The Governor-General's Office of the Three Northeastern Provinces has planned these 24 military reclamation and military animal husbandry bureaus in the three provinces and eastern Inner Mongolia, covering the most sparsely populated areas in the three Northeastern provinces. They play a very key role in the development of the entire three Northeastern provinces and play a vital role in modern agriculture.
Technology, high-quality livestock species, economic crops, large-scale agriculture, military horse breeding, and protective development of mountain forests all play a leading role, and their role in local security and territorial protection is even stronger.
After Song Biao returned to Fengtian from the Xing'an Allied Reclamation Bureau, he made final negotiations with the German DWM company on arms trade, military industry cooperation, technology transfer and industrial loans, and finalized this huge contract, which was most important for the Northeast New Army to enter the customs.
Come down.
On October 12, 1908, Song Biao held a grand wedding at the Governor's Mansion. Two days later, he and his wife Shu Xuan secretly took an American passenger ship to San Francisco accompanied by Cones Vanderbilt and his wife.
There was no warning about the arrangement before and it was kept highly confidential to the outside world.
Song Biao's visit to the United States is mainly to meet with President Theodore Roosevelt and use the contradiction between the United States and Japan to gain further support from the United States (history is really full of drama). After that, he will accompany Shu Xuan to his alma mater and Kang Kang.
State went on honeymoon and sold Pemex on the way.
In the past six months, Pemex discovered many high-yield oil wells. The Asul oil well discovered in August had a daily output of 23,000 tons. Song Biao, who was eager to raise funds to fight the civil war, decided to sell the company in exchange for military funds.
He armed his half a million troops and swept across the country in one go.
…
Connecticut is one of the most beautiful places in the United States. It is densely populated with people from Italy, Ireland, England, and the Netherlands living here, creating a special cultural atmosphere of New England.
After arriving in Connecticut, Song Biao lived in a small town called Wallingford in Connecticut. This was the location of the Connecticut Women's College. The city of New Haven, 20 kilometers away, was the holy place for Chinese students to study at this time -
Yale University.
Song Biao and Shu Xuan lived in Corns. A friend of Vanderbilt lived in a manor in the suburbs of Wallingford. It happened that Shu Xuan had a female classmate whose home was also nearby.
This is an old manor built in 1858, quiet and elegant.
The sun was shining in the corridor, and Song Biao was sitting on the wicker chair in the corridor. Enjoying the afternoon black tea and the warm and quiet time, it has been four years since he returned to this era. It took him four years to become the most popular person in the world.
One of the men with real power, and the most classic tall, handsome and rich man. He also married a beautiful and intelligent young talented woman as his wife. It is precisely because of this that he can savor the comfort of the wedding at this moment.
Life is so beautiful. For him, the luck that history has given him is that it is full of opportunities. In an environment where the Big Three of J.P. Morgan, John A. Rockefeller, and Andrew W. Mellon are still full of discrimination against the American automobile industry,
He and Cones Vanderbilt financed this great industry.
Due to limited funds, he invested very little capital, but under his suggestion, Conn. Vanderbilt decided to cooperate with William Durant to establish the largest automobile company in the United States-General Motors Company. Conn.
Vanderbilt also invested another sum of money in the Ford Motor Company, buying out the shares of the other six original partners of the company, and adding a million US dollars of shares to Henry Ford to build new buildings.
Large factories and parts manufacturing workshops.
The success of Pemex has allowed Song Biao to receive huge dividends of 14 million U.S. dollars in the past six months. He has this money in his hands and is thinking about which areas to continue investing in.
He wants to buy Bethlehem Steel Company, a medium-sized steel plant established in 1904 with an annual production capacity of only 600,000 tons of steel. This production capacity is almost the same size as the Liaoyang Iron and Steel Plant.
Don't underestimate this company. Its predecessor was an unsuccessful steel company. However, it completed the most important metal cutting experiment for the entire world's machine tool industry. This resulted in the emergence of high-speed steel, an emerging steel product.
