47. Construction of roads

Chapter 47 Building the Highway

After the fall harvest and before the snow closed the mountains, Richard led the slaves to start building the road.

Even though it was a simple gravel road, the Harland territory was a mountainous and hilly landscape, building roads was very labor intensive.

Counting more than 3,000 old and weak people, only 30 kilometers of road were built in more than 40 days.

The road was about four meters wide, with drainage ditches more than a meter deep dug on both sides, and road protection trees transplanted on both sides of the ditches.

Today, the road from Fort William to Wayao Village has been completed.

A dozen kilometers of road have also been constructed between Wayao and Vikborg.

The road has now been repaired to the vicinity of the No. 2 Reclamation Camp, with only twenty kilometers left to travel from Vikborg.

The remaining twenty kilometers of road are relatively easy to repair.

There were only two hills three or four hundred meters high to climb over, and the rest was one or two hundred meters, tens of meters high hills, and almost ten kilometers of flat road.

The southernmost ten kilometers of the highway was located within Baron Stopa’s territory, and repairing the road within Baron Stopa’s territory also required Baron Sophia’s cooperation.

With Richard’s understanding of Sophia, she would never object to this matter, and would also send slaves to cooperate with Richard to build the road.

This year’s first snowfall is relatively late, to the middle of November, the snow only came late, than the normal year, about a month late.

After the snowfall, Richard saw that the climate was cold and no longer suitable for field labor.

Richard let the old people and children go home to rest, strong slaves, still need to work, go to the brick kiln factory to burn bricks.

By the fall of this year, the brick kiln factory workers burning bricks technology is still progressing, one-time has been able to burn into 100,000 bricks, the success rate of about 40%.

In one month’s time, the brick kiln factory can burn one million bricks.

Nevertheless, there is still a shortage of bricks.

The construction of Fort William, in particular, seemed like a bottomless pit; there were never enough bricks.

Powell, seeing the huge increase in brick production, decided to clad the walls with a layer of bricks.

The previous walls built were stone foundations and clay ramparts, which were strong but unsightly.

Cladding a layer of bricks looked much more aesthetically pleasing and enhanced the defense.

Now that the brick kiln factory had doubled its output, the construction of houses for slaves to live in had been completed.

Richard decided to support Powell, and by November of this year, one-sixth of the wrapped brick wall had been built.

“Young Master Richard, Bobby has improved the production process again and would like you to visit the brick kiln factory and give some pointers on the process.”

Richard was having a meeting with Powell in Fort William to work out the schedule of the project, when a slave walked quickly and bowed respectfully to the two noble lords and whispered.

Bobby was the deputy director of the Brick Kiln Factory and was also a slave before. In the production of the brick kiln factory, Bobby stood out from a cadre of slaves.

He had improved the process several times and increased the productivity of the brick kiln factory, gaining Richard’s praise, and had gotten rid of his slavery and regained his freedom.

Richard intended to follow Bobby’s example and appoint him as the director of the brick kiln factory.

However, Bobby is not good at management, although very smart but lacks the ability to communicate with people, so Richard can only be appointed as the deputy director of the brick kiln factory in charge of production, to cooperate with the director of the factory Rooney work.

Rooney was a free man of Fort Black River and had been serving the Harland family for many years as Mrs. Olaf’s assistant in business.

The two of them worked well together in the Brick Kiln Factory, and in the past two years, the efficiency of the Brick Kiln Factory has continued to improve, supporting the construction of the territory very well.

“It looks like Bobby has a conflict with Rooney, he asked me to go to the brick kiln factory, on the surface he wants me to point out the craftsmanship, secretly I’m afraid he wants me to stand up for him and gain my support.” Although the slave didn’t say it explicitly, the secret little mind Richard knew it all.

Getting along between people will inevitably be accompanied by such and such contradictions, as long as it is not due to selfishness, Richard is not willing to pursue the matter.

If there is no contradiction below, a nostril out of the air, Richard will in turn suspect the loyalty of the following.

Moreover, in this world where greatness is attributed to oneself, the hooks and horns between ordinary people are simply not on the stage.

If they made too much of a fuss and aroused Richard’s resentment, they would in turn be asking for trouble.

It was difficult for nobles to be punished for killing ordinary people.

Richard is self-aware, although he often played in the brick kiln factory when he was a child, he was very familiar with the construction of the kiln factory, and built the brick kiln factory according to the cat, but he did not understand the process of burning bricks at all.

How to place the bricks, the temperature, time, fire, all kinds of details of the process, Richard simply can not figure out.

Even open the brick kiln factory aunt, in the process also know a rough, otherwise he would not spend a lot of money to hire a brick yard, fire master.

On the contrary, it was Bobby, who was very talented in this area, and had already burned several hundred kilns of bricks in the past two years, accumulating profound experience, or else he could have improved the process many times, and raised the success rate of burning bricks to about 40%.

Put in the previous life of Bluestar, ignition master burning bricks burned into this success rate, will let the boss beat his head.

But in the Morning Glory Continent, Bobby was already the best talent.

According to Richard’s understanding, there is no wheeled brick kiln factory in the Morning Sun Continent yet.

The productivity of the wheeled brick kiln plant in Harland Territory was equivalent to ten ordinary brick kilns.

The entire Black River County, including the territories directly under the Crown, a dozen baronies, had only established six brick kiln factories.

One brick kiln factory in Harland territory had about twice the productivity of the other nobles in Black River County.

Ordinary brick kiln factories are considered advanced productivity in the Morning Glory Continent.

The ones who mastered the brick burning technology were all noble lords.

In this world, the nobles had an extremely serious monopoly on knowledge, and would only exchange it within their families.

The speed of knowledge dissemination was very slow, and those who possessed the knowledge would also treasure it.

From history, Richard had yet to find a sage like Confucius, spreading knowledge and collecting disciples widely.

A territory as large as the Kingdom of Grant, with such a large population, only had very few church schools.

The knowledge taught in church schools was usually dominated by simple knowledge such as words and arithmetic.

When the Stopa family had an accident and lost the books that recorded the production process, they could not find a solution.

This was the situation that prevailed in the Morning Sun Continent.

If you want to change the status quo and remove people’s deep-rooted perceptions, the only way is violent revolution.

The Morning Sun Continent has transcendent powers, and unless you can become a powerful deity, far surpassing your opponents, only then do you have the power to change the world.

Even the Goddess of the Morning Sun is not alone in this realm.

So Richard could only start with himself and try not to act too out of character. But the stereotypical three views from his previous life would still sometimes make him out of place in this world.

(End of chapter)