After inspecting the wood products factory and the plantation next to it, Qiang Quansheng inspected the Henan Glass Factory again.

To be honest, Henan Glass Factory has not had a strong presence in China over the years. Their products are relatively single, and their technology and quality are just that, which is very average. Over the years, they have solved the problems of a large number of bubbles in glass products, such as impure and turbidity in glass products, and the quality of the product has been greatly improved. However, their craftsmanship level has always been a certain gap with those of old-fashioned glass-making powerhouses such as Venice, France and the Netherlands. For example, they are slightly inferior to each other in talent reserves and production technology, and the main production form of factories is also mainly handicrafts.

Until last year, they were able to provide domestic products such as glass, glass or crystal texture with very average quality laboratory instruments, handicrafts and telescopes. Due to the number of skilled workers, the scale of the factory has not expanded much, which has led to the output being unable to increase, and it can only be supplied to the domestic market.

At the end of last year, people from the East Coast paid a lot of money to dig some senior technicians (second-rate technicians, first-rate technicians) from the Netherlands, which is now the most advanced in glass technology in Europe. Since then, the technical capabilities of Henan Glass Factory have improved significantly, such as the quality of their thermometers is better than before and the accuracy is higher. What is more important is that their product lines have become richer. Under the leadership of these Dutch technicians, Henan Glass Factory began to organize highly skilled technicians to hand-made high-resolution telescopes and microscope lenses. Especially microscope lenses, which are the first to name the top. At present, this instrument design principle is said to be the main investment and research of the Ministry of Health. Just wait for Henan Glass Factory to polish some high-level lenses.

As for the materials needed to polish lenses, the few high-quality glass produced by Henan Glass Factory can do. Crystals can also be used (Uruguay is rich in crystals), and even the gems produced in the New China region can be provided by the Ministry of Health. They now only need you to polish the lenses they need so that they can assemble a high-magnification optical microscope.

The teachers and students of the Capital Medical College under the Ministry of Health have long been tired of watching insects with lower magnification glasses all day long, making specimens, and compiling animal and plant catalogs. They are eager to see some more "advanced" and clearer, and higher magnification microscopes to observe some interesting things, such as human blood, etc.

However, given the current domestic glass manufacturing technology and the chromatic aberration that is difficult to eliminate in the existing conditions, these Dutch technicians are still required to make some single microscopes with high magnification (i.e., magnifying glasses). The Ministry of Health has given a high reward for this, starting with 50 times of magnification. For each increase of a certain magnification, the bonus will rise by one step, and the highest bonus even reaches an unprecedented 2,000 yuan. Moreover, their reward is made public to the world. These technicians can write letters back to the Netherlands or Germany and invite their highly skilled friends to join in to polish high-quality lenses together.

With a microscope with high magnification - whether it is a single or a complex, it will undoubtedly provide extraordinary assistance to the East Coast people in the observation of microorganisms and bacteria. Only after the development of microbiology can modern medicine gradually get on the right track, and this is why the Ministry of Health has put in a large amount of special funds to invest in this project.

After walking around the Henan Glass Factory, Qiang Quansheng was not very interested in the Dutch technicians recruited heavily and their work. As a senior official of the economy, he was more interested in the living conditions of the workers in the factory today. There is a bad phenomenon in China now. That is, every time the government builds a new settlement in the inland areas, there are always many industrial workers in cities taking this opportunity to take their families to apply to move to new inland towns. At this time, the government will always recruit some old citizens and live with the new Shandong people to strengthen the effectiveness of various government assimilation measures.

Therefore, at this time, these workers in the original city will always be more likely to obtain government permission to move their household registration to those new towns. New towns are generally agricultural towns, and most of the residents are farmers. Therefore, these people will most likely give up their worker status, instead work in the local area, and start farming and herding sheep.

This phenomenon first began to appear sporadically the year before yesterday, and gradually increased last year. At the beginning of this year, with Ningjin Fort, the establishment of Canyon Fort reached its peak. There were about 400 workers from lower-level construction materials companies, agricultural workers from state-owned farms, and apprentices from wood processing plants applied to immigrate to these two places, which surprised the officials of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

After receiving the report from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Executive Committee immediately instructed the Mei agency, which was established for a short time, to investigate and finally figured out the whole story. In fact, this matter is very simple, that is, the average living standard of farmers is higher than that of workers. Taking ordinary workers in Henan Glass Factory as an example, most of their six-yuan monthly income will be spent on staple foods and some non-staple foods. Only a few remaining money can be used to satisfy some of their hobbies, such as buying wine, high-end leather boots, wool coats, tropical dried fruits, newspapers and books, etc.

