"The gold production of Zhaoyuan Gold Mine is becoming more and more stable now." Nan Yimin walked carefully in the mining area full of gravel and said to Lu Zheng who was following him.

Lu Zheng is the son of Lu Fang, an official of the Southern Development Team. He has been studying in the East Coast local area. After graduation, he has been screened heavily and finally entered the mysterious state-owned enterprise Dongshang Gold Company. In this enterprise mainly focusing on mining, smelting and processing of precious metals, diamonds, and gems, Lu Zheng has fought for ten years. Later, due to outstanding work performance, he was assigned to Far East and served as the general manager of the Zhaoyuan Branch of the East Coast Gold Company, and is fully responsible for the daily production and operation of Zhaoyuan Gold Mine.

As for Nan Yimin, the son of Nanjiro, former deputy director of the Military Administration and the commander of Djibouti garrison, is 37 years old this year. It is somewhat similar to Lu Zheng's experience. After working in Nanyi Railway Company for a full twenty years, he finally got through. While climbing to the position of director, he also served as the actual shortcomings of the Gumstone Railway Management Committee, which is quite good. You must know that it may not be too difficult to be a director, as long as he has a good grade and has a seniority, it is enough, but if you want to have a very good position, it is not easy. Nan Yimin's ability to represent Nanyi Railway Company as the director of the Gumstone Railway Management Committee itself shows his ability.

Today, someone from Nan came to Zhaoyuan Gold Mine. In fact, he was invited by Lu Zheng to see if a railway branch could be built, connecting Zhaoyuan Gold Mine and Guyan Railway to facilitate the daily operation of the gold mine. To be honest, Nan Yimin had no interest in this matter and did not want to build this branch line at all. It was just because of the kind invitation from others, so he had to just take a look.

Although Director Nan is now the top leader of Jiaoyan Railway and is responsible for the daily operation of the railway, his life is not very comfortable. First of all, although this railway communicates with the prosperous areas of the Jiaodong Peninsula and the business is booming, it is not necessarily true if you want to make money. The reason is probably the most important thing is that the maintenance cost of the railway is relatively high, which not only includes most of the parts required for railway maintenance, which is expensive, but also includes personnel expenses. That is, Denglai lacks professional railway talents and requires a lot of money to hire from the local area. The cost is not a small amount.

In addition, a large number of military mobilizations are increasingly frequent through railways. According to the agreement reached by the Nan Railway Company and the military, this part is completely free, or even if it costs little money. Over time, it is natural that the Gum Smoke Railway, which occupied a large amount of transportation capacity by military transport, has caused a large amount of deficit in this regard. However, considering that when the railway was built, the military also donated some cash and materials, which drove a large number of prisoners of war to the construction party for free. In addition, the successive presidents of the Nan Railway Company were active military officers and had close ties with the army system, so this baggage Gum Smoke Railway cannot be removed no matter what, and can only carry it on its own.

Finally, it is also a very important factor. The East Coast has not yet approved the establishment of a wire and telegraph network in the Far East. You should know that wire and telegraph is very profitable. In the early days when local railways were not yet profitable (in fact, they have not yet achieved profitability), the State Administration of Railways had to rely on the profits of wire and telegraph to subsidize the loss-making railway department. However, this model in the Far East cannot be replicated. Although the Gum Smoke Railway is not strictly a loss, without the cash cow of wire and telegraph, its operating conditions will definitely not be very good. Therefore, this time, Lu Zheng invited Nan Yimin to visit the Zhaoyuan Gold Mine and tactfully proposed that he hoped to repair a branch line. It is probably unlikely that the reason is that someone in Nan has no money!

"Zhaoyuan Gold Mine now produces nearly two tons of gold per year. Although it is not as good as the local Tieling Gold Mine, it is almost the same." Lu Zheng pointed to the large mining area in front and said: "The army has established a garrison here, with more than 1,500 people, all of which are cavalry, scattered around, with strict vigilance and no suspicious people allowed to approach. Next year, I plan to recruit more workers and expand the production scale. By that time, the output of Zhaoyuan Gold Mine will inevitably jump to the largest in the country.

After all, the potential of Tieling Gold Mine has actually been tapped to the maximum, with the output stabilizing at more than two tons a year, and there is no increase. On the contrary, the current utilization of Zhaoyuan Gold Mine's production capacity is actually far from enough, which has a lot to do with the long-term indifference of the local government. In the past two years, international silver prices have fallen rapidly, and local masters have finally realized the value of gold, so they began to urge all localities to increase gold mine production and prepare for future currency reform. Actually, I want to ask, what have you done long ago?"

Lu Zheng is the son of Lu Fang, and Lu Fang is the brother-in-law of the army tycoon Yang Liang. Therefore, if you really want to talk about it, Lu Zheng is considered a founder of the country for three generations. Although his identity is not as good as those who are well-known, he is much better than Nan Yimin. Therefore, Lu Zheng dared to scold local officials and accuse them of mistakes, but Nan Yimin was still cautious about this and kept laughing and not expressing his own opinions.

Of course, from his heart, he actually agreed with Lu Zheng's opinion. The stupid guys from the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Precious Metals originally found not a lot of gold. In the era of financial difficulties, they were also used to repay foreign debts and build infrastructure. The documents of the Ministry of Finance often used the words "using a few thousand yuan in gold reserves" in that year, saying that the budget was not enough and the temporary use of gold reserves was used for expenditure. But the problem was that this part of the gold used was not replenished afterwards. Therefore, the East Coast government's gold reserves have been very few for so many years, which is very embarrassing.

Well, now the men see that silver is becoming less and less valuable, and they feel that the gold and silver replica system still has great flaws, which is not as good as the gold standard to maintain value and increase value. However, it is not so easy to carry out gold standard currency reform. First of all, the East Coast government needs sufficient gold reserves: I dare not say that if there are too many, in order not to cause major economic problems, there must be at least a gold coins worth tens of millions of yuan in circulation on the market, right? This is a gold reserve of dozens of tons!

In other words, with the East Coast Republic's current annual gold production (including gold obtained from trade), it takes more than ten years to save enough. