On April 10, 1648, in the Yihe area, autumn was high and cool.

In the vast expanse of the field, a gray roadbed stretches into the distant sky. Next to the roadbed, a large group of road construction workers in sky-blue denim suits are struggling to install the railroad tracks. This is the 100-foot cliff fort-Merlot fort section of the Northwest Railway, and the track installation work has been in full swing, and it is expected to be opened to traffic before the end of June after adding more than 1,000 people. At that time, trains from the town of Lower Yihe will be able to transport large quantities of supplies directly to Merlotburg, and the nearly 3,000 local residents will enjoy the convenience of the transportation leap.

In the vast rural areas south of the Baiqi Cliff Fort and north of the Canyon Township, some technicians are also carrying out intense surveying and mapping. They were all technicians from the newly established Northwest Guandao Company, which had a registered capital of 20,000 yuan -- one of them, Captain Lan Guo, the commander of the army company, invested 5,000 yuan alone. At present, the company has undertaken a number of gravel road projects between townships, among which a seven-kilometer stretch of township road from the agricultural production area near Canyon Township to the railway station is the largest of them. It is estimated that the cost of this section of the road will be as high as 2,500 yuan per kilometer, and the full completion may be close to 20,000 yuan. Fortunately, the money does not need to be invested at one time, otherwise another project of the Northwest Guandao Company would not have started.

In order to encourage private capital to enter the infrastructure industry, the government council has given these road companies a more relaxed deadline for completion, so that they have enough time to prepare materials and, most importantly, to obtain labor from abroad. The price of labor abroad was still quite low, especially for European indentured workers (commonly known as indentured servitudes). It's cheaper to use than those blacks, because the upfront investment is small, which is very suitable for these gate companies to hire. Anyway, these roads have already been relocated, and they are renovated on the dirt roads that were originally walked by people and animals, and on both sides of the roads are endless farmland, and even the drainage ditches can use ready-made irrigation canals, which further reduces costs.

The cost of building the road is so low that the participants are very satisfied, and perhaps the only risk is that the land in this agricultural area has not yet been fully allocated, and there are still many commons (i.e. wild land) in the wild. When the highway is completed, the card will start to collect fees. In order to avoid tolls, some people often take long detours from the field to transport supplies, which will undoubtedly reduce the income of the road company. But this is all for the future, and I believe that there will be a solution at that time.

Instead of thinking about the problem of tolls, it is better to think more about where the labor force for road construction will come from. According to the current shape of the country. The labor shortage will not change in the long term. Then there must be a way to go abroad. And where is the source of labor abroad?

Europeans in the Old World? Sounds good. But it's a little farther, it takes a little longer, and the price is a little more expensive. Bringing in blacks from West Africa? Not to mention that private slavery has not yet been allowed in China, and the employment of blacks has been prohibited. The price of black slaves exported from the Gold Coast to the East Coast was not cheap! The Portuguese price is about 150 yuan per person, the Dutch is slightly lower, it is also 120 yuan, and the English price is somewhere in between, which is undoubtedly unaffordable for major domestic investors who are not yet fully capitalized.

Then there is only one way left! Well, well, of course, this road is not immigrating from the Far East, the cost is even more exaggerated, and now the government will immigrate from the Far East regardless of the cost, and private capitalists will choose the Ming people if they have a hole in their brains, after all, everyone's money is not blown by the wind, it is accumulated by hard work and walking the streets and alleys for a penny and a dime, and it is grabbed by braving the enemy's artillery fire with his head, and the cost saved must be saved!

In this way, the answer is actually coming out. Yes, there are a large number of Guarani villages outside the north-western border of the Eastern Republic, and in the vast region of La Plata, just across the sea, there are a large number of Crantis, said to be in the hundreds of thousands. So, what are you waiting for? Don't pick up the guys to arrest people, this is all labor that doesn't cost money!

Most of the people who have this kind of idea in their hearts are the emerging petty bourgeoisie who came from the military, they don't have a lot of money, and they have to pull a lot of comrades-in-arms and neighbors to invest together to carry out a project, otherwise they will not be able to maintain follow-up investment at all. Therefore, for them, careful calculation has become almost instinctive, and they who once possessed force and were simple and crude in their minds immediately thought of enslaving the alien race to relieve them of costs and complete the primitive accumulation of capital for them.

