There are waterways from the capital to Xiangzhou, but after taking a few roads, some big men in the capital couldn't wait, so they gave Song Jiu a carriage, took a dry road, crossed the Yellow River to Huazhou, and then rushed to Xiangzhou. However, they were not in Xiangzhou, but in Linwei County, west of Xiangzhou. The ancient place name was also called Lichengjun. There were two iron pits in the northeast of the city, and they handed over more than 100,000 kilograms of iron in the country a year.

Before Song Jiu knew it, the population still felt very dense, even in the suburbs. The more he walked north, the more he felt that the population was sparse, and he saw the villages a long way. In fact, the population was not dense. In this era, the crop harvest was too low. One acre in the north only had an annual yield of two stones, and a family could barely maintain food and clothing. The Northern Song Dynasty did not perish, and it was also dangerous to develop rapidly like that. Once the population reached 40 million households, various crises broke out in full swing with the pitiful area of ​​the Northern Song Dynasty.

Only when Song Jiu came here did he truly feel the meaning of the ancient word "two": backward technology, backward production, and difficult life!

In front is Linwei County. Song Jiu said to the two guards: "Let's change your clothes."

“Dress up?”

"Switch to plainclothes." According to the rules, he can also be regarded as an imperial envoy of the court and wants to meet local officials. How could Song Jiu know the rules? And what truth can he see in those social events?

The group changed their clothes, and the Guo brothers sat on the side of the road to wipe their sweat. The four of them were a little sad, and Song Jiu was still conscientious. He sat on the carriage, and the two guards were riding horses at a fast speed, so the four had to trot and follow behind. Seeing that they were so tired, Song Jiu took turns to let them get on the carriage and rest for a while to take a breath. But in this way, the group was faster, and they could almost reach 150 miles a day. They arrived in Linlie County in a few days.

The dressing was changed by the guards. The two guards changed their armor, but they didn't want to wear them. Although the vests were thinner and weighed more than 40 pounds. How could they be comfortable when they were worn on this hot day? When they changed out, no one paid attention, including the coachman, eight people quietly entered Linwei County and found an inn to stay in. The next day, Song Jiu took them out of the city. Tiekeng was not far from the county town, only about twenty miles away. They had not yet reached Tiekeng. They stopped in a small wine shop near Tiekeng, ordered a few side dishes, and slowly drank. Drinking was also fake. Listening to the people's comments, especially when several Tiekeng servants came to have a drink, Song Jiu almost put down the wine cup in his hand and listened with all his attention.

Then he gave some rewards to his uncle and had some chat with him.

On the third day, I took a few people straight to a pit.

I saw a pit from afar, and some scattered iron furnaces. This is speechless. I need to be smelted. How to smel, smelting it on the spot. First, I will extract the iron ore and build a small earth and iron furnace on the spot. Cut the wood on the mountain to make charcoal, and use charcoal and earth and iron furnaces to smelify the iron ore. After refining, I will be handed over to the government. Therefore, the iron furnace keeps moving, and the iron furnace will be built wherever the forest is cut.

Song Jiu frowned and continued to walk towards the iron pit. Suddenly, he saw a bad scene. One of them held a whip in his hand and whipped a black servant.

I don’t know what’s going on in the pit, but I think it will be even more painful in this era. Song Jiu couldn’t stand it and shouted, “You can’t fight.”

The person who was smoking stopped and said dissatisfiedly: "Who are you? Want to meddle in other people's business?"

Song Jiu nodded, and the guards understood and handed over the imperial edict and the inspector's seal to the man. The man saluted first, but his expression was disrespectful, and said, "Song Chengshi, you are the official of the court. You want to have a good reputation, but if we and the common people cannot make a deal, the yamen runners come to urge us, we will lose our money."

When Song Jiu heard some situations, he Yan said, "Don't worry, let me tell you slowly, you are a little bitch, and I am a little bitch."

