Zhu Shuren, who has been living in Nanjing for half a year, finally made his first trip since the beginning of summer this year - to Taiping Mansion to inspect the Ma'anshan Iron Mine, which has just begun exploration and mining in recent months.
As a prince, Zhu Shuren would of course need at least thousands of cavalry to provide escort when he traveled. A mighty march of horses and horses left the city of Nanjing and headed southwest, passed Dasheng Pass, and arrived at Dangtu County in Taiping Prefecture.
This distance was only accessible by Nanjing Metro in later generations, but now it takes two or three days to walk.
Everyone on earth knows that Ma'anshan is the younger brother of Nanjing. So since Zhu Shuren will be based in Nanjing in the future, it is absolutely reasonable to build a new military industrial base under his nose as a backup to add insurance to the Ming Dynasty's military industrial system.
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Eggs cannot be put in one basket. Although Huguang was his early base, he will not have time to stay in Huguang in the future. Now he can still ask his confidant Zhang Huangyan to stabilize the situation with wisdom. In the future, these people will also continue
Highly promoted.
Before Zhu Shuren arrived in Ma'anshan, the Ministry of Industry and other companies had been operating there for two or three months. However, during the busy farming season, they did not use much private labor, and mainly used the Ministry of Industry's own people.
Now that the summer double rush is over, the surrounding farmers are generally idle, so a large number of people are hired to speed up the construction progress.
When Zhu Shuren arrived at the place, he was taken directly to the Nanshan Iron Mine. When he climbed up and looked far away, he saw that under the scorching June sun in the south, tens of thousands of civilians were there carrying earth and stones, filling roads, laying rails, and building various futures.
Plant for mineral processing.
Different from the iron mines in Daye, although there are also open-pit iron mines in Daye, large-scale mining began as early as the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Historically, large-scale mining in Ma'anshan did not begin until the late Qing Dynasty.
Finally, of course there is no infrastructure at all.
It took several months to prospect for the ore. It took advantage of the busy farming season to let professional technicians lead a small team to work first. It was not easy to accurately locate the mine, take a small amount of samples to confirm the grade, and then start large-scale construction during the slack farming period.
Originally, other iron mines in the late Ming Dynasty did not lay rails, nor did they have the iron wheel track mine cars that look like those in Western movies. But Zhu Shuren had already pushed it in the Daye Iron Mine, and now Ma'anshan has copied it.
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Rail mine cars can greatly improve the transportation efficiency of ore in the mine, and can also reduce most transportation accidents in the future. It can also facilitate the management planning of digging down the pit roads layer by layer in the open-pit mine. It is bitter first and then sweet.
The move is worth it.
After the Daye Iron Mine and the steelmaking plant got on track, this kind of inferior steel, which was worse than the later generations of strip steel, was no longer so valuable. This kind of inferior steel cannot be used to make weapons, and it cannot even be used as agricultural tools.
It works so well that I just used it to lay trolley rails, which is a good match of quality.
Everything starts from scratch, and the conditions are naturally difficult. Accidents and deaths of civilian workers during the construction process happen from time to time. This is not because labor protection measures are not enough, but because it is limited by the technology of the times. Even in the 20th century, construction sites
Occasionally, migrant workers lose their lives while building houses.
"In the autumn of national crisis, we have to hurry up. It's not easy for the people, and there's nothing we can do about it." Zhu Shuren put his hand on his eyebrows to block the sun, looked around, and sighed with compassion.
Also accompanying the inspection was Song Mingde, who was transferred from Daye, that is, Song Yingxing's nephew.
He had been hanging out with Zhu Shuren a few years ago. When he was in Daye, due to his many years of meritorious service, he had now climbed to the position of head of the sixth-grade Ministry of Industry, and his uncle Song Yingxing had now climbed to the rank of doctor.
At this moment, hearing that the prince was so compassionate towards the poor, he couldn't help but point out from the bottom of his heart: "The prince's benevolence is extraordinary when he is in power. The workers in the Ma'anshan Iron Mine are all paid 30 yuan a day, and they still take care of the food and do nothing for the people."
How can you be treated like this when you are employed?
As for the previous years when the imperial court imposed corvees to build water conservancy projects, mines and roads, there was no money to subsidize them. The most food they managed was gruel, which was not enough to eat at all, and the people had to give money to buy food.
