In the afternoon, it was cloudy, in Le'an Copper Mine Mining Area, Li Li stood on a high place, and together with the accompanying officials, looking at the busy huge "shallow pit" in front of him.

Le'an Copper Mine is located in the mountains more than ten miles above the Nanpo Water, but the mining area is close to the Nanpo Water and some of the ore veins are not deep, so there is an open-pit mine, which looks like a shallow pit.

Of course, there are also deep mines that go straight into the ground, and the mine tunnels cannot be seen on the ground.

Everyone looked up and saw an iron track hovering in the "shallow pit", like a big snake coiled in the mountains.

A large number of miners are busy everywhere in the "shallow pit", like dense ants.

Horse-drawn mine trucks slowly drove out along the railway tracks, transporting trucks of ore to the smelting ground.

There are many smelting furnaces standing at the smelting furnace. Fires are emitting from the tops of these smelting furnaces and thick smoke is sprayed, making the mining area smog, as if half of the sky is blocked.

The busy scene of the super large mine made people who came here for the first time stunned. The Taiwei Wang Sengbian looked at the large number of busy miners in the mining area and felt unbelievable:

According to the information, when the Le'an Copper Mine starts construction every day, tens of thousands of miners can enter the site at the same time and work in different "working sections".

Then, commanding, mobilizing, and coordinating so many miners is an extremely complicated matter, and ordinary officials cannot do it.

This is not something that can be done in one day or two days, but day after day, year after year, every day, to ensure that the mining area is operated normally, and to ensure that a large amount of ore is mined and refined into copper.

At the beginning of the new year, the annual output of Le'an copper mine (without water copper) last year has been initially calculated, with nearly 7.5 million kilograms. Just thinking about this figure makes Wang Sengbian feel dazzling.

Copper is equal to money. Le'an has money supervision, so a large amount of copper is made into "Zhenyuan Wuzhu" and "Zhenyuan Tongbao" is transported to other places, and the court is getting less and less short of money.

Le'an Copper Mine is the most important wallet of the imperial court.

Therefore, the Le'an Copper Supervisory and Qianjian are extremely large in size and have many officials, and they also have nearly 100,000 miners under their jurisdiction, along with the mines that mine water and copper.

In addition to family members, ordinary people, past merchants, and troops and military families guarding various places, outside the Le'an area, there are almost 80,000 households and nearly 400,000 permanent residents.

The narrow city of Le'an certainly cannot accommodate so many residents, and people related to mining live everywhere.

Therefore, around Le'an City, including various water copper and copper mining areas, there are many large and small cities and garrison camps.

Because the area where Le'an is located is full of mountains, all the food for these 400,000 people must be transported from other places.

Fortunately, after more than ten years of military farming, a large area of ​​fertile land in Raozhou produced grain. Together with the grain transported from other places, it arrived in Le'an through the unobstructed Nanpo Waterway, supporting this large copper mine area.

The allocation of grain canal transport is not simple. In addition, the "copper induction" policy that has lasted for more than ten years has made the shipping of the Nanpo River very busy, and a large number of officials and soldiers also need to maintain operation.

Wang Sengbian thought about it and recalled what he was doing more than 20 years ago, because it is said that more than 20 years ago, the copper mine had been initially surveyed.

According to the rumors, that person was Li Li.

He looked at Li Li who was talking to the left and right under the cold umbrella, and was filled with mixed feelings.

Twenty years ago, probably on the eve of Hou Jing's rebellion, Li Li seemed to be a supervisor in Dongye, Shaofu Temple.

The little supervisor is busy with big things.

There is no doubt that to mine such a large scale, tens of thousands of miners, plus other personnel, including family members, and ordinary people, consume amazing food.

Then, before mining copper ore, we must first increase the grain output in the Poyang area of ​​Raozhou, that is, large-scale military farming.

It takes time to turn wasteland into raw land and then mature land.

To cultivate farms, a large number of laborers have to be organized to open up land.

All this started nearly 18 years ago, when Li Li took office as the Poyang Inner Historian.

Wang Sengbian remembered that it was the late emperor (Xiao Gang) who made many great contributions to commend Li Li, so he specially asked him to return to his hometown to work.