Farmers are different. They spend very low food, because they produce their own food, and even some meat and side food can provide a considerable portion of it themselves. They may only need to spend a very small amount of cash to buy some necessities such as fuel, soybean oil, salt, etc. In addition, they can also go to the market to sell their agricultural products in exchange for cash, and then buy many goods that are out of reach of the working class. Although the land rent tax of farmers in the past few years was very high, once their land changed from the initial allocation of five acres to ten acres and twenty acres, the rent tax also passed the peak of the first few years, their income will quickly surpass the apprentice workers who have been in employment for a few years, and even chase those ordinary workers who have not had very low incomes. This makes many industrial workers in factories envious, jealous and hateful, and express their difficulty in accepting it.

After all, there is still something wrong with the distribution system. The country collects grain from farmers at a reasonable price and sells it to European countries to make money in exchange for scarce foreign exchange. In this process, farmers obtain a certain amount of cash income, which is enough to offset their expenditures on seeds (purchased from agricultural technology stations), fertilizers, water conservancy facilities maintenance costs, etc., and there is also a lot of surplus. A large amount of grain is exported abroad, and the material warehouse must maintain a certain amount of grain reserves in case of emergency needs. The grain prices on the market are not cheaper.

In addition, a large number of sophisticated and middle-aged men in the River Central region of South Africa were transferred to the Far East to fight. Dingkou, a black Mozambique slave who promised to supplement the Eight Banners of South Africa, was unable to be fulfilled due to financial tensions. Therefore, the production of sorghum in South Africa has gradually declined in recent years, and the sowing area has gradually shrunk. The amount of cheap sorghum supplied to the local area has naturally decreased year by year. Under the influence of these multiple factors, the local food prices were finally balanced at the current price. Although the prices fell a little every year because of the increasing grain output in the Huxi Agricultural Zone, the decline has been greatly slowed down.

Food was exported artificially in large quantities abroad for foreign exchange to supplement the huge fiscal holes caused by the decline in textile sales. The cheap sorghum originally provided by the colonies was inadequate due to the war in the Far East, which would inevitably force many people to buy relatively high-priced wheat and even rice, which undoubtedly increased the citizens' expenses in food.

It seems that this problem needs to be solved, otherwise the development and growth of the backbone group of industrial workers will be hindered to a certain extent. Although discerning people know that the development prospects of workers are far beyond those of farmers, because as long as you improve your skills, wages will soon rise like rockets, for some short-sighted apprentices or ordinary workers, they will only care about immediate interests and will not consider too long-term things. Especially for those workers such as brick kiln factories, they are really better than living a comfortable life as a farmer.

However, it is also a troublesome to solve this problem, because there are only two ways to reduce the price of food. One is to increase the supply of food, and the price will naturally fall in response to the sound; the second is to provide financial subsidies, which will not be simple when it comes to money. Now the government is still carrying a lot of debt, the Far East is still in war, and Europe still has a large amount of materials (including female slaves) that need to be purchased. The Executive Committee will definitely be cautious about the price subsidies for any commodity - especially the basic commodity that consumes a huge amount of food. This subsidy cannot be reduced by more than 100,000 or 200,000 yuan a year. It is hard to say whether the Executive Committee is willing to take out this money now. Anyway, Qiang Quansheng is not optimistic.

In addition, there is only one way to pay workers. This is actually no different from implementing price subsidies for grain, because they all cost money. Thinking of this, Qiang Quansheng had the urge to sigh to the sky. The economy was in a downturn. Is a hero who was a hero? Where can there be living money now?

It seems that I have to think of a way from the Far East. Mo Ming has been struggling in the Far East for so long. In addition to bringing some precious fur and medicinal materials to the local area at the beginning, he sent some books, calligraphy, paintings, jade, jade, handicrafts and cultural relics to the local area that cannot be eaten. There are not many gold and silver that can be used as currency. Grandma, it seems that I have to ask the military headquarters to write a letter to the Far East, tap the military leaders, set an indicator for them, and send some silver to the local area. Let Bao Chen'an, deputy commander of the military police who is in charge of the intelligence work there, be a close eye, and strive to send 100,000 yuan a year (about 110,000 taels of Kuping Silver) back to the local area, so that many problems can be solved. (To be continued, please search for astronomy, novels are better and faster!
Chapter completed!