"You are just kidding me. You are not a villain, so why didn't you kill the villain?" But Song Jiu was close to him, and the man was brave enough to let go and complained.

This is the problem of the mining system in the Song Dynasty.

The Tang Dynasty mined directly to set up officials and let the prisoners dig and smel. This is a lot of disadvantages. What if there were no prisoners? With prisoners, these officials would not regard them as human beings. Many prisoners would be tortured to death. However, these people were sentenced to misdemeanors, that is, they were not punished. Zhao Kuangyin and Chai Rong could not stand this inhumane behavior. The third is that officials were in charge of the officials and were seriously greedy. Therefore, from Zhou Wei to Chai Rong, Zhao Kuangyin gradually reformed and changed to the contract system.

Let the officials estimate the annual output first, and call the local high-invested household owners, which are rich households. These iron pits are left to you to manage, but you have to pay as much iron in a year. If the prolific person is yours, it seems to be more humane, but it is not.

The first is that high-invested households are rich and can be exploited, but those who are truly powerful cannot be assigned to them. If they are not powerful and rich, they are still very dangerous in this era. Just like a country, rich and weak, they will be regarded as lambs by countless hostile countries.

The second official also needs to be "patriotic", so this estimate can only be estimated to be higher, not lower.

When the first program is completed and the second program comes, you can be the one who is not bad at the beginning. At first, they are rich, but later they don’t care whether they go bankrupt or not. They will not work by themselves for the time being, so they hire customers (tenants) to be coolies.

The master is more labor and more income. The client workers are not. They are living a big pot and living a life. They are in underground pits. When the master comes to work, the master is not there and he will be lazy immediately. As a customer, he can understand that life is hard, the salary is low, and the risk is still dangerous. He is willing to work hard. As a master, he can understand that there are often eight iron pits in ten iron pits. What should I do if I can’t complete the task? The yamen runners come to urge him. If they don’t pay the slightest, they will be exiled. They have to spend money to buy iron back to make up for the poor. That is, they have completed the task. Good, there is potential to dig. The next year the government levy will increase again until you finish it. Therefore, they desperately urge customers to dig day and night. The tighter the pressure, the more unhappy the customer is, and even openly work. This creates a bad cycle.

The court did not have a good strategy for this, and wanted to relax. It was important to relax the court and take ten steps below. It was not enough to use iron. In this case, the whole country would have an iron crisis. Therefore, Zhao Kuangyi kindly reminded Song Jiu, you should bring a few more guards down. It doesn’t matter if the yamen runners come to urge the iron. They are all fellow villagers. They can know each other and dare not do anything. The officials are not good, and the mine owners will not do anything publicly, but they are resentful in their hearts. If there are few guards they lead, they can even instigate customers to make things difficult or even beat officials. If the law does not blame the public, as long as they do not get seriously injured, it will be a waste of time.

Song Jiu misunderstood that he would be greedy and the court also sent officials to manage it, but the loose management means that the yamen runners would be sent to collect debts at that time, and he would not go to the iron trap. Some civil officials, like Dr. Zhang and Dr. Yan, do not talk about profits, and they don’t even care about management, and they all handed them to harsh officials. There will be tricks in the middle, but it is not something Song Jiu can see at the moment. Zhao Kuangyi didn’t want Song Jiu to ask, and deliberately told him not to cause some disputes.

The Lizhou military iron pit is a good example. Two iron pits have good iron output, so the imperial court ordered more than 100,000 kilograms of iron, which was borne by two wealthy families. It was tragic that this was the debt of King Yama. Whoever got the money would be in trouble for eight lifetimes.

After the trickster said that, he cried loudly.

Song Jiu helped him up and said, "Don't be anxious. Beating people is definitely not a good idea. Since the court asked me to come, it means that Your Majesty is also concerned about this issue. You can take me into the pit and take a look first."