At that time, everyone thought this was an honor for Li Li, that's all.

However, after nearly twenty years, when I looked back, I found that Li Li was already preparing for the formal mining of the Le'an huge copper mine at that time.

Thinking of this, Wang Sengbian sighed:

If the Crown Prince Xiao Daqi died after the Double Ninth Festival change, but instead succeeded to the throne, he is almost forty-five years old.

Li Li, who was nearly 40 years old, thought he could become a virtuous minister who was valued by Xiao Daqi, and he would be able to get along with the king and his subjects.

No matter how bad it is, the young emperor Xiao Xun did not have any accidents. Perhaps Li Li, as a relative of the outside world, could also help the emperor.

But, luck makes people beat me.

Although Wang Sengbian is now at a high position and has no real power, he has no resentment in his heart, because this is the best situation for him and is good for both sides.

The sons have to be appointed, and the future is fine. Wang Sengbian is old and has no other choice. He is willing to be a rich man and watch silently, the arrival of that day.

He will definitely see that day.

Because now, on the edge of this huge mine, Wang Sengbian fully felt the power.

This power is so strong that the dream of unification of the world is about to come true.

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......

Several miles upstream of Le'an, beside the river dam, Li Li, who came to inspect, and the accompanying officials watched the process of making copper coins by the hydraulic coin making machine.

The process is very simple, the principle is "stamping":

First roll the copper strips into copper strips of appropriate thickness, and then "stamp" one by one, with holes.

The round copper piece enters another stamping machine and is "stamped" by the money mold into copper coins with text.

The "Zhenyuan Tongbao" has an extra process called "squeezing edges" compared to the "Tai'an Tongbao" in the previous dynasty.

This process is to let the coins pass through the middle of two counter-rotating gears (gear sets), and the gap between the two gears is slightly smaller than the diameter of the coins). Therefore, the edges of the coins passing through the gear set are squeezed out neat and equidistant "tooth edges".

The "Zhenyuan Tongbao" with the edge of the teeth has an extra cumbersome process.

In addition, copper prices have been slowly falling and the government has been cracking down on counterfeit currency, so the profits of counterfeiting are getting thinner and thinner now.

Following the visiting prince and princes, they looked at the roaring machines in front of them, and looked at the coins falling like rain, and truly felt the huge power of the Le'an copper mine.

After receiving the teachings of their father, they had some understanding of the ways of minting coins.

Having copper means having money, but the traditional method of minting is thankless because the cost of making coins is higher than the face value of coins. The more coins the court minted, the more losses it will be.

However, with the hydraulic press, after changing the coin making process, the cost of minting is already lower than the face value of the coin (the copper content must be adjusted appropriately).

As a result, the problem of coin cost that plagued the courts of all dynasties was solved. The more money was made, the more money the court made.

In addition, copper production has increased year by year, the public can purchase relatively sufficient copper through legitimate channels, and the copper price continues to decline, resulting in the loss of copper fetching for thousands of years.

Therefore, the shortage of copper coins circulating in various places has been alleviated, and the proportion of mechanical coins (mainly Zhenyuan coins and Tai'an coins that are slowly withdrawing from circulation) is becoming increasingly large.

The output of Le'an copper mine will only increase and increase, so the money shortage in various places will gradually disappear.

Although copper shortage may still exist, at least it will not cause illegal people to melt money to withdraw copper on a large scale due to copper shortage.

Copper coins will not disappear in large quantities due to illegal acts (melting money into copper), which will lead to no money shortages everywhere. Therefore, no one is willing to use shoddy bad money and fake money.

Li Fang recalled what his father said, and looked at the machines in front of him that kept "spouting" coins, and felt that there was a passionate power in his heart that was expanding.

Having copper means having money. With sufficient food and population as a guarantee, the dream of unifying the world and ending the troubled times may be realized.

Therefore, Li Fang thought his father was right.

Those aristocratic families, a large number of gentry, and large households in various places occupy a large amount of land and population, but do not pay taxes, do not serve labor, and enjoy various privileges. Why?

If literature cannot stabilize the country, martial arts cannot stabilize the country. Why should the court continue to buy you people with various privileges and preferential treatment?

You are not worth the price!
Chapter completed!