1855 United States Tycoon

In January 1896, Mr. Sun Wen left Japan and took a boat to United States with some anti-Qing scholars. According to his prior agreement with Chen Guang, those lofty people there will receive a half-year training from the United States Blackwater Security Company, and then they will decide whether to continue their "advanced studies" based on the situation. And Mr. Sun himself, through Chen Guang’s matchmaking, met some senior officials of the Macdonald Consortium. According to the research of some later experts, he even stayed in Duck Castle or a large laboratory, almost living in seclusion. Gao Zhi also met with Mr. Sun. However, this claim has not been corroborated by any reliable historical materials, neither in Mr. Sun’s letters nor in Scrooge’s memoirs. However, since then, in the process of China’s old democratic revolution, we can indeed find the figure hidden behind the MacDonald Consortium. At the same time, we can also observe that with China’s old democratic revolution, and thereafter. With the formation of the separatist regime, the business of the Macdonald Consortium has gradually penetrated into China.

However, to be honest, China’s trading is not yet the top priority of the Macdonald Consortium. Today, on the Macdonald Consortium’s schedule, the most important issues are the following two: the currency standard problem and the development of new ones. The problem of the market.

In recent years, the economic situation has not been particularly good. The economic crises in Europe have been one after another, and the situation in United States is slightly better. Because the vast west can always provide some cushion for the United States, just like the later Chitu country, when the international economy is not prosperous, it can use the western development to solve part of the problem of insufficient demand, the United States The west also played a buffer role.

Over the years, the vast west has been constantly accommodating more new immigrants, which has greatly eased the crisis in the United States. However, as the west has been gradually developed, its ability to alleviate the economic crisis has gradually declined. The economic crisis that swept the world in 1893 had just hit the United States economy severely, causing the United States economy to suffer even greater losses than the United Kingdom. Today, United States, to be more precise, Scrooge and a large number of wealthy people represented by him urgently need a larger market exclusively for United States.

For United States, the South American continent is almost a natural accessory of the North American continent. If European power can be expelled from South America, then the vast market in South America will be enough to ease the economic pressure for a long time. To do this, it is necessary to win Cuba, because Cuba is now the most important stronghold of European countries in America, especially Central America and South America. Unplug this stronghold, European power will not have a useful foothold in Central America and South America. In this era of gunboat diplomacy, there is no reliable naval base close enough to provide supplies and maintenance, and the navy’s combat effectiveness will be Greatly affected. And without a strong navy, what kind of gunboat diplomacy is there to play?

It is true that in addition to Cuba, Europeans have other footholds in South America, such as French Guiana, and the Falkland Islands controlled by the British. But none of them can compare with Cuba. The port of French Guiana is rather rudimentary, only that it can dock some ordinary cargo ships. It does not have all the docking equipment necessary for ship repairs, and there is no large coal storage or ammunition storage that can support a large-scale combat fleet. As for Falkland, in addition to the above problems, there is also the problem of being too south and too far away from Central America. Therefore, once Cuba is taken, most of the European influence in South America can be said to be squeezed out. The European market in South America depends to a large extent on their ability to project power in America. Without the support of military power, the loss of the America market can almost be foreseen immediately.

Therefore, Cuba is not only completely taxed and sucked blood from the colonies like Spain, but also extremely important for vampires who sell colonial resources, and it is also extremely important for European industrial countries like the United Kingdom. Even in a sense, Cuba’s importance to Britain is not much lower than its importance to Spain.

In terms of military power alone, the strength of the United States navy and army has long surpassed that of Spain. If other factors were not taken into consideration, it would have been possible to take Cuba directly. The main reason why I haven't done anything is that I care about the British. After all, even though the people of United States claimed that they had won a great victory in the Second American-British War, if someone asked the United States if they wanted to be so great again, the people of United States would definitely not want to. For the world's biggest British guy, the United States people were still a little scared at the time.

Therefore, if you want to control the entire America, you must first control Cuba. If you want to control Cuba, you must first defeat Spain. If you want to defeat Spain, you must first... wait, etc., it must not be deduced like this anymore, because If you really want to derive in this way, it will become a full Japanese-style strategic deduction. The final result must be something similar to "To resolve the China Incident, you must obtain oil from Southeast Asia, and to obtain oil from Southeast Asia, you must defeat United States...", replacing the previous one with a greater danger. Smaller troublesome strategic ideas. And United States can't embark on such a path. So at this most critical step, the strategy of the United States people has become "must wait for the British guy to have problems first."

The United Kingdom controls a quarter of the world's land with only a small island on its own, with a territorial area of ​​33.67 million square kilometers, and as many as 400 million foreign races under its control. It's strange that there is no problem with such a large area. Now, the problem has appeared, and it is getting more and more serious, and that is the South African problem. Taking advantage of the British being entangled by South Africa, it will be a rare good opportunity to take action against Spain.

