Chapter 1118: The Real Crisis
Chapter 1097 The Real Crisis
Even coaxing and threatening, plus the cabinet government to do all the work, the British Parliament finally passed the motion to increase military spending with a narrow majority.
Only 70 million pounds of the budget, was cut to 65.81 million. This is already considered good, the budget in the parliament was cut to the waist is a common thing.
Perhaps it was because they felt the threat of Shinra, the parliamentarians were stimulated by the reality, and they showed mercy when they wielded their scythes.
In spite of this, before and after all kinds of processes down, when the Navy completed the tender to determine the shipyard, the time is still in May.
Not waiting for Campbell to breathe a sigh of relief, new bad news came again. The number of shipyards above 20,000 tons is insufficient to start work on so many super battleships at once.
“What, it’s come to this point and you’re telling me there aren’t enough shipyards to fulfill the conditions?”
Prime Minister Campbell growled.
It was impossible not to be angry, the super battleship moved more than 20,000 tons, such a big man could not be placed on the platform, the construction had to be carried out in the dockyard.
But the dockyard is not a cabbage, especially more than 20,000 tons of the dockyard, that is a phoenix.
The original time and space until the outbreak of World War I, have not heard who one-time construction of a dozen dreadnoughts, not that we do not want to, mainly because the hardware conditions do not meet.
Even to the second world war, can at the same time start construction of more than a dozen large warships, only the American one.
In the face of the prime minister’s questioning, the navy minister Swaintyn full of sadness replied: “very sorry, his excellency the prime minister.
As much as I don’t want to believe that the Empire is actually running out of capacity, this is the reality. The Dreadnought was born too soon for us to build more large shipyards.”
Despite the rapid development of Britannia’s shipbuilding industry in recent years, merchant ships exceeding 20,000 tons were still rare.
It wasn’t that there wasn’t the technology, it was mainly that there wasn’t much market demand. Although theoretically, the larger the tonnage of a merchant ship, the lower the unit transportation cost would be, but that was only theoretically.
Now has just stepped into the early 20th century, overseas trade is far less developed than later generations, what to fill more than 20,000 tons of merchant ships?
Now the bulk commodities that need to rely on shipping, there are only a few, respectively: agricultural products, cotton textiles, oil, ore, steel.
Although the bulk commodities, but the demand for large merchant ships, in fact, is still not big.
Take cotton textiles as an example, who dares to put tens of thousands of tons of commodities into the same market at one time?
Even if there are large merchant ships, that can only spell single. This single can not be good to spell, it is impossible to have so many orders, just happen to rush at the same time need to be transported.
Moreover, not all orders can be put together. Many commodities still have hard requirements for transportation conditions.
For the transportation company, instead of using 30,000 to 50,000 tons of merchant ships that are often underfilled, it would be better to use 10,000 tons of merchant ships that are economically more cost-effective.
The same is true for steel, most countries purchase up to 10,000 or so tons a year, and countries that move to consume hundreds of thousands of tons or millions of tons are basically able to produce their own.
Even if there are orders, usually based on the actual situation in batches. After all, steel is to rust, buy more at once is likely to smash in their hands.
Ore is not much better, bulk is bulk, the problem is that the demand of the countries is small ah!
Free trade era, for many countries, instead of buying ore for refining, it is better to purchase finished products directly in the market, the economy is more cost-effective.
Including Britain is also so, in addition to the large demand for steel, to build their own factories in the local refining, other rare metals that are directly buy buy buy.
Unlike later generations, these days even “aluminum” are rare metals, Britain’s annual consumption of up to 10,000 tons, their own hands refining is not a loss.
The original time and space until 1913, Britain’s aluminum production is only seven thousand tons. Large-scale industrial production, that is the middle and late twentieth century things.
Other rare metals, not to mention. Many of them only existed in laboratories, and could not be used industrially at all.
The market demand is too small to accommodate too many enterprises. Capital seeks profit, no one will do business that loses money.
The most consumed oil in the latter half of the world, now the annual extraction is only so much more than 30 million tons, most of them are still in the internal self-production and self-sale of God Luo.
Even if you need a large tanker, such business is also internal digestion, the order simply can not fall into the hands of British shipyards.
Agricultural products are also the same, Shen Luo a dominant, transportation is also their own hand, there is no British shipyards to intervene in the opportunity.
The only market that exists is someone else’s food. There is not enough market orders, the British shipbuilding companies naturally will not engage in a bunch of large shipyards to put aside.
If not in order to prove to the outside world their own strength, must have the ability to build large merchant ships, to the capitalists of the knuckleheads, it is estimated that only a few large shipyards will not necessarily appear.
Prime Minister Campbell angrily said: ”I don’t want to hear any explanation, the problem now is that we need to build warships, but the production capacity can’t meet the demand.
Could it be that all of you in the Ministry of the Navy are freeloaders, why didn’t you report such a big problem in advance?
