"Folks, remember to come and get your things after dinner. The military headquarters has given us rubber shoes." In the No. 3 section of the main canal, Zhao Sixi was posting an announcement on the bulletin board. He went to the regiment headquarters to copy the announcement.
Because Sixi is literate, he is now a deputy section clerk in the Third Regiment of Hegong, which can be regarded as a small cadre. His father is in the Third Regiment, and his mother is not in the establishment and is an outside worker. She usually works in the nursery of the regiment.
Responsible for taking care of children.
Because the adults have to go to work, the younger children among the refugees are all put into nurseries for intensive care, and the older ones are sent to school.
This project was very large. Huai Haijun recruited nearly one million refugees in Henan, Anhui and other places, and more than half of these refugees were young men and women.
In order to facilitate management, the Huaihai Navy organized young people into engineering regiments. Each regiment had two thousand people, plus four to five thousand people including their families. Each regiment was responsible for the engineering of a river section, and the regiment headquarters was located nearby.
Now the number of workers on the river is still increasing. Hongze Lake has harmed the local area for many years. When I heard that the Huaihai Navy was managing Hongze Lake, many people around Hongze Lake spontaneously rushed to the construction site to participate in the construction.
After the main canal is built, tens of millions of acres of high-quality paddy fields will be added around Hongze Lake and on both sides of the main canal. These fields can almost feed the population of a province.
This is why Dong Shuheng wanted to build this main canal despite selling iron.
On average, tens of thousands of taels of silver are spent on this project every day. This is because workers are not paid.
Without wages, are these refugees still willing to work here?
Yes, this is because Huai Haijun promised that after the river channel is built, each household will be allocated ten acres of paddy field. This temptation for the people is really too great.
They all dig this river as their own river. In the future, their fields will be irrigated by this river.
So everyone is very motivated, not to mention that Huaihai Haijun is in charge of three meals a day and full of white rice. They are all white Nanyang rice! What else is there to complain about?
"Sixi, why hasn't your mother helped you find a wife? You're already an official. How can you not have a wife after you become an official?" a middle-aged man joked.
"Hurry up and shut your mouth. It's your turn to take care of whether our family, Sixi, takes a wife or not." At this time, Sixi's father walked out of the crowd.
He patted Si Xi on the shoulder. His son is now his pride. Si Xi is now a cadre of the Huai Navy. Although he is a low-ranking official, this is unprecedented in the old Zhao family. Their family used to be just a cadre.
Just a small landowner.
"Everyone, please stop talking. Listen to me. The Army Logistics Department has transferred a batch of rubber shoes to us. Only those who go to the river can receive them. After dinner, everyone, remember to go to the warehouse to register and collect them."
These rubber shoes are a good thing. It turns out that when the weather is warm, river workers go out to dig in the mud with bare feet because they are afraid of wasting their shoes. The mud on the river bed tends to stick to their shoes, so they wear cloth shoes when working in the river, and the shoes break down after a few times.
It's getting cold now, so of course I can't go barefoot anymore.
It's different when you put on rubber shoes. Moisture can't penetrate and your socks won't get wet, so you won't get too cold.
However, this kind of shoes is only produced by Huaihai Haijun. Huaihai Company's shoe factory has mastered the rubber vulcanization process and can make rubber strong and durable.
These kind of shoes are very expensive outside and are not affordable for ordinary people. Now the military is willing to give them to the river workers. How can we not impress the river workers?
In fact, Huai Haijun did this mainly to meet the construction deadline. In the past, work on the construction site had to be stopped when the weather was so cold.
However, the finishing work of the project will have to be done before the spring floods next spring, so the construction of the main river channel must be completed this winter.
"There is one more thing. I have been informed by the superiors that a senior official from the imperial court will come to inspect our construction site in the next few days. Everyone just needs to do their own thing. Don't watch around and don't talk nonsense." Sixi said another notice.
.Then he left the construction site and went back to the warehouse to sort out the materials.
No one cares about the arrival of high-ranking officials in the imperial court. Anyway, everyone is eating from Huai Haijun and working hard for Mr. Dong. Under the propaganda of managers at all levels, the river workers have now formed this understanding.
…
Shao Can walked eastward along the river project, stopping at each section to express condolences to the river project.
It must be said that digging river channels in this cold weather is really a very hard job. People will sweat when working, so although river workers are given cotton-padded clothes, most of them will take them off and put them on the bank.
In the river, you can see some young men wearing single clothes, shouting slogans, and digging hard.
The soil is dug into baskets, and then someone hangs the baskets on a slip made of steel ropes. People on the shore control the steam engine to drive the winch to pull the baskets filled with soil to the shore along the ropeway.
It was this invention that greatly improved the efficiency of river construction. The steam engine is a power source. As long as you can think of it, it can be used in many places.
"What is that?" Shao Can asked, pointing to the steam engine on the shore.