But now, even this issue is not the biggest issue the Macdonald Consortium has to face and deal with. At present, the most important issue is how to change the United States currency from a gold and silver composite standard system to a direct gold standard.

United States has always implemented a gold and silver composite standard system, which means that gold and silver are recognized as legal tender at the same time. As long as the advantage is the convenience of coining, for example, since 1792, according to the law, silver coins of ten dollars, five dollars, and up to 2.5 dollars are all gold coins, and one dollar to five cents are silver coins. One cent and 5% are copper coins. (If this rule can be continued, five cents can be higher than fifty cents.) If a single gold standard is used, there will be a problem that the fraction of one dollar to five cents is too small to be used.

United States law allows free coinage. In other words, as long as you have gold or silver in your hand, you can go to the mint and mint it into U.S. dollars. If the price ratio between gold and silver can be stable forever, this system is of course no problem. However, although the ratio of silver to gold is relatively stable, there are always changes. This brings a series of problems.

The "Coin Law of 1792" stipulated that the ratio of gold and silver was 1:15, but by the beginning of the 19th century, Russia's gold mines were exhausted, but Mexico discovered large silver mines. As a result, gold appreciated in the international market and silver depreciated. By 1805, the ratio of gold and silver had become 1:15.75. As a result, a large number of speculators soon appeared. They first took US dollar gold coins and went to the market to buy silver at a price of 1:15.75, and then minted the silver into US dollar silver coins, and then went to the bank to exchange US dollar gold coins. In one of the processes, for every currency unit, he can earn 0.75 shares of silver. Not only did individuals do this, but banks did the same. As a result, the national gold reserve bottomed out almost in the blink of an eye, and there were no more US dollar coins on the market. Large commercial settlements have become particularly inconvenient. In the end, there was no alternative. The United States Congress had to revise the law and change the price ratio of gold and silver coins to 1:16.

However, only a few decades later, a big gold mine was discovered in San Francisco, United States, which triggered a gold rush. As a result, the price of gold fell sharply, so the above story was reversed. Silver coins became "good coins" and gold coins became "Bad money". Soon there were fewer and fewer silver coins in circulation in the market. By 1850, it was hard to see silver coins on the market. One of the consequences is that going to the streets to buy vegetables becomes very troublesome, because the large amount of gold coins cannot be found, so the grocery shopping and the aunt selling vegetables must bring a large amount of copper coins.

In order to solve this problem, in 1873, Congress finally made up its mind and passed the "Minting Reform Act", announcing the abolition of the legal tender status of silver and the implementation of the gold standard. The matter should have ended here, but damn it, the following year, there was an economic crisis in United States, and then, damnably, a large silver mine was discovered in the Midwest.

So some guys in the Midwest immediately began to clamor to restore the gold and silver composite standard system. They clamored "Tianzhu Minting Reform Law, return my silver coin casting rights" and rioted. This is not only because they have silver mines in their hands, but also because if the silver coin casting rights are opened, it will also stimulate the price increase on the market. For the local consortiums in the Midwest that owe the financial consortium in the east, there is also Is it a better legal method of arbitrage than inflation?

The guys from the Democrats jumped most aggressively on this issue. Because since the Civil War, the Democrats have been suppressed very much. Whether it is Congress or the White House, they have been dominated by the Republicans for a long time. Therefore, the Democratic Party had no choice but to stabilize the South as much as possible while seeking development in the Midwest. With the continuous influx of immigrants, the status of the Midwestern states on the political map has become more and more important. So after the discovery of silver mines in the Midwest, the Democratic Party immediately took the stand of the Midwestern states and shouted. And because of this, it has received widespread support in these states.

Of course, this requirement is not a good thing for financial capitalists represented by Morgan. This is firstly because if the gold and silver composite standard is re-implemented, a large amount of silver coins will flood the market, which will inevitably lead to inflation, which is definitely not a good thing for creditors. Therefore, Morgan and the others are naturally abhorrent to this request.

The McDonald Consortium’s attitude on this issue is relatively neutral. Compared with finance as the Morgan Consortium, the resurrection of silver coins has a smaller impact on the McDonald Consortium, which is the largest in the mining and manufacturing industry, and even to a certain extent, moderate inflation has certain benefits for the manufacturing industry. So the McDonald consortium's attitude on this issue is relatively ambiguous. There is even a faint meaning of support. This also led the Democrats to take this opportunity to fight a turnaround and regain control of Congress and the White House. In spite of the opposition of the Morgan consortium, they passed bills successively in order to restore the status of silver. This seriously affected the interests of the Morgan Consortium. Morgan knew that to drive these Democrats out of the White House and Capitol Hill, they must get the support and understanding of the McDonald Consortium. Therefore, Morgan, who seldom went out and walked around, came to Duck Castle in person to have a long conversation with Scrooge.

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