In the morning, the autumn wind blew, and the clock on the bell tower reached 7:30. Then the bell rang and echoed over Daye City. The streets, which were originally few pedestrians, began to walk out of the courtyards on both sides of the road.

These people have different heights, fatness, slim figures, but the same thing is all wearing gray clothes. The shapes of these clothes are similar, with the tops all having double-breasted, narrow sleeves, hem and hips. The pants are not common large-mouthed pants, but straight-leg pants.

Everyone has a rattan "hard helmet" on their heads and a knitted towel around their necks for sweating. This is a rare dress elsewhere. Only in Daye, only miners and smelters at Daye Ironmaking Institute wear "work clothes" and "go to and from get off work" on time every day.

At 7:30, there is still half an hour before working hours at 8:00, and the workers have to say goodbye to their families, take to the streets, go to the "unit" to "work" and start their day's work.

At this time, more and more workers gathered on the street, like countless ants gathering together, moving forward along the street.

The officials and soldiers standing at the intersection of the street to maintain "work order" appear much smaller in the surging crowd.

Among the crowd, some people greeted each other, some were eating the pancakes in their hands, and more people took out a copper coin or two when passing the street stalls and bought hot breakfast from the breakfast (chaoshi) vendors.

On the way workers must go to work, breakfast shops are lined up on both sides of the street, and vendors are busy by the steaming steamer, and there are all kinds of pastries.

There are cooked cakes, buns, and various small pastries, which are cheap and in sufficient quantity. Many workers at work are too lazy to make fires at home, so they choose to buy them while they are at work and eat them while walking.

Many families also choose to buy breakfast because it saves money than making a fire on their own. Even cooked water is purchased from cooked water shops all over the city, which is more cost-effective than boiling water on their own.

The crowd at work makes the breakfast shops crowded. In fact, many of these small vendors are workers' families. When selling breakfast, they meet old acquaintances and customers, and they keep saying hello. The stalls are crowded and lively.

The surging crowd continued to move forward, some crowded but congested, because the workers were walking on the left, and to the right of the street were people and carriages coming from each other.

Walking on the left is the rule of Daye City, because every commuter hours, the streets are crowded, and if there is no such regulation, it is easy to become a mess.

The reason why people have to go to the left rather than to the right is that most people get on the horse and get off the horse from the left side of the horse. If they drive on the right, people who get on the horse and carriage passing by the middle of the road are easily encountered by horses and carriages.

The bell sounded, and a carriage was slowly moving forward on the rails in the middle of the street. Because the workers were walking to the right in a regular manner, there was no one blocking the road on the track. The driver did not need to shout loudly to "give way", just ring the bell to remind everyone to pay attention to the carriage coming.

The carriage slowly moved forward, gradually moving away from the workers walking to work. In front of the track was a gatehouse. In addition to the main gatehouse, there were two small gatehouses on both sides.

Above the main door opening, a huge plaque hung with white background and black letters, with the letter: Daye Ironmaking Institute.

Behind the gatehouse, there was a strange scene: huge mines were shrouded in black smoke, with tunnels crisscrossing on the mountain, countless mine cars moving along the railway tracks, and explosions came from time to time in each tunnel.

At the foot of the mountain, black smoke was emitted from the tops of countless blast furnaces, and there were fires flashing in it. Various surrounding buildings were rising one after another, and there were jingling sounds coming from time to time. There were many stone elevated canals running across the road.

The entire Daye mine is like a burning incense burner or a huge flaming mountain. The fires are not extinguished day and night, and they are constantly emitting thick smoke. The smoke is stormy during the day, and the fires are lit at night.

Around the Daye Mine, countless workers are busy like ants. The crowds of people "going to work" and "geting off work" every day look like a group of gray ants moving from a distance.

This is the most strange scene in the world. Li Yuan, the governor of Ezhou and the Duke of Tang, looked at the scene in front of him and sighed at the huge scale of the Daye Iron Manufacturing Institute and the iron production that shocked the world.

Daye Ironmaking Institute has 46 new blast furnaces. Last year, the iron production exceeded 3 million kilograms, ranking first in the world.

The Daye Iron and Steel Institute hired more than 10,000 smelters and more than 20,000 miners. The entire Daye City has become a family area of ​​the Daye Iron and Steel Institute. In addition to the garrison, officials and family members, as well as ordinary residents and merchants, and more than 50,000 households inside and outside Daye City.

This is an amazing number. The number of households in Daye City alone exceeds that of many prefectures and counties in the world. This surprised Ezhou Governor Li Yuan, while also feeling frightened.

