Chapter 452: The Beacon of Freedom Must Be Lit Up
Chapter 442: The Lighthouse of Freedom Must Light Up
As the capital of England, London has been at the forefront of the world since the first industrial revolution.
It has too many halos, for example: the world’s largest city, the most prosperous city, and the world’s political center, financial center, commercial center, industrial center ……
Overnight, it seemed to have turned into a small country place, and this sudden transformation was too much for the arrogant London public to bear.
They had the capital for arrogance in this age, as the British newspapers described it:
The plains of North America and Russia are our cornfields;
Austria is our granary;
Canada and the Baltic are our woodlands;
Australia Argentina is our pasture;
Peru and Mexico carry its silver;
The Far East grows our tea;
And our coffee, sugar cane and spice plantations throughout the Indies;
That Spain and France are our vineyards;
The Mediterranean is our orchard;
The Confederate States of America our cotton fields;
……
So, everywhere outside London is countryside, everywhere outside the British Isles is backwardness, and the sacred mission of leading mankind to progress is only for the British.
Under this cognizance, the emergence of Vienna’s city of night can be imagined as an impact on the London populace.
The pressure of public opinion, toward the new government paved the way up, Benjamin Disraeli government only feel the pressure of the mountain.
Now they are very envious of John Russell’s cabinet which has already stepped down, don’t look at them as an early resignation, in fact, John Russell’s cabinet is only two months short of the two terms of office will expire.
The end of their term was met with an economic crisis, so of course they won’t be sweeping up for their rivals. The early resignation of John Russell’s cabinet puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the next government.
It was going to be a tough time for Benjamin Disraeli’s cabinet in the economy. Internationally the battle for the Spanish throne and the Polish throne were on everyone’s nerves.
And now a city that never sleeps has popped up, giving Prime Minister Benjamin even more of a headache. Electric lights weren’t high tech, they’d been in use for a long time, but it wouldn’t be easy to popularize them throughout the city.
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli asked, “My finance minister, is the budget out?”
Finance Minister Molitor replied seriously, “Preliminary estimates suggest that at least 75 million pounds will need to be invested to popularize electric lighting in London, and 440 million pounds will be needed to popularize electric lighting in the British Isles, and considering the actual situation, the investment may be even greater.
This is only the equipment investment, the future cost of electricity investment will be more. For London’s street lighting system alone, we’d need 150,000 generators, and we’d need at least 300,000 people to provide the logistics for that.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli interrupted with a wave of his hand, “Hold it, just tell me straight away that London can’t universalize its electrical equipment. But why were the Austrians able to do it?
Even if Vienna is much smaller than London, it’s still a metropolis with a population of over a million. I don’t believe that the Vienna government would invest in it for the sake of a face.”
Finance Minister Molitor explained, “It’s said that the Austrians used high-power generators to safeguard Vienna’s lighting system, just two hundred generators are needed.
This high-power generator reduces the cost of power generation by eighty percent, and the number of maintenance personnel needed is greatly reduced, only about three to four thousand workers are needed to maintain this electricity network.
In fact, the lighting system in Vienna is the masterpiece of the Austrian New Energy Power Company, and there is said to be royal investment.
The City of Vienna only needs to pay the electricity bill, which costs about 100,000 pounds a month, to use this power supply network worth more than 7 million pounds.”
Molitor also had a headache, the British power company was salty, just keen to supply electricity to the rich, not at all interested in creating a city-wide lighting system.
If he hadn’t been reading the newspapers, he wouldn’t have known that the revolution in generator technology, had taken place. If it was just a matter of creating a street lighting system, then bite the bullet and get over it.
Obviously, this was not possible. The citizens of London, who needed a more attentive service of electricity delivered to their homes, required a much higher investment.
Simply 100,000 pounds of electricity, obviously can not feed the Austrian new energy power company, even if it enjoys tax-free treatment, this is still far from enough.
Now just to run a horse, direct funding to build a complete set of power supply network, also means the monopoly of the Vienna power market.
Vienna has no industry, the ultimate profitability of the power company or residential electricity, commercial electricity, these high-quality customers is the long-term cash cow.
Compared to the previous 8 shillings per kilowatt-hour, the cost of electricity in Vienna has now been reduced to 1.5 shillings, which is the advantage of the power supply network, significantly reducing the loss of electricity in the transmission process.
There is no doubt that this price is a windfall, but new technologies are still fueled by windfalls if they want to spread.
If you want to further reduce the price of electricity, you have to wait until electricity is fully popularized. Otherwise this power supply network, who will pay for it?
The government of Vienna can not afford this expense, once the government funding is not a city’s problem, but to carry out the national popularization, which is the core of the fairness system.
We are all taxpayers, why should the big cities be supplied with electricity first?
If the central government doesn’t invest, who in the local government can afford the upfront investment?
Do they take out loans? I’m afraid it wouldn’t take long for Austrian local governments to go bankrupt.
Expecting the bureaucratic class to control costs is a dream. It would be better to leave businesses free to develop first, and then go back to universalization once the technology has been further developed.
The same problem has been encountered by the British, the central government does not allocate funds, the City of London simply can not afford it, and give funds to other areas of the public and not agreed.
No need to wait for the people to make trouble, the Parliament will not be able to pass. The capital city already occupies a lot of resources, and the central government’s financial tilt will intensify the conflict, and may even lead to a serious split of the country.
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli rubbed his forehead and said helplessly, “Then throw this problem to the London city government! The Austrian government hasn’t even allocated any funds, so who are they to ask us to allocate funds?
As to how they do it, that’s their own business. Municipalities cannot fulfill their duty to build their localities and put their responsibility on the central government, this kind of thing is not to be done.”