Now that something has gone wrong, how are you going to end it, the enemy won’t give us that much time to prepare!”
No matter how many reasons there were, the Ministry of Navy could not be blamed for the situation that had happened now.
“I didn’t know that the enemy would be so crazy as to drop so many dumplings at once.”
Such a reason was fine for shirking responsibility, but it couldn’t solve the actual problem.
Swendin very awkwardly explained, “We have already taken countermeasures, the shipyard has already started to work overtime to build a new large shipyard as early as three months ago.
In light of this current situation, we have modified the design of some of the warships.
At the expense of sacrificing some of the performance, we have successfully compressed the displacement down so that the 20,000-ton dock can also meet the demand.
Although the Holy Roman Empire’s large shipyards are a bit more numerous, there are only six shipyards that exceed twenty-five thousand tons, three of which have long been in operation.
From this aspect of speculation, the enemy to build more than 25,000 tons of dreadnoughts the number of at most only three, exactly the same as us.
The rest are all generation dreadnoughts, and even if our displacement is smaller, our combat power won’t be much weaker than theirs.”
Advance notice to the shipyards of a new large dock was naturally non-existent, and if the Admiralty had reacted that quickly, they would have thrown out the problem long ago.
But the capitalists with vision did start doing it ahead of time. To a certain extent, it was a political rescue for the Admiralty.
As long as the capitalists admitted that the construction of large shipyards was related to the Ministry of the Navy, then it proved that the Ministry of the Navy had taken a strong and timely response, and the matter was over.
I don’t know if there was any transfer of benefits behind this, but anyway, the shipyards that built large shipyards in advance got orders from the Ministry of the Navy.
This is all a minor issue, we are all on the same rope, political allies, there is no need to fall on the sword at this time.
In the past, we did not feel, anyway, the British Empire can get out of any technology, it is just a matter of the first step, the next step.
Now the real meaning of the opposite, we suddenly realized that things are big. Royal Navy dominance is not false, but the overall industrial level of the British Empire can not keep up ah!
The high cost of production, no cost-effective is just, the troublesome production capacity actually can not keep up.
The people present are playing politics, was pushed up, on the industrial details do not know much.
The windowpaper is not pierced, no one can think. Now being poked through the blind spot of thinking, many problems that are usually ignored, all of a sudden flooded into everyone’s mind.
All are the elites of the times, and naturally they will not be naive enough to think that Britain’s current problem is only the insufficient number of large shipyards.
With a little bit of brain power, everyone knew that there was a big problem with Britain’s industrial system.
The world is so delicate, Britain in order to better plunder the wealth of all countries, hand-made free trade system.
Wealth is indeed plundered, in the past years, the British capital is making a lot of money, but the aftermath of the big so “billion point point”.
In the free trade system did not feel, this just independent, Britain’s industrial system has a big problem.
The number of large dockyards are not enough to give warships to do supporting enterprise capacity, will be able to meet the demand?
Don’t forget, it was these same guys, not so long ago, who were crying out to get out of the free trade system and implement tariff barriers to protect the market.
If it was normal times, a little bit of slowdown would be fine, and a little bit of delay wouldn’t be a bad thing if it could support their own industries.
Not now, both sides are competing for speed. Britain’s shipbuilding program is already lagging behind, and if there’s another hiccup in the middle of the process, it’s going to be the end of the line.
Campbell’s Prime Minister, who was in a cold sweat, hurriedly ordered: “Order all the major shipyards to immediately purchase the relevant spare parts.
The speed must be fast, we must stockpile enough spare parts before the Vienna government reacts.”
Sick and desperate, perhaps! But Campbell could not afford to gamble, the current situation is no longer easy for the British government to make another major decision-making error.
Domestic capacity is insufficient, and only part of the spare parts capacity is insufficient. Even if the capacity is insufficient, there are many substitutes that do not necessarily need to be procured from the Holy Roman Empire.
But the time belonging to the British government is limited, there is no time to carefully screen. In the event that a certain part happened to be out of stock and no substitutes could be found, it would be a tragedy.
Who made it so that these days, the only one with the most complete industrial system was the Holy Roman?
Originally, Britain also had a complete industrial system, but unfortunately, it didn’t keep up in the second industrial revolution, and took a break at the critical moment.
This hiatus, it directly fell out of line. Many industries have been impacted by the new technology, capitalists have turned their heads to play with finance, and fewer and fewer people are willing to invest in the real industry.
Of course, the Americans have a pretty full industrial system. Only technologically behind a few eras, can only cottage products with no technical content.
If you really expect to get spare parts from the Americans, it would be better to wait for their own enterprises to explode production capacity, more reliable.
By now, everyone already understands why the Vienna government will suddenly change its style and become aggressive all of a sudden.
Such a big break, clearly placed in the eyes of the enemy. If we don’t take advantage of the opportunity to fall on the well, do we have to wait for Britain to come out of the doldrums, and then do it again?
(End of chapter)