With the further development of the era of large-scale industry, the massive demand for machine tools and high-speed steel made Bethlehem Steel quickly become the second largest steel company in the United States and made huge profits during World War I.
Song Biao decided to invest in this company and then bought all the data from the metal cutting experiments to invest in a new machine tool company.
The American machine tool industry was almost invincible in the first fifty years of the twentieth century. It had the world's most advanced theoretical and experimental research, the world's most advanced scientific management experience, the world's largest domestic market, and
Abundant talents and huge production scale eventually made the United States rise to become the king of machine tools in the world. Except for Germany, no country could challenge the dominance of the American machine tool industry for the entire 70 years before the 1970s.
Capital is the king of all evil.
Sitting in the sunny corridor and enjoying the quiet time, Song Biao slowly thought about the problem. The feeling of wedding joy is actually quite special. It can only be experienced after getting married, and the condition is that you don't care too much about money.
.
The wife has no conditions. The only request is to go to Connecticut for her honeymoon, visit the campus where she studied, and get together with her female classmates from college. If there is no money, I am afraid it will be difficult to satisfy even this small wish.
.
Shu Xuan was chatting happily with two classmates from her college days in the living room. They were accompanied by Mrs. Vanderbilt and Cones. Vanderbilt came out of the living room and offered Song Biao a cup.
A bottle of whiskey and a box of cigars.
While the women were talking about those interesting things, Cones Vanderbilt and Song Biao could only bask in the sun in the corridor, enjoying the late autumn in Connecticut.
The two of them each lit a cigar from Brazil, sat on both sides of the coffee table, and talked about business and marriage. When it came to marriage, Cones Vanderbilt was a very experienced person, because
He has been married twice, the first was bad and the second was unhappy.
They are already very good friends. There have been many business cooperations in the past two years. Although Cones Vanderbilt is still some way away from regaining the glory of the Vanderbilt family, he can develop financial businesses in the three eastern provinces and Asia.
It went very smoothly, which made him very happy.
Americans are very good at doing business. Cones Vanderbilt is definitely not a master in the business field, and he even lacks the characteristics of keenness and alertness, but at least he is not too bad. After Bank of America went public in New York, it relied on
The business in Asia and the western United States has gained a high market value, which allows him to invest more capital in the three eastern provinces for credit.
Although the Vanderbilt family's large-scale investment in the automobile industry was ridiculed by the Big Three and Wall Street, it still seemed to have a good rate of return. As Song Biao's Mexican oil company suddenly achieved great success, he now also wants to invest in the oil industry.
A large sum of money is invested in the industry.
He talked about ambitious plans, but Song Biao didn't have much interest. Because Song Biao just wanted to sell Pemex at a good price as much as possible, that's all.
Song Biao seemed to be listening attentively, but his heart was running quietly like an iceberg on the bottom of the sea. His thoughts were so active, yet so quiet.
With the development of shipping and railways, the world has begun to become smaller. The distance from the three northeastern provinces to Connecticut is only 15 days, and it will become even smaller in the future.
At this time, Song Biao felt that it was necessary for him to invest in the aviation field, establish an aircraft manufacturing factory in China, and slowly cultivate and develop it. There would always be benefits in the future.
Historical information gave him not short-term investment opportunities like Pemex's, but various long-term investments. As long as he persisted, he would eventually reap rewards following the wheel of historical development.
Mussolini once suggested that Chiang Kai-shek reduce investment in the navy and increase investment in the air force, because the aircraft manufacturing industry wanted to improve much faster than the warship industry, at least before World War II.
It is really too late for the three northeastern provinces and China to continue to develop the navy now, but it is still very early to develop the air force.
…
In October 1908, two great business opportunities appeared to European and American capitalists and Wall Street. The first was the well-known American General Motors Company, and the second was Pemex. The former was ridiculed by all capitalist giants.
, this year's automobiles in the United States were also belittled as road killers by wealthy horse-drawn carriage sellers, and the latter were simply regarded as the best investment opportunities.
