Chen Mo's power once again began a large-scale expansion in the west.
In fact, the 10,000 times James told Zachary Taylor is a conservative estimate. It may not be 100,000 times, but it is still tens of thousands. The relatively good places in the entire West are basically occupied by Chen Mo.
Coupled with the massive expansion of the southwestern region now ceded by Mexico, it is only a matter of time before it becomes 100,000 times.
Today's northern capitalists have focused all their attention on "high-end" fields such as industry, real estate and finance. The southern plantation slave owners are clinging to their plantations and slaves. Chen Mo took advantage of this gap to eat up all the land in the west.
, quickly grew into the largest rancher and landowner in the United States in just two years.
A large number of people who originally lived here and immigrants from other places flocked here after discovering that joining Chen Mo's men was much better than digging for food in the soil themselves.
The people who came to the West during this period were all hard-working poor people. As long as they had food, clothing, and a secure life for themselves and their families, they would cherish their job, whether they were cowboys, farmers, or miners.
They work diligently and diligently, and Chen Mo is not stingy in giving them the generous rewards they deserve.
Chen Mo's enclosure was not just for the purpose of enclosure, he also had a deeper purpose, and there was more than one.
These wild lands in the western United States are vast in area but sparsely populated. They are undeveloped and desolate areas. Although they belong to the territory of the United States, they are not added as federal states, but are simply divided into several regions.
Each of these areas is the size of several other states, but does not have as many people as a single city in the central and eastern regions.
Although these regions in the west are now desolate and backward, more than a dozen independent states will be established in the future, and there are strict requirements from region to state.
When establishing these areas, the U.S. government promulgated written federal statutes stipulating the conditions for statehood in these areas.
Initially, they divided these areas into several independent special districts, which were first managed by a governor and three administrative officials assigned by the Confederate Congress. As the population in the area increased, another three to five territories could be added.
When the population of any territory increases to 60,000, it can apply to join the federation and enjoy equal rights as existing states.
In these barren and sparsely populated lands in the west, Chen Mo's ranch occupies most of the high-quality land and is itself the largest population gathering place. With the development of the ranch, more and more people are recruited. In the future, these areas will truly become federal states.
After that, most citizens will be Chen Mo's employees.
Chen Mo will become the real controller behind these states, and the votes for governors and even president will be in his hands!
At that time, the entire western United States will become Chen Mo's "territory", controlled by Chen Mo behind the scenes, and Chen Mo will become the most important lord among the major forces in the United States!
The United States itself is a country controlled by capitalists. As a big capitalist, Chen Mo controls huge wealth and a large number of votes that can influence the presidential election. He will definitely become the target of various political parties.
Behind every party is the support of a large number of capitalists. These parties represent the interests of these capitalists. The presidential election and partisanship are actually the struggles of capitalists!
However, Chen Mo's large-scale enclosure and establishment of ranches in the West and even the entire United States was not just to control votes. The heyday of the fur trade would soon be over. Chen Mo could not just point to the ranches and land in his hands, and only these.
, cannot yet support his ability to influence the political situation.
After all, with the continuous development of the west, his ranch cannot always dominate the west. The number of employees the ranch can accommodate is limited after all. As more and more people come to the west, especially the arrival of other businessmen and capitalists,
It will bring more factories, enterprises and employment opportunities. Although Chen Mo has occupied the best land in the west, he cannot enjoy the west alone and prevent others from coming in. This is also detrimental to the development of the west.
Therefore, what Chen Mo has to do is to strengthen his own strength and always firmly occupy the dominant position. No matter how many businessmen and capitalists arrive, he will not be able to shake his dominance in the west.
To achieve this, pasture alone is not enough.
If all the land bought by Chen Mo in the United States is marked on a map, and then compared with a distribution map of American oil resources in the future world, we can easily find that the vast land owned by Chen Mo has covered
More than 80% of the oil-producing areas in the United States!
The remaining ones are just small oil fields with small reserves.
In other words, the land he bought contains most of the oil resources in the entire United States!
However, at this time, oil had not yet begun to be used on a large scale. The oil extraction and distillation processes were primitive and backward, and modern oil wells and refineries had not yet appeared.
Moreover, the fuel engine that consumes the most petroleum in the future has not yet been invented, and coal-fired steam engines are still used as mechanical power output in industry.
There was no internal combustion engine, and cars had not yet been manufactured. Therefore, in this era, the main use of petroleum was to extract kerosene using indigenous methods and use it for lighting.
Chen Mo had no intention of accelerating the historical process and allowing the oil industry and automobile industry to appear in advance, so his purchase of oil-producing areas was just a precautionary measure, and he bought it together with the land to build a pasture.
In addition to oil, which is called black gold, Chen Mo also did not forget about real gold!
Chen Mo had heard about the gold rush in the United States a long time ago. It happened to be in this era. How could Chen Mo let it go?
Places such as San Francisco and Los Angeles in California have large gold reserves. When the United States acquired California and other areas from Mexico and sent governors and administrative officials, Chen Mo expanded his enclosure operations there. Who knew?
, there are huge amounts of gold treasures buried under the newly built vast pastures!
In fact, Chen Mo has always been thinking about a piece of land, Alaska!
This enclave located in northwest Canada, across the sea from the mainland of the United States and not bordering the mainland, can be said to be a huge treasure.
Today, this huge piece of land is still a colony of Tsarist Russia.
Historically, after the Crimean War broke out in 1853, Russia was afraid that the Alaska colony would be taken away by Britain, so someone proposed selling Alaska to the United States. Finally, in April 1867, the two parties concluded the transaction for US$7.2 million.