Lord of Industrialization

As soon as the calendar turned to March, the rain kept falling from the sky, which was annoying.

As soon as she got to work today, Chief Secretary Vanessa sent several letters of negotiation from the parliament.

Some people think that the docks on the moat south of Weisenburg Castle have affected the expansion of the city. They suggest moving all the docks to Oak City, then building a new city in the south of the city and building a bridge across the moat.

Some people think that Archduke Wesson does not have his own official palace, and it is inconvenient for the principality government and the state government to be squeezed into one building. They suggest building a new palace and office building.

Some people also suggested that since so many architects have been invited recently, it is better to let them design palaces, office buildings, opera houses and concert halls for the Principality of Wesson.

After reading them all, Frederick replied "Send it to the relevant departments for feasibility study." After putting down his pen, he looked at the time and picked up the thermos cup to attend this month's regular meeting of the Supreme Council of Ministers.

When everyone arrived, Frederick drank some tea, tapped the table with a thermos cup, and went straight to the topic without saying any empty words. He asked directly: "Ministry of Foreign Affairs, how is the investigation of that matter?"

The other ministers suddenly looked at Baron Christian, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, wondering whether it was related to the treaty of the Elbe Treaty Organization?

This treaty has been discussed many times at the meeting, and there is basically no problem. I guess it is to investigate other people's views on the treaty.

Christian had recently been in charge of receiving nobles of all sizes from the forest, ocean and Elbe valleys. Frederick asked him to inquire about the mysterious messenger.

He said: "This winter there are some people pretending to be our envoys and operating in the north. On the surface, they are persuading nobles from various places to join the Elbe River Convention Organization led by us. In fact, they are instilling in them that we are ready to build the railway to their doorsteps."

"They endorsed it with your speech in the Helvetia Federation. Many people believed it and came here because they could make a fortune by building the railway."

After he finished speaking, Minister of Administration Frick immediately said: "We have no such plan. According to the plan, our next railway construction funds will mainly be used to build a railway to the Great Gulf with the Osmaga Empire."

Finance Minister Erhard even said with a straight face: "There is no room for this project in this year's budget."

Giovanni, the president of Wesson Bank, frowned and said: "We issued an astonishing amount of bonds last year. Before more than half of them are repaid, the credit rating of the newly issued bonds will be greatly reduced, and the continuous large-scale issuance of bonds will inevitably cause chaos in the market. panic."

In the past few years, everyone has seen that Frederick was obsessed with building railways, but everything required money. Giovanni was worried that he would have to issue bonds again. Given the current situation, the gains outweighed the losses.

Now they made it clear that they had no money, lest Frederick agree to the matter, in the end it would be them who would make the money.

Minister of Railways... There is currently no minister in the Ministry of Railways, only an acting one.

Albert von Mainz, who originally managed the railway system, sold Frederick last year. Frederick wanted to beat him up, but he was resistant, so he was not included in the list after the reform of government departments this time. name.

The person who currently manages the daily work of the Ministry of Railways is Albert von Maybach, a senior lawyer who used to lead the legal department in the railway system. He comes from a riverside city more than 100 kilometers northeast of Cologne. His father is the mayor. .

After the railway system was reformed into the Ministry of Railways, he had the highest salary in the entire ministry, so Frederick asked him to serve as acting minister first to support his work.

Maybach was helpless when he received the appointment. He had some understanding of railway management and could only talk on paper. He wanted to refuse, but he was reluctant to pay a higher income than his father, who was the mayor.

In addition, his son will graduate from Weisenberg University this year, and his daughter will graduate in two years. She has to be in a high position to help arrange a good job, so he can only rush to get it on the shelves.

Maybach did not express his position immediately, but began to think.

Adam, the Minister of Commerce next to him, said angrily: "This is a conspiracy. The upfront investment in the railway is huge and cannot be repaid in the short term. This forces us to use our limited resources on it and squeeze out funds from other places."

Adam has been studying the impact of railways on business in the past few years. One of the topics is the relationship between the time it takes to recover the cost of railway construction, the cost of railway transportation, and the impact of transportation costs on business.

If the railway wants to recover its capital in the short term, it must increase transportation prices. When transportation costs are high, the cost of goods will increase. High commodity prices will affect business prosperity. This needs to reach a balance.

Adam's preliminary conclusion is that it is most beneficial for the railway to recover its costs within 10 years at the earliest and 15 years at the best.

He briefly explained this theory to everyone, and everyone thought it made sense.

"Yes." Father Arms, the Minister of Education, agreed. "The 'Tinder Plan' we started this year needs to popularize basic education to three new states within three years. School construction alone requires a lot of funds. If the funds are insufficient, Oh no."

Father Arms is like a kind old priest on weekdays, and will not get angry no matter how much he contradicts or gets into trouble, but when it comes to departmental interests and wants to grab cakes, he transforms into a brave paladin.