Anyone who is slightly familiar with history knows that investing in the former is definitely one of the best transactions in history, while investing in the latter will be the most destructive transaction in history.
After a short one-week honeymoon in Wallingford, a small town in Connecticut, Song Biao couldn't wait to visit the Winchester Arms Company in New Haven. During the Russo-Japanese War, he almost used the Winchester Company
He defeated the Japanese army with shotguns, which left a deep impression on him about this company.
The reason why Song Biao came to Winchester Company at this time was precisely because this company was facing a serious economic crisis during peacetime. Although it received a large number of orders during World War I and had a special period of prosperity,
After World War I, the Winchester Company entered an unstoppable decline.
In addition, Song Biao also made an appointment with John Moses Browning to meet in New Haven. At this time, John Moses Browning was still in Belgium and it was estimated that he would arrive in New Haven in three days. This meant that
So Song Biao was going to spend three days in New Haven looking for something.
This is not the first time that Song Biao has contacted John Moses Browning. In order to invite this talented designer to join, he has promised many conditions, but in the end he failed to get what he wanted.
New Haven is a classic gun city in the United States. Almost 1/3 of the industries in this city are related to the military industry. Similarly, it is also the location of Yale University.
Although the United States is riding a wave of new industry, what Song Biao saw in New Haven was still too traditional traces of the old era. The city's industry was gradually lagging behind the big era, and was gradually falling out of the sequence of American industrial cities.
Exit.
After the termination of the cooperation with John Moses Browning, Winchester Company found a new young designer Thomas Johnson to take charge of the firearms design and production business, because Song Biao was an important customer of Winchester Company
, is actually the only major customer, Thomas Johnson, who is already the company's chief designer, is personally responsible for receiving Song Biao.
This is an Irish mechanical expert. At the age of 27, he succeeded the famous J.M. Browning as the designer of Winchester Company. In the past six years, he launched the m1903m1905m1907 for Winchester Company.
Three self-loading rifles, this is a series of continuous improvements of automatic rifles.
In order to solve the company's survival problem. In the past three years, Winchester Company has been supplying 8mm Mauser rifle bullets, 7.62r rifle bullets, 75mm artillery shells and three-inch artillery shells to the Northeast New Army at low prices. According to the Northeast New Army
military
Needed, Winchester Company specially developed the M1894 repeating shotgun based on the m1894 repeating shotgun. This is a special shotgun specially used for trench warfare. The barrel is shorter and has a hole.
Design of steel plate heat shield and bayonet seat.
With the formal introduction of Madsen machine guns into the Northeastern New Army on a large scale, as well as the reorganization of the Far East Ordnance Company and the increase in production capacity of its subordinate factories, the orders Winchester received from the Northeastern New Army in 1908 were gradually decreasing.
Thomas Johnson decided to take advantage of Song Biao's personal inspection of the Winchester Company and recommend the new m1907 self-loading rifle to Song Biao in order to reverse the current situation of the Winchester Company.
After visiting the Winchester Company, Song Biao already knew that this company would not last long. When the Benxi Arsenal, a joint venture between the Far East Ordnance Company and Germany, was trying to adopt streamlined operations and completely adopted the latest German equipment.
, while improving production efficiency and quality on a large scale, this old weapons company is still stuck at the level of the late 19th century. Although the gap is only ten years, it is already fatal.
In this noisy and roaring workshop, Song Biao was lucky enough to see with his own eyes every step of the production process of the m1907 self-loading rifle. Although he has not actually used it yet, he believes that this is a pretty good semi-automatic rifle.
, but its shortcomings are very obvious. Firstly, the bolt machine has not kept up with the current development trend. Secondly, during the loading process, the magazine can only be inserted directly, and it needs to be loaded into the magazine one by one before it can be used.
Although it was his first time to meet Song Biao, Thomas Johnson still recommended it to him very enthusiastically: "Your Excellency, General, this is the most advanced rifle in the world. It can fire 20 rounds of bullets continuously and is automatically loaded.