When the Ministry of Industry was organizing the work, it also deliberately selected multiple refugees who had fled from the north to the south according to your previous instructions, and the yamen in charge of the military settlements raised manpower. Although the work was harder, these refugees had just arrived and had no foundation and had no time to farm.
Being able to work harder and earn some food for my family is my dream, and I am grateful to the prince for his kindness."
Zhu Shuren listened very carefully and even did some mental calculations.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to successive natural disasters, prices were already very expensive. In big cities in the south, rice was often sold for more than two taels of silver per stone. In places like Suzhou, where the wealthiest people in the world were, it was even more common for rice to be sold for three or four taels.
Therefore, the salary of 30 copper coins per day was equivalent to a little more than one tael per month. It was still heavy manual labor and it was impossible to survive in the late Ming Dynasty. But taking care of food was different.
(Note: In the late Ming Dynasty, copper coins and silver were no longer theoretically one thousand to one. Because of the large import of silver, silver actually depreciated by about 20%. In the later period, 760 to 780 coins were good enough.
The money can be exchanged for one tael of pure silver. Nine hundred copper can be exchanged for one tael and one and a half cents a month.)
Zhu Shuren was very concerned about people's livelihood, and he happened to be here just in time for the people to have dinner. Today, he deliberately did not notify the people in advance to prevent fraud, so he took the opportunity to make a surprise inspection of the food situation of the people.
The clerks and supervisors below naturally knelt down on the ground when they saw the prince personally inspecting the mine. Zhu Shuren walked to the pot and took a closer look. Sure enough, the peasants were eating thick porridge cooked with lotus root, taro and some grains.
In addition, you can also get a little bit of separately cooked tilapia meat and pickled fish soup as dishes.
Of course, the pickled vegetable and fish soup is limited, but the porridge can keep you full, and you can have more after drinking. The only thing is that the eating time is limited, and the meals are eaten in batches. Those who eat too slowly in each batch will not be able to get out.
This is also a necessary management measure, otherwise all links will be delayed and the construction period will definitely be affected. Whether there is an opportunity to add more food using the eating speed card can be regarded as a more reasonable indicator. After all, eating slowly means that you are not very hungry.
Zhu Shuren randomly asked a few refugees who came to work, and all of them knelt down and said that these were already unimaginably good days. As long as they had enough to eat, it was nothing to work harder.
Especially those refugees from Shaanxi and Henan, they all said that they couldn't even eat elm bark in their hometowns, but here they had enough grains and vegetables.
Zhu Shuren also saw some children who were obviously too young, probably less than ten years old, among the crowd of women, doing work such as sifting soil that was not too hard and required more care and patience.
He still has very few grassroots jobs. When he sees this, he inevitably asks the person in charge of the department why there is such an arrangement.
Song Mingde on the side quickly came over to explain: "Your Majesty, this is already a favor that ordinary people can't get. I know your kindness and have already given instructions. Children can be used, but they can only be used at fixed stations.
Use children in your work.
As for the work that requires climbing down potholes, climbing over mountains, paving roads and filling potholes, the environment is too complex, so children are not allowed, so there is no risk.
My lord, you don’t know that these newly arrived refugee families have a very difficult life, even if they are organized by the government. If the children are not allowed to work, and if they give birth to a baby, they will have to be strangled to death and drowned. Where will there be food to feed them?
Letting older children go out to work can at least give their unexpectedly born younger siblings enough to eat a mouthful of porridge and water without being killed directly. This is already a benevolent policy."
Zhu Shuren was silent when he heard this. He had done a very good job in resettling the refugees in Huguang in the past few years, and such miserable situations rarely happened.
The refugee problem has worsened again this year. In the final analysis, there is a steady stream of new refugees coming in. They are all coming to the South for the first time and have no foundation, so they are naturally more miserable.
Dorgon worked hard to "suffer the people" in the north and drew internal lines to exploit some of them. It is conceivable that this crazy flow of refugees fleeing south will continue in the next one or two years, unless the Zhu Shu people destroy the Qing Dynasty.
Otherwise, you won't be able to stop.
Therefore, he could not say much about the issue of child labor for the time being. He only affirmed Song Mingde's decision that "children are not allowed to do jobs that require working in complex environments." Only fixed work stations are allowed. This is the limit.
