mtl008 Chapter 430 The Development of Dingzhou
Chapter 430 The Development of Dingzhou
After three days of arduous background checks, Gong Shangjin finally uncovered the mystery of the so-called Jinling drug dealer Lu Dingkun. It turned out that the Lu family's strong capital was the one behind him.
After Zhao Sheng learned of this situation, he immediately gathered together several major families such as Cui and Zheng who had worked together to resolve the issues in Bingzhou.
In the workshop's conference room, Zhao Sheng sat in the middle, his gaze steady as he gazed at the heads of several families below him. He slowly spoke, "Everyone, I've invited you here today because we have three important matters to discuss."
He paused, then continued, "One of these is the establishment of a railway group. At that time, we will sincerely invite you to become shareholders based on your investment proportions."
Secondly, the Bingzhou tribe massacred members of our railway and mining protection teams. This blood feud is so deep that we must expand our armaments and resolutely fight back."
When Zhao Sheng said this, he scanned the expressions of the people below with sharp eyes, trying to catch even the slightest bit of strange expressions.
However, the result surprised him a little. Everyone's expressions were as calm as water, without any ripples.
Just as he paused, Cui Wenxin, the Cui family's former head of Bingzhou affairs, spoke first: "The head of the family has ordered that the Cui family will unconditionally support anything Young Master Zhao does."
As soon as he finished speaking, another person followed up, saying, "Our Qinghe Cui family and Boling Cui family are of the same blood and will fully support Master Zhao."
Zhao Sheng looked up and saw that the man looked very unfamiliar.
Just as he was wondering who this person was, the man bowed and introduced himself, "I am Cui Qilian, from the Cui family in Qinghe. I was unable to attend the last meeting."
Cui Qilian was seen wearing an ice-blue brocade robe with sparse bamboo patterns embroidered with silver thread on the collar and sleeves. His black hair was half-tied up with a mutton-fat jade hairpin, and a few strands of hair hung down on his temples, which made his eyebrows and eyes look gentle, like distant mountains with dark clouds and his eyes like stars with hidden light.
Even in this February day, he still held a plain sandalwood folding fan in his hand. When his fingertips gently stroked the fan bones, his posture seemed casual, but he remained dignified.
Occasionally, when the spring breeze blew across the peach branches in the courtyard, he would stop and look up, his clothes fluttering like the wings of a crane.
As he spoke, the corners of his lips slightly raised, and between words, he sometimes pressed his fan against his chin and pondered, and his eyes seemed to contain the charm of thousands of volumes of poetry and books.
Zhao Sheng couldn't help but admire in his heart:
Ice silk, jade tablets, black clouds, cool, folding fan, stars move, koi fish hidden;
The pine wind and crane shadows startled the cold moon, and I wrote a poem as I stood by the water with my green sleeves.
Seeing that the Cui family expressed such a firm stance, the others all echoed their voices.
Seeing that this matter had won everyone's approval so easily, Zhao Sheng stopped talking nonsense and moved on to the next topic.
"Everyone, when we were checking the list of people who subscribed for shares, we found a person named Lu Dingkun, who is from the Lu family.
When the expressway was first built, they were not allowed to participate.
However, I am also well aware that many of you here have in-laws with the Lu family. Therefore, I would like to hear everyone's true thoughts on this matter.
Everyone sitting below knew that Zhao Sheng's move was just to give them face.
As for the final result, it is actually not important. The key is to make sure that the handling of this matter is reasonable.
The Cui family and the Lu family have always been the closest to each other. At this moment, they suppressed the waves in their hearts and chose not to speak anymore.
Zheng Hanrong, the head of the Zheng family in Dingzhou, knew very well that the Zheng family, which had always kept a low profile, needed to stand up and say a few words at this time.
Not only does the Zheng family have a marriage relationship with the Cui family, but they also have quite a few people who are married into the Lu family. In particular, the young master of their family is the legitimate daughter of the second branch of the Lu family.