Li Yuan, dressed in official uniform, changed into a rattan "hard helmet". Accompanied by the officials of the Daye Ironmaking Institute, he began to inspect the giant smelting ground.

The day before yesterday, Li Yuan hosted Chen's envoy Xu Shanxin and his group in Xiakou. After handling several emergency official duties, he took a carriage to Daye for inspection.

Although the Daye Ironmaking Institute actually has its own system and does not require his nominal parental official to interfere, Daye City has too many people. If Li Yuan came here to check it out from time to time, he would not even sleep well.

There are cities in the world with more than 50,000 households, but Daye, Luoyang, Yecheng and even Chang'an are not comparable. What gathers here are not ordinary people, but a large number of workers.

These workers can distinguish between left and right, and will queue up. They have developed the habit of obeying orders and possess the so-called "organization" and "discipline". Once they are instigated by people with ulterior motives and cause trouble on a large scale, it is a great event.

Li Yuan knew that the working environment of miners and smelters was very difficult, so dissatisfaction was easy to accumulate, and once it was handled improperly, it would be exploited.

Tens of thousands of strong men gathered in a city, but they were not short of iron tools. Once they gathered together, they would be extremely destructive forces. In a hurry, even the garrison might not be able to suppress them.

So Li Yuan came to Daye from time to time to see if the workers were dissatisfied and whether the officials were too exploited. He even came to Daye from time to time to give the opportunity to give workers the opportunity to "block the road and shout for justice."

However, all the signs show that Li Yuan was over-thinking.

Daye Ironmaking Institute, formerly Daye Supervision, has now been "restructured" and has become a joint venture between officials and the people. In fact, the government is mainly responsible for supervision and does not interfere with specific operations.

The employees and workers of Daye Ironmaking Institute have "performance wages" from top to bottom, including commissions and bonuses, and it is very tiring to work, but "more work and more rewards" and the relevant reward and punishment system is improved, and it is fully seen that the amount of mine and iron output is "divided". In addition, there is also the amount of coal (carbide).

The Daye Ironmaking Institute used special iron craftsmanship when smelting iron, which was a process that was not available elsewhere, which was to use a lot of coal (carbide) as fuel, and these coals were also "coking coal" that had been specially treated.

Therefore, there are not only silver mines, copper mines, iron mines, but also many coal mines in Daye area. In order to ensure "increase production and income" and increase workers' enthusiasm for work, all subordinate "units" implement "performance wages".

More work is more rewarded, and the rewards and punishments are clear, and the basic treatment of workers is in place. The mining area and smelting area provide sufficient salt and boiling water to allow workers to replenish salt in time. When lunch starts, the meals in the "big canteen" are sufficient, and they are willing to put salt and salted egg slices.

Work-related injuries and disability, and deaths will be compensated. We will never be owed and paid in full. One measure ensures the welfare and income of employees and workers, and is enough for workers to support themselves and their family.

The treatment is good and "distributed according to work", while workers and their families do not need to pay rent and transfer, do not need to serve labor or military service. The implementation of this series of measures is one of the important guarantees for the soaring output of Daye Iron Manufacturing Institute.

In this regard, Li Yuan had made many on-site inspections and confirmed that it was correct, but he was used to visiting Daye, so he felt restless if he didn't come for a while.

At this moment, he was standing by the step-shaped reservoir on the hillside next to the lake to the southeast of Daye Ironmaking Station, looking at the "starting points" of stone elevated canals, looking at the chimneys with thick smoke, watching the unique machines roaring in front of him, and feeling the power of machinery.

The new iron-making blast furnace of Daye Ironmaking Institute requires water discharge to blow the air, and hydraulic hammers and iron-making equipment. These equipment need not operate by manpower or animal power.

The power of driving the water drain and the hydraulic forging hammer comes from the water wheels that are driven by water. There are so many blast furnaces and hydraulic forging hammers in the ironmaking station, which require a large amount of water drainage and blowing, so the huge water consumption makes the original stream and spring water not enough.

To this end, the craftsmen built elevated sinks and divert water from other places into the smelting area. There is a large lake in the southeast of Daye. The eastern end of this lake is bordered by the Yangtze River and connected with the river water, so it is the best water source.

But the question is, how to lift the lake water to the reservoir on the hillside and then lead it elsewhere through the elevated sink?

This problem is very tricky, but it was solved in the end, which was to use a very magical machine to pump water.

This kind of machine does not use human power or animal power to drive it, so it consumes not food and grass, but coal. It has powerful power, which is incredible.
Chapter completed!