In addition, for jobs that require a safe environment and fixed stations, the daily wages will be five to ten cents less than jobs that require digging holes, depending on the level of hard work. This is also a bowl of water to avoid doing dangerous jobs.
My husband is not convinced.
…
Zhu Shuren briefly inspected the project for two days and confirmed that the progress of various projects was still very smooth, and the use of civilian power and logistical support were also secure, so that there would be no problems.
The remaining key is to see if the iron mines and steel plants in Ma'anshan have any new technological problems that need to be solved that are different from those in Daye.
After all, the mineral deposits in each place have different grades, and the natural environmental conditions are also different. There are always differences in the specific details of "acclimatization".
Song Mingde is also relatively experienced, so the iron mine there is still under construction. He has already built the first blast furnace and the first preheated air steelmaking furnace to support the steel plant, and started trial production on a small scale.
A two-pronged approach is to start mining and debug the production line at the same time, so as to avoid wasting time in the future.
After the blast furnace was built, some ore mined by local methods was obtained, coupled with coal mines brought from Guangde and Huzhou, and several furnaces were tested directly.
Tongling in Chizhou has also transported the expanded copper ore to Ma'anshan. In the future, the metallurgical plant here will add some copper smelting production lines in addition to steel smelting, making full use of the local transportation convenience and sufficient fuel distribution.
The water network in the south of the Yangtze River is crisscrossed. The copper ore in Tongling can be directly transported along the Yangtze River, taking the 200-mile Yangtze River waterway to reach Ma'anshan. The cost of water transportation is very low.
Coal mines in Changxing, Guangde and other places can directly enter Taihu Lake, take Yixing in Changzhou Prefecture, Lishui in Liyang, pass through Shijiu Lake, and Gaochun Lake from Dangtu County to the Yangtze River, so it is also directly accessible by water, and there is no need to cross the mountains by land.
In this regard, Ma'anshan's location advantage is much better than that of Daye Iron Mine in Huguang. The coal needed by Daye still requires some setbacks in land transportation.
On the third day after Zhu Shuren arrived, he got the first batch of samples from Ma'anshan's iron and copper smelting. He inspected them personally and asked the accompanying professionals to conduct quality inspections. He soon discovered some problems that needed to be debugged.
After confirming again and again, Song Mingde reported anxiously: "Your Majesty, the grade of the iron ore here is not low, the output is larger than that of Daye, and it is easier to excavate on a large scale in the open air.
Unfortunately, the quality of the smelted iron is still slightly worse than that of Daye, and indeed the sulfur content is slightly higher. I will ask my uncle and Fang Futai for advice, and also ask wise people to review the details, and strive to solve it as soon as possible."
From Song Mingde's reply, we can also see that he has made a lot of progress in recent years. Originally, he only had some engineering practical experience, but extremely lacked a theoretical foundation.
After several years of experience in Daye, I occasionally listened to Zhu Shuren's advice from a high position, and studied theory with Fang Yizhi. Now I can even summarize such superficial chemical conclusions as "the quality of iron ore is poor because it contains too much sulfur."
Zhu Shuren was quite satisfied with this progress. Hearing that the sulfur problem was difficult to solve, he asked in a regular manner: "The method used in Daye is to make coke first and then use coke to make steel. This method cannot be solved even if it is transplanted.
What?"
Song Mingde quickly replied: "Part of it can be solved, but coke is expensive and small in quantity, and is mostly used for refining steel. It is not practical to rely on large amounts of coke when making crude iron.
Secondly, not only the iron ore in Ma'anshan contains a lot of sulfur, but the coal mines in Changxing and Guangde also contain a lot of sulfur, and they often produce defective products due to direct burning."
Zhu Shuren didn't know much about metallurgy and chemical engineering. His level in his previous life was just that of high school physics and chemistry. After thinking about it over and over again, combined with his pitiful experience in his later life, and the problem described by Song Mingde, after thinking for a long time, he finally got a few ideas.
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"Let's take a look at some iron ore and coal. Have you transported some of the iron ore from Daye for comparison?" Zhu Shuren decided not to make a decision. Without research, he has no right to speak.
