In September in Beijing, autumn is crisp, and the fields on the outskirts of the capital are either busy picking cotton or plowing the land to sow winter wheat.

The two railways from Beijing to Baoding and Beijing to Jizhou, except for the four bridges in the middle have not yet been completed, the tracks have been laid. Fortunately, the distance between Beijing and Jizhou is fine, except for the temporary bridge that cannot be built on the Lu River, several other rivers have been built first, so the railway transport of goods only needs to be transferred by ship once.

However, between Beijing and Baoding, because of the three new bridges, it had to be transferred three times. But even so, the transportation between Baoding and Beijing is much more convenient than before. This year's cotton harvest in the cotton fields reclaimed near Baoding depends on this railway to go north, instead of going around a big circle from Baiyangdian to the south near the canal.

The railway greatly reduced the cost and time of transporting cotton, and also brought higher profits to local farmers and landlords. The landlords near the railway soon realized that if the three bridges between Baoding and Beijing were completed next year, not only would the cost of transportation be reduced, but even the time between Beijing and Baoding would be reduced to 2-3 days.

In the past, it took 8-10 days to get from Baoding to Beijing. This shortening of time made many gentry and businessmen in Baoding feel a lot closer to the capital. In the past, Shuntianfu was called the foot of the Son of Heaven, and now the gentry of Baoding feel that they should also be regarded as the foot of the Son of Heaven.

The construction of the railway from Baoding to the south began to advance steadily at a speed of 3 kilometers a day. This is at a rate when there is a shortage of railroad tracks and road construction materials, but even at this rate, the construction of the entire railway will not take more than 200 days, or 7 months, to complete.

At the same time, the completion of the Lutai-Tangshan-Xugezhuang railway made Tangshan's steel and coal finally available from Lutai to ship directly by sea. This also makes it possible for the coal from the Tangshan Kailuan Coal Mine to be supplied not only to the Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant, but also to other places.

After the opening of the railway in August, the daily mining capacity of Kailuan Coal Mine exceeded that of Xishan Coal Mine for the first time, and it became the highest coal mine in the North Zhili area. Compared with the Xishan Coal Mine, which is inconvenient to transport, the flat terrain of the Kaiping area is obviously easier to transport coal to the outside.

The development of Tianjin's industry also quickly digested the increased production capacity of the Kailuan coal mine. The Tianjin Chemical Plant, which was built by the government and the Academy of Sciences, is a major consumer of coal. The emergence of dyeing and leather processing industries in Tianjin has also promoted the continuous expansion of production capacity of Kailuan Coal Mine.

As a result, the coal produced by Xishan Coal Mine has been challenged by the price of coal from Kailuan Coal Mine. Although Xishan coal is inferior in industrial coal, in terms of domestic coal, Xishan white coal, which is of better quality, is obviously more popular with the people of Tianjin.

At the same time, Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant completed the fourth blast furnace, which produced exactly as much pig iron per day as the previous three blast furnaces combined, producing 108 tons of iron per day. As a result, the annual iron production of Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant has finally reached nearly 8,000 tons.

This figure did not seem to be anything in Su Changqing's eyes, but it was already one-tenth of the amount of iron produced next year in the past. However, even with the continuous expansion of steel production capacity in North China, pig iron in the market is still in a state of shortage, and the price of pig iron has broken through from 49 yuan a ton last year to 78 yuan per ton.

Even if the cost of blast furnace ironmaking remains high, always staying between 35-40 yuan per ton, it has begun to win double the profit. The cost of blast furnace ironmaking is mainly in the refractory bricks. Compared with the mixing furnace, the production cost of refractory bricks in the blast furnace is much higher.

After six or seven blast furnaces were built, the craftsmen of the steel mill finally had a basic concept of the construction of blast furnaces. After the completion of the new blast furnace with a capacity of 12 cubic meters, a daily output of 108 tons and a cost of 40,000 yuan, these craftsmen proposed a taller blast furnace design.

After discussions with experts in mathematics and physics at the Academy of Sciences and Yenching University, the craftsmen decided that it was possible to make a blast furnace close to the theoretical limit with the current state of the art. That is, the volume is 21 cubic meters, the daily output of iron is 19-20 tons, and the cost is about 7-80,000 yuan.

Although the director of the steel plant was very worried about whether there would be problems with such a tall iron-making blast furnace, Zhu Youjian still approved the construction of a new blast furnace. At the same time, the iron factories in Shanxi, Shandong, Hubei and Anhui have begun to build new blast furnaces using coke smelting under the rapid rise in iron prices.

Obviously, the experience of the blast furnace built by the Tangshan Iron and Steel Works has made the owners of these iron plants realize that a new way of making iron has emerged. Most of the ironworks in these areas were run by the local gentry or merchants, and were originally nothing more than blacksmiths that produced farm tools or kitchen utensils.

However, with the advent of railways, the traditional blacksmith shops can no longer meet the needs of this new ironwork. The smelting of pig iron and the production of railroad rails required great capital and technical investment, and this was not a new mode of production that could be supported by one or two gentry and merchants alone.