There is no need for manual reloading and the rate of fire is very fast, which can help you defeat all enemies."
Song Biao calmly continued to watch the workers in front of him processing the gun barrel on the lathe, without making any reply to Thomas Johnson.
This made everyone present feel a little embarrassed. J.W. Grant, the general manager of Winchester Company, couldn't wait to wink at his designer, hoping that Thomas Johnson could make some more valuable recommendations.
Song Biao's Northeastern New Army is a real big buyer. It is said that it has just signed a huge contract worth several million pounds with Germany. If such a contract can allocate 1/5 to the Winchester Company, all this will be
It has greatly helped Winchester Company overcome the current difficulties.
Thomas Johnson thought for a moment and asked Song Biao: "There is a shooting range near the factory. Do you want to try out this most advanced rifle in the world for yourself?"
Song Biao was somewhat interested in this proposal. He nodded, took an m1907 self-loading rifle from Grunt, and tried to operate it. The special thing about this rifle is that it is not based on Springfield.
The rifle, Mauser rifle, and Mosin-Nagant rifle are improved on the basis of mature modern rifles, but based on the traditional Winchester lever-action rifle.
Song Biao deliberately removed the ammunition and reloaded it. As expected, it was the same as what he had learned before. When loading bullets, only the magazine could be used. This was similar to modern automatic rifles.
As a groundbreaking semi-automatic rifle, the M1907 self-loading rifle boldly uses box magazines, bolt recoil springs and safety mechanisms. All three of these are innovative at present, and most of these come from Thomas Johnson's
design.
The Winchester Company's factory itself is located in the suburbs of New Haven. There is a large forest grassland and a ready-made experimental site outdoors. Accompanied by others, Song Biao walked to the experimental area outside the factory and faced the fixed target here.
Six rounds of ammunition were fired.
The rate of fire is definitely very good. The shortcomings of the traditional bolt action of the lever-action rifle have been reversed in this new improvement. However, compared with the rotating rear-pull bolt action, it still has the fatal flaw of insufficient accuracy.
Winchester uses .30 and .40, two of the most common ammunition in the United States. Round-nose bullets, the bullet has a large powder chamber capacity. It relies on the huge gunpowder thrust to automatically trigger the recoil spring device, but its range
It can only be tragically reduced. The shooting accuracy cannot be compared with modern rifles such as Mauser and Mosin Nagant rifles.
After firing a few rounds, Song Biao handed the rifle to Zhang Futian who was accompanying him and let him experience it. Then he asked Glenn and Thomas Johnson: "What did the US military say?"
Grunt immediately responded confidently: "The Army is undergoing intensive testing and is very interested in it. It should be officially put into service soon. This will be a huge contract. With our excellent design and
Perfect reputation, there will be no doubt about it. When the American army installs this most advanced rifle in the world, other countries will be eager to negotiate with us! Your Excellency, we have a very special relationship with you.
A great partnership, I recommend you buy it as soon as possible.”
Song Biao took out a pack of British American Tobacco cigarettes from his trouser pocket, and Grant immediately lit a match for him.
Smoking a cigarette, Song Biao thought about it in silence, and then said to Grunt: "If what you are telling the truth, at least half of it, is true, I don't think the United States will install this kind of rifle, even if it is just for trial now.
For a moment, if we consider the issue from the perspective of the military, we can only say that this is a very good civilian rifle. It is a pity."
"Did you judge such a special thing prematurely?"
Grunt seemed a little embarrassed, because the U.S. Army had rejected this new type of rifle more than once, for the same reason - the same bullet, lower range, lower power, lower accuracy, and finally...
Allowing soldiers to squander large amounts of ammunition, the prices become even more outrageous.
The comment "the price is outrageous" is definitely a bit excessive. Because the bolt and magazine structure of the m1907 self-loading rifle is very simple, it only requires very ordinary equipment to produce, and the cost is not high. At most, it is a Winchester
In the first quotation, the company was a little too confident and wanted to make huge profits. After that, it gave very low quotations twice. Even so, after all, it was impossible to lower the quotation than the Springfield rifle.