It just so happened that the East Coast army was still fighting in La Plata, and they had all served there before, so they knew very well what was going on there. Some of the soldiers who had served in the port of Buenos Aires had long known that almost every day two to three hundred so-called Crandy prisoners (mostly theft, robbery, arson, murder, etc.) were loaded onto ships and transported to the penal colonies of New China and Australia. Anyway, these Klandians will have to serve their sentences when they go to the penal colony, so it is better to change their place of imprisonment to be in China, so that hello, I am hello, everyone.

The military department was able to obtain some material benefits from this, and by the way, it also took care of them as veterans and improved everyone's cohesion. In addition, the new petty bourgeoisie, who had been converted from war veterans, also gained a large amount of cheap labor, which was very beneficial for saving costs and completing primitive accumulation. In the end, of course, the government reaped the benefits: the roads were repaired, the farms were more productive, the market was more seafood, and inflation was down, which was a great thing for everyone.

The War Department was quick to respond to the veterans' opinions, and on April 20, with the acquiescence of the Executive Committee, the first shipload of 100 Klandy "prisoners" -- many of whom had been framed because he had been present at the scene of the alleged crime, and then had been automatically made criminals by the officers on the East Coast -- was sent to Canyon Township. The Northwest Guandao Company paid 30 yuan per person, and then obtained the right to use these people for three years, which alone can compress the cost of the township road to less than 2,000 yuan per kilometer, and the profit margin has greatly increased.

Three years later, these Klandians - if they are still alive - will be released from prison and then arranged by the Department of Immigration to settle in Australia and New China, in short, they will not stay in the mainland, and there is no need for aborigines. In order to manage the prisoners, the twenty or thirty veteran shareholders of the Northwest Guandao Company were also granted cold weapons such as ten muskets and some armor sabers by government charter, and the Crandy workers were also shackled to their feet to ensure that they were not capable of making trouble, resisting, or escaping.

The primitive accumulation of capital is indeed extremely bloody and violent! In fact, the people on the east coast were quite good, and the enslavement of the Spaniards was even more appalling. For example, when they first introduced the guardianship levy system on Hispaniola (i.e., taxing and enslaving Indians as slaves), there were still about 300,000 Caribbeans on the island; But after more than a decade it had plummeted to 60,000, and a few years later to 14,000, and by more than 50 years after the system was introduced, there were only about 500 Caribbeans left on the island, and the extinction of the race could be almost declared, which is why the island is now almost entirely black or mulatto—the Spaniards had to bring in a large number of black slaves because of a lack of labor.

The Klandians are easy to solve as ordinary laborers, but many of the technicians needed to build roads are not easy to solve, because there is a shortage of such talents in the East Coast today. At this point, you'll need to find a well-known labor broker, Mr. Sorendino, who has a knack for getting a lot of ordinary labor in the Old World, and even some technicians can get it for you, provided you can provide enough pay.

For example, there are now some glass-making technicians from the Netherlands in the Henan Glass Factory in Dongfang County, who polish lenses by hand and manufacture telescopes and high-magnification microscopes, creating huge economic benefits for the factory. As Europe began to build a large number of roads in the Roman Empire, there is certainly no shortage of construction professionals, as long as you pay enough money to impress them, then there will always be some technicians who are not so happy to come to the East Coast to serve.

In addition to technical personnel, some construction machinery has also been introduced for the first time in the infrastructure sector, such as the steam plow, which has received increasing praise in agriculture. This kind of thing can not only plough the land, but also be a good hand at digging trenches, and the efficiency is definitely not to be said. Perhaps its only drawback is that its price is too high, which is somewhat unattainable for the East Coast bourgeoisie, which is still in the primitive accumulation stage, and only a few very powerful companies (often with cross-public investment) are likely to buy one or two units.

But it doesn't matter if you can't afford it, there are not one or two domestic agricultural machinery leasing companies now. For example, the wealthy East Coast Company (involving textile, construction, trade, banking, shipbuilding, military and other industries) placed an order for more than 20 steam plows in one go, and at the same time began to build its own professional maintenance team at any cost, and then began to promote this kind of machinery to domestic highway companies interested in investing in the infrastructure industry and farmers who invested in large agriculture.

Rents are not cheap, but they are worth it for investors who can't afford to hire enough labor, as it clearly helps them reduce costs and speed up construction schedules. With the full spread of these private capital in China, the first machinery factory, Dafeng agricultural machinery factory, and the second machinery factory also began to organize manpower to develop some simple construction machinery to reduce the difficulty and cost of road construction.

The massive inflow of capital into infrastructure or agriculture has led to tremendous growth in both sectors. The development of these fields has led to the development of construction machinery and agricultural machinery, which seems to have formed a virtuous circle. And this cycle can undoubtedly be extended to other industries. (To be continued......)