In fact, Marin has to deal with not only Essen, but also Dortmund, which also produces coal, which is also an imperial city. Unlike Bremen, the Hanseatic city that has been annexed by Marin, although these two cities are unwilling to surrender to Marin's rule, they did not openly form an alliance with others to fight against the North Sea like Bremen.
Therefore, Marin is really helpless about such a city that has no cooperation but has not turned against each other. If it is a city with no resources, Marin would ignore it. However, Essen and Dortmund are both cities with large coal mines, and the coal mining industry is very developed. For Marin, who is determined to include coal in Yuanluer District, this is not good.
But what gave Marin a headache was that the two cities were just not cooperating, but they were not in a confrontation, which made Marin unable to find an excuse to send troops to annex them.
However, Dortmund is fine. Essen's behavior of manufacturing weapons and selling them to various vassal states has touched Marin's bottom line. It's just that Marin cannot use this as an excuse to attack. Why? Marin is not in a state of war with those vassal states. Why do you think it's not good for Essen to sell weapons to them? Do you have bad intentions to the princes? If you do rashly or even send troops, it's considered giving excuses to the princes.
Therefore, Marin could only use other methods to deal with Essen. Previously, Marin had come up with the means to block the roads around Essen and embargo to kill Essen's handicraft industry.
But Essen turned around and went to the Imperial Parliament to complain about Marin. Marin was unreasonable, and with the pressure from the princes, he had to leave it alone. Even the emperor stood on Essen's side this time. Because the right to free passage of the imperial city was originally granted by the emperor. As long as the other party honestly paid the toll tax and did not fund Marin's war rival, Marin had no reason to stop Essen from trading with the outside world.
Helplessly, Marin had to stop for the time being. But this time, he met this guy named Krupp at the Krumhein Iron and Steel Plant. Moreover, the other party was an Essen and had some holidays with his hometown. Marin soon thought of using it to open a steel plant, compete with Essen, and poach people with high salaries. This is a pure business behavior, reasonable and legal, and no one can blame him.
Moreover, Marin pushed the young man Krupp to the front desk and borrowed his name, clearly wanting him to come forward and cause trouble.
In addition, Marin is also very clever to target those blacksmiths. After all, for blacksmiths, serving your weapons merchants in Essen and serving the Krupp Steel Factory is actually similar. Whoever gives more money will be with him.
As for Essen's weapon dealers who raise their salary and benefits to grab people? OK, whatever you want, I, Ma, Jianlin, Ali, Huateng, Lin, I have never lost money...
Even if you lose money, you will have to hollow out all the blacksmiths of the Essen Weapons Merchant!
Marin could not only provide higher salaries to the blacksmiths in Essen, but also provide houses and provide good benefits for the distribution of houses. In addition, the canteen would also provide fast food at the later generations, with two meats and three vegetables each meal, feeding the masters full. Moreover, the taste was far beyond the local German food of this era. He didn't believe it, and those blacksmiths would not be moved.
Of course, they can be poached by themselves, or they may be poached by others at high salaries. Therefore, the core technical positions of the Krupp Steel Plant in the future will be controlled by the Beihai Country's own craftsmen. For example, the blast furnace iron smelting process must be operated by Marin's own people to avoid the technology being leaked.
However, when the iron is cast into ingots and made into utensils, blacksmiths are very needed. At this time, the blacksmiths dug by Essen can come in handy. They dare to use cannons if they don’t use them. However, when building agricultural tools, there is no need to keep them confidential, just let them come.
In addition, Marin will also develop a project that he has long wanted to develop - steel wire!
What should I do with steel wire? Of course, it is to make reinforced concrete!
Among the steel bars, thick steel bars are the best to make. They can be made by casting the steel directly in a long groove. If you are troublesome, you can use thick steel bars to process them.
However, prestressed steel wires that tie thick and thin steel bars in reinforced concrete, commonly known as strips, are more troublesome.
In later generations, you can use a wire drawing machine to draw the steel bars that have not yet been cooled or tempered and softened to obtain the required wire.
However, there is no wire drawing machine in this era! If you want to get iron wire, you have to rely on blacksmiths to use tools such as wire drawing boards to pull the red iron bars into wire.
This is a pure technical job. Without many years of experience in blacksmiths, it is difficult to learn. Marin planned to let the blacksmiths draw the steel wire after digging back from Essen. His own blacksmith first made low-carbon steel carbon spring steel steel strips, and then used tools such as drawing boards to pull into wires for the blacksmiths. In this way, the prestressed steel wire, that is, the strips, needed to make reinforced concrete.
Needless to mention the role of the strip, it is an important part of reinforced concrete and an important guarantee of the tensile strength of reinforced concrete. As long as the output of the strip is sufficient, Marin will start to use reinforced concrete to build city walls and fortresses. In this way, even if the other party brings heavy artillery, it is helpless. After all, reinforced concrete is very resistant to conventional weapons.
You should know that even during World War I, when artillery technology had reached its peak, facing the Maginot defense line with reinforced concrete structure, the army as powerful as Er Dezi had to choose to attack from Belgium. Of course, in the San Dezi period, because of the armor-piercing bombs of tungsten alloy, there was a way to deal with reinforced concrete. Otherwise, Xiaoma would not have exchanged so much German equipment and bald Jiang for tungsten ore sand, and sent military consultants to help with training. However, during World War I, reinforced concrete was really unsolvable. A neutral country in Belgium was pushed by Er Dezi because it could bypass the Maginot defense line of reinforced concrete.
......
Therefore, Marin built the Krupp Steel Plant in Essen not to cast cannons or to make other weapons, but to draw steel wires.
With steel wire, Marin can not only create authentic reinforced concrete (it has been made with iron wire before, but it is a low-end version and has no tensile resistance), but also consider creating a wire spoke hub for bicycle wheels. The bicycle wheels with wire spoke hubs can absorb the impact force of the road surface. The deformation of the steel wire can achieve the purpose of buffering. Combined with rubber pneumatic tires, it can make riding very comfortable.
In addition, a manned carriage with a small load capacity can also be made of wire spoke wheel hubs. This can make passengers more comfortable. Moreover, it also saves steel materials and makes the wheel hub lighter.
Before this, because the elasticity and recovery power of the wire were insufficient, it was not possible to be used for wire spoke hubs, and it was easy to be deformed and could not be recovered. Therefore, it was not applicable. Now, Marin plans to use carbon spring steel to make highly elastic steel wires, and its application range is much wider.
Of course, because it is purely hand-drawn, the output will definitely not be high and the price will definitely be expensive. But this is just the beginning. In the future, Marin will definitely make people develop steam-driven wire drawing machines. Once the wire drawing machines are put into use, steel wire or something will be a mass-produced cheap product. At that time, bicycle wheels and horse wheels with wire spokes and hubs will inevitably become widely used in life.
Chapter completed!