Of course, the return on this huge investment is also extremely amazing. The small blast furnace, which produces 23 tons of iron per day, only takes 14 months to recoup all the investment. Of course, this high rate of return is entirely based on the imperial court's continuous investment in railway construction.

Whether it is the technology for building a small blast furnace, or the refractory bricks and other materials needed to build a small blast furnace, they are now under the control of the inner government. Merchants and gentry who wanted to join this industry obviously had to be automatically included in the industrial system under the planning of the internal government.

Within this industrial system, the joiners must produce according to the standards set by the government, and they must also purchase raw materials according to the requirements of the government. It can be said that the property rights of the participants are only to invest in the construction of the workshop, and as for the production and operation, they must be changed according to the needs of the system.

Once out of this system, the products produced by this workshop are basically difficult for others to accept. After all, under this system, each workshop is just a processor in a certain link. No one is able to complete the entire production process from raw materials to finished products, except for the inner house.

Even if someone does make a finished product, they will go bankrupt because of the high cost and inability to compete with the products produced by the inner government. Therefore, even if the price of iron continues to rise, the internal government still does not hesitate to reveal to the outside world some of the production capacity of small blast furnaces, and began to authorize the construction of new small blast furnaces. Of course, the cost of these small blast furnaces has risen by 100%, which offsets the large amount of capital invested in the research and development of small blast furnaces.

The development of the steel and coal industry has absorbed a large number of employees. In addition to the surplus labor force in the vicinity of Gyeonggi, the largest source of these personnel is refugees from Liaodong.

Since the Apocalypse period, the imperial court implemented the national policy of "guarding the Liao land with the Liao people and raising the Liao people with the Liao soil", the Liao people who fled back to the Ming Dynasty from the Later Jin Dynasty were intercepted outside the Shanhai Pass. Among them, the strong ones were selected to enrich the army of Liaoxi, while the old and weak were used as auxiliaries by the generals of Liaoxi.

The implementation of this policy ultimately caused only one consequence, and the strength of the generals in western Liaoning increased dramatically, and there was a gradual trend of warlordization. The conditions for becoming a warlord are, first, to have an army that obeys his orders; Second, it is necessary to have a base area that can feed the army.

After the implementation of the policy of "guarding the Liao land with the Liao people and raising the Liao people with the Liao soil", the area outside the Shanhai Pass was equivalent to being artificially demarcated as a military control area, and the Liaoxi Jiangmen became the real owner of this land. In a certain way, the implementation of this policy is equivalent to the imperial court personally supporting the Liaoxi Jiangmen to become a warlord on one side.

On the other hand, the Liao people, who had worked hard to return to the Ming Dynasty from the Later Jin, not only did not receive help from the imperial court, but instead became the slaves of these Liaoxi generals to enrich the army and use them in Tuntian. In fact, there is no difference between the military tun implemented by the Jiangmen in western Liaoning and the coating system of the Jurchens, and it may be more comfortable to make the coating of the Jurchens in comparison.

After all, as a slave of the generals of Liaoxi, there is no chance of turning over at all. As a Jurchen coat, there is also a chance to rob the Ming people, so as to change their situation. Therefore, after the implementation of the Liao people's policy of guarding Liaotu, the number of Han Chinese who fled back to Liaoxi from the rule of the Later Jin Dynasty suddenly decreased greatly.

In fact, only the first half of this policy can be barely implemented, and the second half is just to fool the emperor. Whether it was Sun Chengzong or Yuan Chonghuan, their offensive strategy was to build a fortress from Guangning City, wanting to build it all the way to Shenyang.

Although the Liaoning West Corridor is a coastal plain suitable for farming, most of the land here has been occupied by the generals of Western Liaoning, and the remaining land output cannot even solve the army's rations. Therefore, in the end, it was necessary to transfer a large number of manpower and materials from the customs to Liaoxi.

However, this policy has fallen into an unsustainable situation after Wei Zhongxian dismissed Yuan Chonghuan. After all, the implementation of this policy has not been long ago, and the generals of Liaoxi have not yet become truly independent warlords. The ministers of the DPRK and China did not all support this policy, after all, the ministers of the DPRK and China also had their own interests and needs, and it was impossible to allow the officials who supported the generals of Liaoxi to occupy the surplus financial resources of the entire country.

However, after Chongzhen ascended the throne, he did not fully liquidate the eunuch group headed by Wei Zhongxian, nor did he let the Donglin party fully preside over the government, nor did he give Yuan Chonghuan the opportunity to play the trick of Pingliao for five years.

Liaoxi Jiangmen lost the support of the officials of the DPRK and China, and then the imperial court abolished the policy of the Liao people guarding the Liao land, which made the power of the Liaoxi Jiangmen not swell sharply as in history.

Chongzhen abolished the Liao people's policy of guarding the Liao land, and tried his best to relocate refugees outside the customs to Jeju Island, Taiwan Island and other places, which not only greatly reduced the burden of the imperial court on raising people outside the customs, but also hit the trend of warlordization in western Liao. The development of the coal and iron industry recruited a large number of young and strong people in Liao, so that the imperial court began to regain control of the power to restrain the army in western Liao.