After entering the pit, it was a little deeper. In order to save costs, there was no ignition inside. If the torch was extinguished, it would be like coming to the underworld. Finally, I saw someone digging a mine, knocking on the stone wall with a hammer and hammer. It took me half a day to knock down a piece of iron ore, carry it outside in a basket, and then smelting it with the earth iron furnace. Not to mention how much iron the earth iron furnace would waste, even this way of mining, I don’t know how much iron would be wasted. Song Jiu estimated that a good iron ore would probably not get one thousandth of it if it was mined in this way. What impact would it have on future generations? Song Jiu didn’t want it. But this method made him frown.

After watching it for a day, I heard the mine owner complaining about his grievances for a day. Song Jiu's ears were almost calloused. The next day, Song Jiu said: "Go to Cizhou."

Coal iron smelting has appeared in Cizhou, which is the focus of Song Jiu's attention. The group continued to go north and arrived at Guzhen on the west side of Cishan Mountain in Cizhou. The iron pits here and the iron pits in Qi Village in Xingzhou were the big heads of the Song Dynasty's iron pit, which almost bear two-fifths of the current iron production of the Song Dynasty. Some people used coal to smelter iron, but it was still a soil furnace. Song Jiu asked, more people complained. Speaking of one thing, the Sierra Dashan collapsed, and the Sanzhou iron ore was an old iron ore. It can be said that it began to dig since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The dig below was like a maze, and often there were too many pits and landslides began to appear. Once a landslide occurred in this era, it means that the people below were... dead! There were also problems with the iron furnace. Some people wanted to build a large iron furnace to save costs, but the smelter would easily collapse when it was big. It was not a cost saving, but wasted costs.

Song Jiu's eyebrows were so fast that they couldn't stretch them out. He didn't look at them anymore, but turned to the coal mine to look at them.

It was even more a bloody and tears story.

Coal mines not only collapse, but also gas. After many people die, some people find out the rules and use a long bamboo tube before entering. Before entering, they ignite the fire. If they encounter gas, they will immediately lie on the ground and the fire passes through their backs, and people will be able to avoid death. However, some gases are fierce. Once they explode, the fire will spit out a hundred feet, and they will not die and will burn them to peel off the skin and rot.

Boss Hu said: "This is simply not a job for humans!"

I used to think that Lifu was very hard, but compared with these miners, what is it?

Song Jiu went to see steelmaking again.

At this time, when officials from Ci'an County heard that they would come one by one, they might not take Song Jiu seriously, but he meant that it was the will of the court and that etiquette must be received.

Song Jiu had eight big heads at this time, so he was in a while. I said a few words to look at steelmaking. Steelmaking is expensive, and it is not common to use it. It mainly depends on large-scale steelmaking methods.

The steelmaking method is a steel pouring method passed down from the Southern and Northern Dynasties. It uses high-grade iron ore and then pours liquid pig iron on the cooked iron to penetrate into steel. Compared with the Han Dynasty, there are many advantages. Pig iron, as a carbon agent, has a high temperature after melting, accelerates the carbon toward the cooked iron, with a fast time and increased productivity. Crafted iron produces carbon alloy due to carbon infiltration, and pig iron also becomes high-quality steel due to decarbonization. Carbon, silicon, manganese, etc. in high-temperature liquid iron reacts chemically with oxides in the cooked iron to remove impurities and produce real alloys. It is easy to operate. If you want to obtain steel with different carbon content, you can get it by melting the pig iron and cooked iron in a certain proportion. Of course, don’t think about the last one at this time. The Song Dynasty further developed, embedded pig iron sheets in coiled cooked iron bars, sealed the steelmaking furnace with mud, and sintered the suburbs, and the suburbs are a little better than before.

Progress is progress, but Song Jiu carefully thought about the principle in his mind, and then thought about the chemical reactions in the middle, as well as what he saw and heard in this industry, he couldn't help but hold his head, squat on the ground and shouted: "I'm having fun now."
Chapter completed!