"Oh, sir, it seems to be called a steam engine, which is similar to those used on steamboats, but much smaller. I learned this from foreigners." The prefect of Huai'an explained that he had been in the Huaihai Navy's territory, so he
I understand these things more or less.
Moreover, the prefect of Huai'an also followed other people's example and purchased machinery to set up several factories, which increased his income every year. His factories also had steam engines.
"It's such an artifact. It's much more powerful than oxen and horses. You see, as long as one person controls it, it can at least catch up with the efficiency of dozens of oxen and horses." Shao Can sighed.
He is not the kind of ignorant person, nor is he the kind of old stubborn who denounces "obscene and strange things" when he sees something good.
Along the way, Shao Can felt very good. The construction site here was different from what he had seen before.
First, the mental outlook of the river workers is relatively good and full of motivation. Not all of them are skinny and lifeless.
Second, the construction site was in good order. There was no cheating or cheating, and there was no mess like a hammer here and a hammer here and there.
He has already worked on two construction sections, each of which is responsible for about 10 kilometers of river. If this project is constructed in sections all the way to the estuary, how much manpower will be used? Shao Can decided that he must complete the entire river.
He has been deeply attracted by this river project.
Such a large-scale project has probably never been done since the Qing Dynasty. Shao Can has now forgotten about fame and fortune, and suppressing the Huai Navy. Anyway, he is also the governor of the river, and he is in charge of managing the river. There is nothing wrong with it.
The deeper he went, the more shocked Shao Can was. This river project actually had a complete and scientific management system.
First of all, each river section has a management organization, which is in-depth at every level.
Looking at the history of peasant uprisings in ancient China, you will find that many uprisings took place on river works.
On the one hand, the corvee service in ancient times was very heavy, and the treatment of river workers was so poor that it was easy for people to harbor resentment.
On the other hand, Hegong is a place where people gather, and these farmers can easily be incited by people who are interested in gathering together.
The construction site here is tightly organized, with river sections as the basic unit. Each river section is divided into types of work, and large types of work are also grouped according to the number of people. This way, all river workers who repair the river can be completely controlled.
Secondly, there is also a set of patterns for the division of labor in repairing rivers.
River excavation is divided into many processes, and manpower is allocated to each process according to needs.
Those processes that consume a lot of physical strength are usually assigned to young people, while some older and weaker people do jobs that require relatively less physical exertion.
Even things like washing, cooking, and taking care of the children are all taken care of by our own people.
At every station along the river, he saw a school where half-grown children were studying and studying with their husbands.
It is unprecedented to move the teachings of saints to the construction site of river control.
Shao Can stopped outside the school for a long time. The school taught some basic literacy and arithmetic courses. But Shao Can did not look down on them. It was a great honor to be able to study under such difficult conditions.
He recalled that when he was a child, he was studying in school, and there were often some children from poor families standing outside the school to watch from a distance.
Now all the children of the homeless river workers here can go to school. Is this the work of Huai Haijun?
Who is directing this project behind the scenes? No one in the court that I know can do this. Even if it is led by Huai Haijun, there must be someone who is well versed in water conservancy construction to be in charge of it.
…
Before the end of the year, a plenary meeting of the Huai Navy was held in Yangzhou. At the meeting, Zeng Xianfeng gave a government work report to all participants, and Dong Shuheng, as the commander-in-chief of the Huai Navy, gave a military report.
The third year of Xianfeng was the beginning year of the Huai Navy. In this year, the Huai Navy developed from scratch into a local force that controlled the military and administration of Jiangsu Province.
In terms of politics, Huai Haijun controlled the management of the entire Jiangsu through the military government and cultivated a group of political talents of his own. Although these people were transformed from the original scholar candidates, staff, and masters, they were able to control Huai Hai.
The army's policies are effectively implemented.
In terms of military affairs, the Huaihai Navy's regular army has grown from scratch to about 50,000 people. In addition, it has also cultivated hundreds of thousands of reserve militia forces. On the surface, the Huaihai Navy is not the strongest among the national military forces. However,
If we consider comprehensively from the aspects of equipment, personnel quality, mobilization capabilities, etc., no army can defeat the Huaihai Navy alone.
In terms of business, Huaihai Company has grown dozens of times in size from small to large. Its business covers the whole country and surrounding vassal states, and has even extended its tentacles to North and South America on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
From scratch, the Yangtze River Group has become a conglomerate focusing on light industry and finance. It has become a model for the development of national capital.
There was another important person who did not come to the meeting, that is Mr. Feng Daoli, who is responsible for the "Three Horizontal and One Vertical" project and has been fighting hard on the front line of water conservancy projects.
The old gentleman got sick recently. The weather was too cold. He was running around on the construction site even though he was still young, and he contracted the cold. He was forcibly sent back to Yangzhou by several disciples, and is now being treated in a Yangzhou hospital.
Dong Shuheng made a special trip to visit the old man. The old man's only request to Dong Shuheng was that he should return to the construction site as soon as possible.