213. Iron and Steel Ambition 7
Chapter 213 – Iron and Steel Ambition 7
“Why? Lord Earl?”
Burns’s expression was as if a child wanted to buy a toy but was ruthlessly rejected by his parents.
He was expecting Paul to praise him and fully support him in his research in this field, but he didn’t expect the other party to pour cold water on him in the end after praising him.
“This matter is more complicated and can’t be explained in two sentences.”
Paul had a difficult face, not knowing how to explain to Burns, and he also did not know if his idea was correct.
“First of all, although the principle of using steam as a power source is very simple, I tried to deduce it, but there are still a lot of technical details that need to be solved, and I can’t figure it out in a while.”
Burns said with a resolute face, “You are right, but I am fully mentally prepared to face these difficulties.”
“But I can’t afford to wait, next year’s research and development task in the machine shop will be very heavy, I have many ideas that I need you to realize, I can’t be tripped up by a steam engine that I don’t know how long it will take to get it done. Besides, it’s not always appropriate for a steam engine to appear at this point in time ……”
Burns wondered, “What do you mean by that? Windmills and watermills are too limited by weather and geography, but if a steam engine were built, factories like ironworks could spring up all over the place.”
Paul shook his head, “What’s the point of building so many ironworks?”
“Too useful, huh? With more iron refineries, your territory can produce more iron.”
“What’s the use of me wanting so much iron?”
“This …… this ……”
Burns felt very ridiculous, didn’t the Earl know what a large amount of iron meant? But due to the other party’s identity, he couldn’t say it explicitly.
“You can use it yourself or sell it to others ah, to build weapons, agricultural tools, don’t they all use iron?”
“That’s true, but if the iron smelting plant we visited is built according to plan, its output is more than enough to satisfy the needs of both Arda and Bairdin, and it can also be sold in large quantities to other territories. The reason why I upgraded the iron making technology is because the development of agriculture and other industries in the territories needs to consume more iron than before, and also the fact that the rebellion in the south will allow us to make a profit, but whether it’s in our territories or the other territories around us, there is an upper limit to the demand for iron every year, and sooner or later, the rebellion in the south will be over. If we keep on increasing production, the extra iron produced will not be sold and can only be piled up in warehouses to rust, and in the end, we have to close down the ironworks because of the lack of profit, and after tossing and turning just a few factories that can satisfy the balance between supply and demand have been retained, while countless manpower and financial costs have been invested in the process in between.”
Burns was dumbfounded, “This ……”
“Look, why put too many resources into developing any kind of steam engine before there’s that much demand? The existing water conditions in Arda and Bairdine are enough to allow us to build several ironworks.”
“But if we combine steam engines with harvesters, we can still use them for agriculture!”
“It’s still the same thing as ironmaking, produce too much food and not as many people to eat it, and the price of food goes down. It’s true that having plentiful and cheap food is good for the people in the city, but it’s not good for those in the countryside who produce it.”
“Lord Graiman, there is never a shortage of hungry people in this world.” “So what? Do they have money to buy it? Do I have to be so kind as to pay my own way to deliver food to those who have nothing?”
“……”
“Well, Lord Gleeman, you have a point.”
Burns looked like he was convinced to the point.
In fact, Paul still has a concern that he didn’t say, in his planning, the future is definitely to develop industry, the key step in this is to convert more than half of the population into industrial population, if something too ahead of its time occurs, a machine can replace several dozens of people to work, instead, it will affect the speed of the conversion of the industrial population, it’s not easy to cultivate a group of serious workers now, is it possible to re let them go back to farming.
Paul remembers that in his previous life, the textbooks have introduced, Britain after the Industrial Revolution broke out in a large-scale “destroy the machine” movement, the reason is that the efficiency of the machine is too high, resulting in a large number of workers lost their jobs.
Although the number of machines and factories can be controlled so as not to exceed the current social needs, but this will inevitably lead to the structure of the whole society is not enough “industrialization”, the population is still mainly agricultural.
The few factories that relied heavily on machines became the key nodes of Paul’s power, and once these nodes were destroyed for some reason, he could not recover immediately, and could only degenerate to the level of the small lord when he just awakened his memory.
Therefore, he would rather maintain some “backward” productivity, but also to maintain the “industrial population” first, and with the help of the growth of social demand for industrial products, gradually convert the agricultural population over, so that even if because of the war and other reasons to lose some of the remaining part can still continue to carry out industrial activities. This way, even if a part of the population is lost due to war or other reasons, the remaining part will be able to continue industrial production.
For the same reason, he subconsciously rejected the use of the mysterious power of this world. After seeing the performance of Lardy and the sorcerer of the Secret Society, Paul did not think about the possibility of using the mysterious power of magic to develop the industry, but after a few conversations with the female counselor, he gave up this idea.
First of all, magic was too arcane for even a mage to understand, and the spells he had learned from Laddie didn’t have anything that could help him.
Secondly, Paul didn’t want to rely too much on the mages as a group, not to mention the fact that now with the church’s attitude towards the mages they might invite trouble for themselves, even if one day the status of mages was legalized and they had the means to contribute to the world’s great explosion of productivity, the monopoly of the mages on such advanced productivity as magic would inevitably result in a terrifying class.
According to the female advisor, something like magic requires an extremely high level of talent, and might even be somewhat linked to bloodline, unlike science and technology, where even the dumbest of people can grasp a rough idea if they work diligently.
Moreover, with the relatively scarce number of mages, it would also become a ‘key node’ that could affect the whole body and cause the entire industrial system to collapse if an accident occurred.
It is important to choose the right path from the beginning, once the route is wrong, the cost of changing it again can be huge, especially after the interest groups are formed.
He still hoped that this society could be as fair as possible.
Therefore, Paul set the tone of his attitude towards magic: at this stage to prevent the main, wait until they have the ability to further contact, can be studied, can be utilized, but can never rely on, only in the urgent need and can not find a conventional alternative means, only to resort to the power of magic.
(End of chapter)