Song Mingde did have a scientific comparative analysis idea. As expected, he had people transport several ships of iron ore from Daye, and even coal and coke from Daye. He immediately had people fetch them and give them to him.
Zhu Shuren looks at it.
Song Mingde's preparation was also to try to smelt Daye's ore here in Ma'anshan, as a comparison group with the local smelting of local ore, to reduce variables——
Because if Daye's ore arrives in Ma'anshan and is refined with Ma'anshan's coal, and something goes wrong in the end, it can be inferred that there is something wrong with Ma'anshan's environment or the quality of the coal mines.
If the coal from Daye is replaced and there is still a problem, then it can be further determined that there is a problem with Ma'anshan's geographical environment, such as air, water sources, pollution, etc.
In this way, iron ore, fuel, environment, and three groups of variables are combined in pairs to set up control groups. A total of eight groups of controlled experiments can be conducted, and each group is divided into two groups to investigate problems. With the blessing of such scientific ideas, it is more reliable than the random experiments of the ancients.
Much more.
No matter what the final result is, this scientific investigation method is worthy of recognition in the first place.
With Song Mingde's early comparative investigation, Zhu Shuren's thinking became much clearer. Combining the superficial chemistry knowledge of later generations and common sense found on the Internet, he quickly got some inspiration:
"It seems that Ma'anshan's iron ore and coal mines contain a lot of sulfur, but it should be mostly in the form of 'iron sulfide', that is, pyrite impurities. The iron ore itself is mixed with pyrite, and there is also yellow in the coal.
iron ore.
Before the ore is smelted, the ore here needs to be more finely crushed than in Daye. The finer the grinding, the easier it is to screen out impurities.
I don’t know if the density method can be screened, but even if it can, it is estimated that the cost is not cost-effective. This is large-scale production, not gold mining - it is best to think about using magnetic separation. Pyrite in iron ore may not be screenable.
But the crushed pyrite in the coal mine can definitely be magnetically separated."
The common sense of "magnetic separation to screen out impurities" can basically be thought of by future generations of intellectuals who are not too partial to liberal arts. As long as they watch more Bilibili videos or Douyin popular science, it will be enough.
Iron sulfide retains relatively strong ferromagnetism and is more easily adsorbed by magnets than iron oxide and ferric oxide, and is easier to adsorb than non-magnetic coal.
It's just that there was no electricity in ancient times, and there were no electromagnets. Natural magnetic materials were needed to sift minerals. The materials were difficult to assemble, and magnets were not absolute permanent magnets. After a long time, the magnetic consumption was too high, and artificial supplements were needed.
Thinking of this, Zhu Shuren also roughly understood why the coal mines in Ma'anshan were not mined until the late Qing Dynasty. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that alternators and power stations were gradually popularized, and the first power plants were built in China at that time.
, you can use industrial grade electromagnets.
Ma'anshan's mineral resources are much more abundant and better than Daye's, but before magnetic screening, the output here was large, but the product quality was not as good as Daye's.
After understanding this, Zhu Shuren also knew: In the future, Ma'anshan will be positioned first and foremost as a base for large-scale mass production of low-quality steel. However, the main iron production here is still used for tools and people's livelihood.
To meet the needs of this type, we should serve as a substitute for Daye's low-end civilian steel.
After replacing Daye's production capacity, Daye can concentrate all its production capacity on weapons-grade steel.
As for the magnetic separation and high-end route in Ma'anshan, it is not impossible to use technology. As long as the total investment cost is controllable, it is good to use it to verify technology.
Maybe Zhu Shuren will point out the idea of "magnetic selection" and predict a little bit of the guiding ideology of "changing magnetism to generate electricity, changing electricity to generate magnetism", which will allow the Chinese scientist to become the father of human electricity in the future and put forward the prototype of electromagnetic induction theory first.
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Of course, it was just a prototype. Historically, Faraday proposed the theory of electromagnetic induction, but it took nearly a hundred years for humans to actually develop industrial-grade generators.
Even if Zhu Shuren helps others come up with ideas by chance, he will probably never see a generator in his lifetime, or at most he will only see an unreliable toy-level product in a laboratory. It is impossible to industrialize, and the industrial foundation is too different.
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Song Mingde wrote down Prince E's instructions one by one, and immediately arranged to purchase natural magnets, conduct mineral processing experiments, and then re-smelt the coal and iron to remove pyrite impurities as much as possible.