Kicking the can down the road, this is the most common tactic used by politicians. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli wouldn’t even care if there wasn’t so much public pressure out there.
The fact that the Cabinet had asked about this matter was just a sign of attention, not the same as saying that it was about to intervene.
If the investment capital is small, Benjamin Disraeli Prime Minister is still very happy to brush a wave of political achievements, so that the British Isles light up.
Now the investment is so big, then it is better to forget it! If you really blindly embark on this big project, the UK’s financial revenue is not necessarily enough to fill the hole.
……
Paris, the tragic Paris city hall was once again surrounded by marching people, which is proof that the Parisian people know the rules.
It is the city government’s responsibility to revamp the city’s infrastructure, and it cannot let the central government pay for it.
Including Napoleon III’s remodeling of Paris, the money was largely borne by the Paris city government, not dumped on the French central government.
In this regard, the French are very clear-cut, and the accounts have never been separated. Local governments also have their own revenues, rather than relying entirely on central government funding.
For example, the salaries of municipal employees and the operating costs of the various governmental organizations are covered by the local authorities themselves.
Otherwise, the revenues of the central government in this era would not be enough to maintain the government.
Of course, some European countries are still directly managed by the central government, but they are small countries with small size and small population, so they don’t need so many organizations.
If the local government could not afford the administrative expenses, the central government could still subsidize them, for example, the Austrian government once subsidized the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, otherwise this poor province could not even pay the salaries of the civil servants.
There are also exceptions, such as the United States. That is, each state to play each state, money to spend, no money to find their own way, anyway, do not count on the central government.
Looking at the crowd outside the protest march, Paris Mayor Barko is broken inside. To know the Paris reconstruction project, has let the Paris government back a huge amount of debt, pressured them just about breathless.
The mouth-breathing party makes it easy to say that improving public infrastructure will help develop the economy and get rid of the economic crisis.
In reality, it all costs money. What’s there to invest in if you don’t have the money? When Napoleon III ordered the remodeling of Paris, it was not the Paris municipal government that was paying for it.
Debt has to be repaid, and in order to increase revenue, the Paris city government has raised taxes several times.
This tax can’t be counted on the general public, who themselves don’t have much money, and the final bulk still falls on the enterprises.
Napoleon III was encouraging the development of industry, so the financial capitalists bore most of the tax. Frankly speaking, this model of tax distribution was reasonable.
The financial sector was more profitable than the manufacturing sector, and there was nothing wrong with high profits bearing high taxes, so this period was the golden age of French industrial development.
There were also a number of electric power companies in France, but unfortunately none of them were large. Usually a power company, only a few hundred customers, can have a few thousand customers are large companies.
Mayor Barco, after interviewing these power companies, just gave up on letting them take on the heavy responsibility of building the Paris power supply system.
It’s bullshit to say anything without power, and with neither money nor technology, who dares to let them do it?
There are many capitalists who are interested in taking on this important task, but the appetite of these predators is so big that it directly makes Balko shy away.
For example: financial predator Rothschild is interested in investing, not just asking for free, he also asked the Paris government to bear half of the construction costs without compensation.
Half of the construction costs at no cost, it would be better to just state-run it. Obviously, the capitalists are aware of the pressure of public opinion and want to maximize their benefits.
As the lighthouse of the free world, how can it work if it doesn’t light up? The attitude of the Parisian public says it all.
Franz probably never dreamed that investing in the construction of the Vienna power system would actually bring so much trouble to Britain and France.
Even if he knew it was useless, he could not help. The popularization of electricity in this era is still a bit ahead of its time. Waiting for the generator technology further, smelting copper technology to another level, is the best time.
Now the cost of promotion is too high, in a special city like Vienna promotion is still possible, in other cities can not lose, even if it is lucky.
1.5 shillings per kilowatt-hour electricity cost, the whole Austria is only ten percent of the people can afford to consume, Britain and France is almost the same proportion.
Vienna’s situation is special, not an industrial city, the pillar industries are relatively high income industry. Most people can afford to use electricity because of their high incomes.
And other cities will not be able to, Europe is different from the East, not rich people are in the city, a large part of the landed gentry are in the city’s surrounding estates.
These quality customers are scattered, directly increasing the cost of universal access to electricity. Most of these nobles have long been using electricity, people have their own small generators.
Of course, if the power company was willing to supply electricity, they wouldn’t refuse. After all, the small generators of this era, just to say that the power is small, the size that is not small at all, it is very inconvenient to use.
However, the cost per kilowatt-hour of electricity would continue to rise in this way. Most cities, because of the insufficient number of users, or not centralized enough, the final cost of power supply has to be greatly increased.
This is also the reason that after supplying electricity to Vienna, the Austrian New Energy Power Company stopped and plowed deep into Vienna’s market, not blindly expanding.
Power technology revolution, there is a Vienna do benchmark is enough. To promote the whole country, it is not too late to wait for another three to five years.
In this fast-changing era, new technologies are advancing almost every day, from 1866 to the present Austrian new patents on electricity, there are more than three hundred.
Franz did not even know that the original specialized technology involving electricity, there are actually so many. It is important to realize that this is only the 19th century, the use of electricity is still in the most elementary stage.
Now the biggest effect is lighting, rely on electricity-driven machinery and equipment, still stay in theory, want to become the most important energy source of mankind, at least need thirty years.
Without any surprise, after the first step of the new era in Vienna, the Paris government announced the establishment of the Paris Electricity Company, to make Paris light up.
The lighthouse of the free world, black lights won’t do.
(End of chapter)