and successively produced more than 10 kinds of ferromanganese with different proportions, and the quality was medium to high after being tested by the laboratory department.

At the same time, the construction of the steelmaking furnace is also in full swing. Nowadays, the main thing that troubles everyone is the lack of building materials, the massive building materials in the outside world are limited by the fact that the railway has not been opened and cannot be transported in large quantities, and the local wheel kilns and lime kilns have not been able to officially produce in sufficient quantities, which makes the construction progress of the factory lag behind, so that the construction personnel are so anxious that the corners of their mouths are blistering, and they can only stare dryly.

Fortunately, in a few months, the railway will be built to Chengshanbao, which is only a few dozen kilometers away from the Tieling area, and the distress of insufficient transportation capacity will be greatly alleviated, and the construction progress of the factory will gradually accelerate. Especially now that a new batch of immigrants have begun to arrive on the east coast, the arrival of fresh blood means a rapid increase in the labor force, which can effectively promote the construction of the factory.

After the establishment of Tieling Special Steel, it will include a coal coking workshop, an iron-making workshop, and a steel-making workshop; At the same time, the No. 2 Machinery Factory presided over by Li Hongxing will also be relocated here in batches and officially renamed the No. 1 Heavy Machinery Factory, specializing in using the ferromanganese and manganese steel of the special steel plant to produce high-quality machinery, transmission and steam power equipment, so as to improve the industrial base of the east coast. (To be continued......)