Coal used to produce coke can also be crushed and coarsely screened with a slight magnetic force in the future. If the magnetic force is weaker, then more efforts will be made in crushing, which can also be compensated to a certain extent - the lighter the debris that needs to be magnetically adsorbed, the more
The smaller the screening magnetism is, the smaller the magnet will be, the less of a problem it will be.
For a time, Song Mingde made several preparations while organizing more migrant workers to build dams to raise the water level at the mouth of the Yangtze River where the Dangtu water entered, as well as where the water from Shijiu Lake and Gaochun Lake in the upper reaches came.
Then build a lot of giant stone crushers driven by waterwheels. The coal that will be used for steelmaking will be crushed thoroughly under these waterwheel stones and then magnetically screened again.
While building a large number of hydraulic pulverizers, he prepared magnetic materials himself, and also sent a letter to Daye in the rear to request technical guidance from Song Yingxing and Fang Yizhi.
Not to mention, the level of Song Yingxing and others was indeed much higher than Song Mingde. But on the tenth day, Wuchang gave a reply,
Song Yingxing also scolded his nephew for not studying carefully in the letter. He had not even seen the method of artificially manufacturing magnets by "thin steel sheets are hot forged and then rapidly cooled to form paramagnetism" mentioned in the "Martial Arts Summary" written by the Song Dynasty.
Moreover, Song Yingxing went one step further and explained some of his own ideas about artificial magnets to his nephew in detail. In this way, he ensured that the supply of magnetic materials would not be interrupted, but it would only consume more fuel during the manufacturing process.
, the cost is a little higher, which is considered as keeping a trump card.
And once mass production occurs, through continuous trial and error, and after the process is matured and experience is gained, the cost will gradually come down.
Isn't the progress of industrial science and technology the result of spending resources and accumulating experience through large-scale production over and over again? Losing money now does not mean losing money in the future. There will always be someone who suffers losses in industrial mass production to be the pioneer.
Zhu Shuren has no objection to the waste of resources. He just requires that all the experiences gained from the waste of resources should be summarized as completely as possible. It cannot be used as a unique skill. In the end, after a generation of craftsmen died, the experience in the mind disappeared. It must be written into a book, even if
Even if it is not made public, it must be treasured by him first.
As a result, Ma'anshan Iron Mine and Iron Works are finally on the right track through several-pronged construction, and a bumper harvest in terms of both output and quality is just around the corner.
Build a large number of hydraulic crushers, purchase a large amount of magnets for mineral processing, explore a large number of artificial magnetic materials, and finally use better refined ore and refined coke to further produce high-quality steel. Every hand must be hard.
The total amount of money that will be spent on all this is estimated to be at least in the order of millions. The exact number of millions has not yet been determined.
But Zhu Shuren even paid the price of the truce. In the past two years, the court did not have to fight a war. The money saved could be used to lay an industrial foundation first. The cost of making weapons in the future can also be significantly reduced. It will definitely be cost-effective in the long run.
Finally, considering that Ma'anshan is a relatively remote place, it is a rural mining area after all, and the nearby Dangtu County is too small, so it is difficult to attract high-end talents. Zhu Shuren thought that in order to better coordinate scientific research, it is better to establish a research center in Yingtianfu next door.
Research institute.
To this end, he allocated hundreds of thousands of taels of silver and ordered the establishment of a "Magnetic Research Institute" in Jiangning Town, a southwest suburb of Nanjing. Zhu Shuren was afraid of shocking the world, so he did not mention electricity for the time being, saying that he would only focus on research.
magnetic.
The initial research direction was nothing more than how to use heating/quenching methods to produce artificial magnets more efficiently and with lower energy consumption, based on the ideas in "Wu Jing Zong Yao" and "Tiangong Kaiwu".
As for whether people in the research institute will tinker with magnets and discover electricity in the future, that is something that will happen very far away.
Naturally, the person in charge of the research institute must have the official salary of a sixth-grade director of the Ministry of Industry. In the future, the technical talents from Wuchang Daye can be gradually transferred to them, and they can work together to develop more directions. Zhu Shuren already has this Jiangning institute in his heart.
The research institute in this town is planned to be China’s future senior science and engineering university.