In addition, the US military's other comments are simply very appropriate.
Song Biao felt that the problem should be viewed from two angles. For example, cavalry had better results in using this kind of rifle. Therefore, for western cowboys, the sales of this kind of rifle were still good, but they were far from enough.
To the extent that the crisis at Winchester Company was resolved.
As for the crisis of Winchester Company, it is actually very simple, because there are so many small firearms companies in the United States, the market is saturated, labor costs are high, and the prices of firearms are so low that the companies lack enough profits, and this old company
The company retains too many problems related to production efficiency, so it is difficult to continue to develop.
Song Biao smoked half a cigarette before continuing to reply to Grunt: "I think you should know better than me. It should be said that this may be a good rifle, but it is a little unsuitable for use by the army. If you want
To occupy the military market, you must change to a new type of gun. If possible, you can send two hundred m
1907 comes to my army for experimental use. If I determine that I need to purchase a batch and verify that it can adapt to various complex environments, I will need you to change the bullet. I must use one that can use a new pointed bullet.
7.62mm R-type bullet, because I don’t have to buy another rifle bullet for this.”
His answer was simply the best news for Grant and Thomas Johnson. Both of them had expressions of gratitude and thanked Song Biao for giving them such an opportunity, because since the m1903 self-loading rifle was verified by the US Army
After being approved as unqualified, the subsequent two improved models did not even have a chance to be verified.
Song Biao said: "Although its range is a problem, its power is a problem, and even its accuracy is a problem, weapons are always flexible. An excellent army should be able to use different weapons to produce different effects. Consider your company
You have provided me with a lot of cheap ammunition in the past, and I heard that your recent situation is not very good. It is necessary for me to give you some help as much as I can, but I am very sorry.
In other words, the shortcomings of this kind of weapon are very obvious. Even if I finally buy a batch, it can only be used as a special weapon rather than a formal large-scale deployment of the army. In addition, if you don't give up the lever-action rifle,
Tradition, the arms market can only give up on the tradition of Winchester. It needs to move forward with the times and needs innovation and better inspiration. My friends, you should never lose money."
George Galent sighed: "Yes, you are right, but the board of directors will definitely not approve our idea."
Song Biao said: "Then change the board of directors. If they don't want to go bankrupt, I would be interested in investing in this company."
"Is that so?"
George W. Grant seemed to notice a new smell spreading in the air, which made him feel slightly surprised. Although it is always unpleasant to change a boss, it is inevitable that there will be a new manager and he will be dismissed.
Some old employees, but for an old company, this is a new opportunity.
George Grant very carefully invited Song Biao to inspect other parts of the factory. When he was far away from other employees and only accompanied by Thomas Johnson and other Song Biao's subordinates, he was more cautious and tested with Song Biao.
asked: "As for your investment in Winchester Company, how much are you willing to invest, or in other words, at what price are you willing to buy it?"
Song Biao has no serious plan to buy this company, saying: "It's hard to say. Although I have plans in this regard, even if I want to take action, I will first discuss it with my partners in the United States. Regarding Winches
Specifically speaking, this is a company with a long history. To me, this is just a business. History is used to pass on and change. Only this process is the progress of mankind, isn't it? There are always
It's such a sad fact that some companies will be eliminated, my friends."
George Galent still insisted and asked: "Can you give an approximate price?"
Only then did Song Biao realize that the shareholders of Winchester Company were indeed interested in selling the company. There is no doubt that in the United States at this time, investing in arms companies was definitely an industry with the lowest return on investment.
He thought for a while and simply replied: "In addition to the price of equipment and venue, given its special history, I might offer a price of one million US dollars for it."
George Grant couldn't help but said: "This is not possible."
Song Biao sneered indifferently and said: "Yes, the problem now is that those who want to sell want a higher price, while those who want to buy always feel that it is not worth it. In short, this is something that I am afraid will never be discussed properly.
.”
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