The existence of the hard labor camp has a long history in the Changshan Iron Mine. The purpose was initially established to punish South African labor workers who were cheating or trying to escape while working. Later, due to the occasional harassment of the Chalua tribe and the Gaoqiao bandits, some of the above two types of people who were captured were also sent in. Over time, the hard labor camp became a permanent institution.

In the past six months, with the introduction of new regulations of the Executive Committee, prisoners have been sent to Changshan Iron Mine everywhere in the country. If these prisoners were in the past, they might have been able to "start a new life" in Ma Island, South Africa or New China. But now they are unlucky, and they all go to the notorious hard labor camps of Changshan Iron Mine to do heavy work.

Zhou Dahe was not even willing to stay in the hard labor camp for too long. The low, solid, dark residence like a cell, the dull and lifeless miner, the vicious supervisor who was walking around with his wolf dogs, all this had a great impact on Zhou Dahe. Especially after the Norwegian supervisor in charge of receiving, the cold eyes of the two looked at them after looking at their handling statements, Zhou Dahe felt an indescribable discomfort.

After leaving the house as if they were running away, Zhou Dahe, Ronald, Bogdan and others embarked on a journey back home. The journey back was relatively smooth. The small steamer they took to pull the ore sand from Changshan Iron Mine to Ping'an County, only took more than three days to arrive at Zhenhaigang, located at the mouth of Yazi Lake. In the middle, they only made a short stop at the dock of Xiayihe Fort, while replenishing water, they also added coal and water to the small steamer.

As the only node for north-south transportation, Zhenhai Port is at this time when the crowds are surging. After a group of new immigrants from the old continent came out of the quarantine camp, they were transported here by ship. Then the second dispatch was made according to their respective destinations.

In 1640, the East Coast Republic of China in China had more than 7,500 active or passive immigration from overseas throughout the year. In addition, two Guarani tribes were recently conquered in the northwest of Meihe Township this year. Therefore, the national population exceeded 40,000 in early December 1640, reaching a scale of more than 42,700.

Compared with the whole year of 1639 (the number of immigrants was about 6,000 that year), the number of immigrants in Europe, especially French, decreased rapidly this year. In addition to the more than 1,000 adult immigrants from the three provinces of Gascone, Languedoc and Upper Gallon, there were only about 600 French children. In addition to some Baltic people from North Germany and Rivonia who actively immigrated, white immigrants from Europe have only just 2,000.

Correspondingly, the number of Ming people immigrants increased explosively. In 1639, the number of Ming people immigrants was only 1,200, but this year it suddenly increased to 3,000 (including Japanese and Koreans). The first time it exceeded the number of European immigrants that year. Of course, these surged Ming people immigrants almost broke the finances of the East Coast Republic of China - although the East Coast Republic, which currently has nearly 500,000 yuan debt, is not far from bankruptcy.

In addition to Europeans and Ming people, East Coast people also bought a large number of slaves from Muscat merchants and the Ottoman Empire this year. These included 800 Persian female slaves, 700 Persian children, and nearly a thousand Cossacks, Tatans, Berbers, and Maghreb slaves. There was basically no delay for those about 1,500 children (more than 600 French, 700 Persians and other ethnic orphans), and they were sent to the expanded Corps Fort in the Xiling area at the first time. There, they will be with their first five seniors and seniors to receive a system and strict education for a decade.

After removing the children, about 6,000 adult immigrants were also divided into 3,700 immigrants to be allocated after the construction of three newly established settlements in the Yazihu ​​River Basin, the remaining 3,700 immigrants to be allocated were disbanded and distributed to various places. Among them, the two shipyards and their supporting factories were divided into about 700 people; the cotton-nong township was divided into 1,000 acres of cotton fields used for newly reclaimed; Zhenyuan Township, Ranch Township, Dingyuan Township and Chengguan Town were divided into 100,400,200 and 500 people respectively. Finally, the 800 people were distributed to Ping'an County, a heavy industry center in the East Coast Republic of China, to fill the personnel gap of Ping'an Steel Plant, coking plant, Northern Arsenal, First Machinery Plant, Northern Gunpowder Factory and other heavy industrial enterprises. Among them, Ping'an Steel Plant, which is the top priority, was divided into 400 people, which can be said to be the leader.

