West Coast, Collins Shipyard.

This is a small shipyard, which has always been engaged in the construction of fishing boats and whaling boats. Both fishing boats and whaling boats are not too big, usually not more than 1,500 tons. However, Collins fishing boats are well-known and have earned some money for the boss. Recently, the business of container cargo ships is so good that many shipyards have been scheduled for several years. Mr. Collins, the owner of the shipyard, naturally looked at it, so he gritted his teeth and borrowed a large amount of money from the bank, expanded the shipyard, added a 10,000-ton ship platform, and prepared to start building container cargo ships.

There is a big difference between building container cargo ships and building fishing boats. Many things have to be introduced from outside. For example, design, engineering staff, and even a large number of experienced workers. Collins paid higher wages and dug up some technical workers from other shipyards to be foremen and lead others to work.

Old Charles is one of them. Old Charles has worked in Hart on the East Coast for decades because of the shipyard. First, he worked as a riveter carrying a sledgehammer for ten years. Fortunately, Charles was studious and actually taught himself a lot of things related to shipbuilding. Butters, an engineer in the shipyard at that time, saw that he was diligent and studious, and was willing to take time to teach him. Later, gradually, he was able to help Butters and be an assistant.

Of course, the boss is also willing to see this situation. Originally, such assistants were used for college students, and the salary cost was not cheap, so Charles was much cheaper. So Charles received the wages of workers and started working as assistants. It is said that the boss also promised to straighten him in the future and let him be a formal assistant. However, Charles worked for another thirty years, but he was still a temporary assistant.

"How can there be a temporary assistant for thirty years in the world?" Charles finally couldn't stand it anymore, so he took this opportunity to jump to Collins Shipyard and become a formal engineer assistant.

Moreover, their first ship was finally about to be completed, and Charles was doing the final inspection of the ship. The main content he was responsible for was to inspect the riveting conditions of some key parts of the ship.

"Red, the rivets in these places are not right." Charles said to the workers, "It's going to be like this here...but the problem is not too big... If you do this a little bit... it's almost done. Move quickly, this boat will be in the water next week."

...

Shipments like this are increasing rapidly, with new ships continuously launched. On the other hand, almost any steel plant is producing containers in large quantities. Nowadays, it is not just ships, but containers are also in short supply. MacDonald Steel easily bought a good price for a container patent. Nowadays, for every container produced by other manufacturers, they need to pay MacDonald Steel a patent fee of five dollars. Worldwide, this patent alone can earn millions of dollars in net income within one year.

"The container patent will not be tried to get around, right?" Grestone stood in the stamping workshop of the MacDonald Steel Pittsburgh Steel Plant, looking down at the huge stamping machine that was about to stamp pieces of galvanized sheets, shouting at Donald.

"No problem! We..." The surrounding environment was too noisy. Although Donald shouted with his throat, Donald's voice was obviously not loud enough that Greston couldn't hear it clearly.

"What did you say? I can't hear it clearly! Hell! Let's go out and talk!" Greston also shouted.

They walked through the huge factory building through the overhead steel passage across the entire workshop and walked outside. The outside was full of noise, but it was much quieter than the inside of the workshop, at least they could speak.

Like in the original history, Pittsburgh, as the inland city with the most convenient water transportation, has become the center of the US steel industry. Now nearly one-third of the steel in the United States is smelted from here, and it has become the steel capital and smog capital of the United States, just like in the original history. However, because of the emergence of MacDonald Steel, the American steel in history, such as Carnegie, Mellon Consortium, and so on, naturally failed to emerge.

"Ahem!" Donald coughed.

"Pittsburgh is such a bastard. The air here is really... cough cough..." Greston also coughed due to the cold air outside.

"It is said that London was called Misty, and it probably wasn't as good as Pittsburgh." Donald had already breathed and asked again: "What did you want to ask me just now?"

"I want to ask, is there any way to get around our container patent?" Greston also stopped coughing.

Containers do not require any difficult technology, so it seems impossible to bypass patent restrictions. Therefore, Grestone is naturally a little worried.

"Technically, it's not difficult," said Donald. "I have at least a hundred ways to bypass our technical limitations and make similar solutions. But these are not of great use. Because our patents are really important, what makes it difficult for others to deal with is the size regulations. At least the current regulations can guarantee that they can't easily bypass our restrictions. However, you also know that this limitation is also based on the development of Alaska. All the ports in Alaska are controlled in our hands. So containers that do not meet our restrictions are completely unavailable. This makes it possible for any ship that intends to travel to the Alaska route to adopt me.

Our size containers. But in fact, you know that the size difference is so small that our port facilities can load and unload them. So this is just effective for those cargoes to be used in Alaska. As for ships running elsewhere, honestly, there is no way. We shouldn't have at least guaranteed that all containers used in Alaska can provide us with patent income. As far as I know, those damn British guys have already specified another size. For them, Alaska shipping business is not particularly large, and container transportation can bring them more benefits, so they... Grestone, you know, we have no way to do that at the moment."

"Damn British!" Gresson also said. The feeling of being stolen by someone was so bad.

"One day, I will let these British guys spit out all the money for us!" Greston said this viciously at last.

...

Although most of the matter was handed over to Grestone, Scozhi still found it difficult to free himself completely. To be honest, people like him who have been busy may not be a good thing to free him. Many elderly people who have been busy often experience rapid decline in their physical and mental state once they are free.

There are several things that Scourge cares most now, both of which are experimental research in large laboratories. For example, the effect of traditional Chinese medicine on viruses, such as brand new bactericidal drugs. At present, no one can completely replace him. Of course, if Dena can come back, Scourge feels that he can take her with him, and he can trust her to feel at ease.

In addition, over the years, Scrooge seemed to have been influenced by Rockefeller again and became pious. Now he has gone to church more often. Although he has donated a lot to the church in the past, the church has unanimously recognized that he was a devout believer.

Many years ago, oh, it should be said that when Scrooge was in high school, he learned a text called "The Scrooge". This article was excerpted from Mr. Balzac's novel "Eugenie Grandet". When studying that article, Scrooge always felt that Balzac's description of Old Grandet was too exaggerated, so he didn't look like a realistic writer, but like Hugo's romanticism. And at that time, he always felt that the last sentence in the text, "This proves that Christianity is indeed the religion of the Scrooge."

Understanding. Now, as he gets older, Scrooge finds that he can understand Old Grandet more and more, and understand what Balzac said more and more. If everything dies, what is the use of the accumulated wealth? Therefore, what must exist in "the other side", otherwise, you will not be able to expect that one day in the future, Grestone, who takes good care of everything, can live "the other side" to "report" to him. So now, as life gradually enters old age, Scrooge's faith in Christ really has a little piety in it.

Of course, the last important thing is to collect and analyze Dena's relevant information. Dena has participated in many revolutionary activities over the years and has left behind many theoretical works. Scrooge gathered the relevant information, carefully studied Dena's style of conduct and theoretical characteristics, and made various inferences about her next move, and then further adjusted and upgraded her database based on the feedback. Scrooge found that Dena, like all communists at that time, lacked expectations for various problems they might encounter in the future. Scrooge felt that she might be able to seize the loophole in her theory and idea and find a suitable time, such as when they had differences or had major setbacks, use this to defeat Dena's confidence in communism in one fell swoop, and then, perhaps Dena would honestly return to the MacDonald family, thereby filling in the last shortcomings of the second generation of the MacDonald family.
Chapter completed!