"Mr. Zhao, what you said is indeed quite reasonable. Our great families have always had intricate intermarriage relationships.
The Lu family has indeed become much more honest in recent years. They didn't inform us beforehand about their participation in the share subscription.
However, they've gone to such great lengths to join, presumably to give themselves a chance to reform." Zheng Hanrong's words made perfect sense.
Mr. Zhao actually originally wanted to give face to everyone present.
Upon hearing this, Li Youran of Zhao County showed displeasure and sneered, "We should have supported each other and overcome difficulties together. But they have gone so far as to ally with outsiders to bully us in Dingzhou."
The implication of his words was obviously that he was dissatisfied with the Lu family's behavior.
The people from the other families looked at each other, then all looked up at Zhao Sheng, hoping that he could make the final decision.
"For the sake of the interests of the other families, we will not dwell on the past. But if it happens again, we must unite and denounce it."
In order to solve the problem of the ? tribe, Zhao Sheng had to lower his stance temporarily.
Li Youran had originally deliberately created complications to highlight Zhao Sheng's magnanimity.
Now that Zhao Sheng had said this, he naturally stopped talking at the right time.
Seeing that the situation had calmed down, Zhao Sheng discussed the specific matters of the railway protection team with everyone, and finally decided to expand the three battalions of the Bingzhou railway protection team into five battalions.
At the same time, the railway protection team was given the same responsibilities, and the required expenses would be borne jointly by the major families that subscribed to shares after the establishment of the group.
After some discussion, everyone unanimously agreed that Zhao Yongqiang would serve as the commander of the group's railway protection brigade.
Although some people are not clear about what this "commander" means, after Zhao Sheng's patient explanation, they learned that it is similar to "chief governor".
The expansion of the railway protection team adopts a mercenary system. The group is only responsible for the salary, pensions and consumed weapons and ammunition of the mercenary team, and is not responsible for other aspects.
Moreover, this recruitment also adopts a selection system, and the selection conditions are tentatively set as the performance in the battle to annihilate the Bingzhou tribe.
At the beginning, Zhao Sheng wanted to develop Guangchang County into his own backup territory, mainly to prevent Zhao Wei from hunting him down.
However, now that Zhao Hui is in power, he no longer needs to have such concerns.
However, textile factories and other units are all there, and he doesn't want to put all his eggs in one basket.
After a careful survey of the terrain of Quyang County, he found an excellent place near the border of Tang County.
Today's textile factories mainly rely on water resources for power, and this place happens to have a river that can perfectly meet this condition.
The main reason for building the factory here was the pollution problem caused by wool spinning. If it were located in Luancheng, the excessive concentration of industry would not be beneficial to the development of Luancheng.
After all, later experience told him that the so-called environmental pollution was caused by, firstly, excessive industrial concentration and, secondly, excessive population density.
Therefore, his purpose of building a textile factory here was also to divert the population.
However, textile factories generally employ female workers, so the recruits are all local residents. This way, it will not affect the local farming labor force.
Although Zhao Hui sent his mother to try to persuade him, this did not prevent him from making his own long-term plans for Dingzhou.
Time flies, and in the blink of an eye, a month has passed.
In April, the area of reclaimed farmland in Quyang and Tang County has doubled compared to before.
Like Zhao County and Luancheng, this place also implements a collective production work system, that is, wages are paid according to the length of working hours.
In this era, there were no pesticides such as insecticides and herbicides, so farmers had endless farm work to do every day.
Even in their spare time, they are organized to make fertilizer.
Making agricultural fertilizers in ancient times was not an easy task. The main methods were composting and fermentation.
Digging holes in the fields and soaking weeds and straw to compost them has been a method that appeared as early as the Qin and Han Dynasties. It later developed into a compound composting process that added bean cake and human feces and urine. This is the composting method.
Composting involves laying straw in a pen and mixing it with manure through the movement of livestock. Composting involves layering plant residue, household waste, and manure, then covering it with soil to seal the fermentation process.