Speaking of Ping An Iron and Steel Plant, it has become a heart-wrenching problem for the Executive Committee and the State Council. Since the ignition was successfully produced a few months ago, the steel plant has recently started to have frequent accidents, and the quality of the steel produced is also many problems. Especially a group of cast irons that are ready to be used for the machinery department to make parts are even more unbearable and are directly returned, which makes the steel plant manager Gao Xiaogang jumped straight into anger.

Gao Xiaogang worked in a steel mill for a few years before traveling, but he did steel rolling work. After traveling through time, he turned to learn iron making and steel making under the guidance of Mau Vest. After Mau Vest became the president of the Government, he naturally took over the position of director of Ping'an Iron and Steel Plant, which was being constructed.

The pressure of serving as the director of this factory may be the most important factory in the East Coast Republic cannot be underestimated. Especially since the factory started to be built a few years ago, although it was temporarily suspended for various reasons in the middle, it was immediately restored. It took two or three years for such an extremely important factory to be officially put into production, but various problems frequently occurred within a few months after it was put into production. How can this be called Gao Xiaogang and he is not extremely depressed?

Since the first ignition was successful a few months ago and the iron was released on the same day, the production has been abnormal these days, and the problems have mostly been concentrated in the iron smelting workshop. After many in-depth analysis and research by factory technicians, several main problems in production have been summarized: one is the furnace cooling accidents that occur from time to time, the second is the poor efficiency of the steam blower, the third is the high sulfur content of the coke, and the fourth is the large iron ore sand sent and insufficient reduction.

Therefore, after summarizing the problem, Gao Xiaogang immediately gathered several technical backbones in the factory together and then held a meeting to discuss the solution together.

"First of all, let's talk about the furnace-cold accident." In the conference room of Ping An Iron and Steel Plant, Gao Xiaogang held a large teapot and said with a serious expression: "I think this kind of accident is essentially caused by improper operation, and of course the on-site management is not in place. Pierre, you are an engineer, how do workers' vocational education be carried out in normal times?"

"These workers are a group of new workers who have entered the factory and are currently instructing them to perform rotation internships." Pierre, a former Swiss blacksmith and now an engineer at Ping An Iron and Steel Factory, whispered: "This time, the masters in the workshop went to the cafeteria for lunch, so they were asked to temporarily take charge of feeding. As a result, they put too much materials at one time, causing the lower part of the furnace to freeze. Now, in order to avoid such a situation again, on the one hand, we will increase the training of new workers and strengthen on-site management. On the other hand, we have also developed a new method of layered and graded fabrics, namely, batches, hierarchies, and a small amount of fabrics to ensure that no furnace cooling accidents occur."

"Remember this issue and discuss it in detail after the meeting." After listening, Gao Xiaogang turned his head and told his secretary to make a record, and then said to everyone: "Then the next question. Regarding the efficiency of steam blowers, well, let me talk about this question. We used the livestock blowers, but it had not been a problem since they had been used for a long time. This time, in order to respond to the call of the country, our factory carried out steaming technical transformation of the entire factory's equipment, so many livestock blowers were removed and used small steam blowers instead.

Machine. But there is a problem now. These steam blowers are unreasonable and are not designed according to the performance parameters we require! These turtles from the first machine factory are just messing around! The steam engines only pull the bellows about 120 times per minute, which is not enough. I will negotiate with Li Hongxing of the first machine factory for this matter and ask him to pull all of these steam engines back and replace them with another batch. Well, the number of bellows per minute must reach at least 200 times per minute."

Everyone below has long said a little about these steam engines with many problems. Although they are very efficient in working, they do not need to rest or eat like human or animal power, but their disadvantages are also very large. That is, due to the quality of product processing, they will give you some small problems from time to time, which will affect the normal production of steel. In fact, the steel mills are quite good. In the past, other units have had tragedies in which boilers exploded and killed people. Since then, many boilers have generally been made very thick as long as they do not have weight requirements, in order to prevent such things from happening again.

In fact, no one here knows the benefits of steam engines? Moreover, the improvement of steam engine quality by the first machine factory has been obvious to all over the past two years. The average failure-free time is several times or even dozens of times that of the initial one. However, who told them that they had always used animal blowers before, but now they are a little uncomfortable with changing such a new guy to anyone. In addition, there are many production accidents at this stage, and everyone needs to find an excuse to shirk responsibility, so the steam engine is "just right" and has been hacked by everyone.
Chapter completed!