Now seeing that the limited funds may be reduced again, he immediately jumped out to protect his own plate.

Frederick said very solemnly: "Don't worry, even if I only drink mushy peas, the Ministry of Education's funding will not be reduced by a copper coin."

Father Arms was reassured by his statement, but everyone else was nervous.

In addition to serving as Army Commander, Franz Jr. also served as Minister of Military Affairs, responsible for communicating with local governments.

He was the second to jump out: "A new round of recruitment will begin this month, new weapons and clothing will be purchased, and we will also prepare for the 'Destruction Mushroom-1035' large-scale exercise and the Shield series of exercises."

Frederick decided to send troops to the Kingdom of Tarago to assist Archduke Suarez in defending the Kingdom of Madeira. He is expected to set off next year and start preparations this year.

This year we need to change our military uniforms, which is very expensive and there is no way to reduce military expenditures.

Frederick waved his hand to signal him to stop talking.

"This matter is not about whether to build the railway." Frederick thought that these guys were too protective of the food. "The key is who is leading this matter. There is no clue at the moment."

"Be careful in the next work. The man behind the scenes is targeting the railway this time. I don't know who he will target next time."

This is what worries him the most. As the saying goes, if you start a rumor, you will lose your legs if you refute it. Who knows what new tricks will come out in the future.

Frederick continued: "This also involves an issue. A few days ago, newspapers reported that someone pretended to be a police officer and stopped vehicles on the road to fine them, which caused a very bad impact."

"The Administration Department took the lead and asked universities and the Academy of Sciences for help to research a logo for public officials who go out to perform official duties."

Frick immediately agreed.

Frederick said to Maybach: "I will ask the secretary to send you a document later. I will discuss it with Professor Adam in the next two days and publish an article in the Wesson Daily to mention the concept of the railway network. More Talk about nonsense."

Now it is difficult for Maybach to study how to improve railway punctuality, but he is very good at asking him to write some pragmatic articles.

For Frederick, such rumors that could not be fulfilled in a short time were easy to solve. Just draw a big pie. A leader who cannot draw a pie is an unqualified leader.

The biggest problem is how to deal with other people pretending to be their own messengers. What if those fakes kill people and set fires next time? The flow of information is still not smooth now, and it can easily cause bad effects.

Frederick thought of ID photos, and it seemed that he could get silver salt photos.

The railway rumor matter was settled in this way. Maybe the other party did not expect that there was a fifty-year railway construction plan in Frederick's filing cabinet.

Next are the issues raised by various departments that require Frederick's decision and coordination with other departments.

These issues are summarized in advance to the Secretariat of the Supreme Council of Ministers and distributed to various ministries three days in advance together with the monthly work briefing.

The first issue is that Agriculture Minister Monoflo proposed that to reclaim more farmland in New South Wales, the Ministry of Transportation needs to cooperate with road construction. He also proposed that now that artificial insemination technology has become practical, the Ministry of Commerce needs to take the lead in purchasing high-quality breeding livestock from various places.

The Ministry of Transportation asked the Ministry of Agriculture to come up with a reclamation plan. The Ministry of Commerce said, "Aren't you bothered by this matter that you have been nagging about since last year? Who doesn't keep good breeding animals as treasures? Do you want Master Juggernaut to go and destroy other people's big ones?" Get the fat pig back?

Frederick instructed the Ministry of Commerce: Throw money!

Next, Minister of Industry Monnarz said that after the World Expo, all factories are operating at full capacity, and several new industrial parks are expected to be put into use in six months. However, the Ministry of Construction’s low-rent housing cannot keep up, and workers cannot be allowed to Live in a tent.

Construction Minister Edward Edwards said that the supply of red bricks, cement, steel bars and other building materials is currently tight, but he will strive to cap off a number of "peach blossom stone buildings" before the end of August.

Frederick couldn't do anything about it. These were in short supply, and now some people began to steal steel bars from construction sites.

The meeting lasted all morning, and after Frederick returned to the office, he ate chicken rolls and studied the 1034 financial report that had just been completed.

There were large expenditures in 1033 and 1034, and the government's finances suddenly became very dangerous.

Fortunately, the stamp duty from the first World Exposition was repaid, and the first batch of physical repayments of the Friendship Bonds were repaid before the rivers were frozen last year. From the report, the deficit is not very large.

At the same time, the latest data on Friendship Bonds were sent. After the river thawed and opened to navigation last month, the second batch of physical repayments began to arrive, transporting away the goods accumulated over the winter.

Last year's World Exposition signed a contract worth more than 12 million florins, of which 10 million florins were used as friendship bonds. This means that the factory in Wesson received an order of this amount.

Judging from the current situation, at least 90% of the orders can be completed before the opening of this year's second World Expo.

Frederick calculated on his fingers that from this alone, the factory could provide at least one million florins in tax revenue.

But as the territory grows, investment also increases, and life seems less comfortable than imagined.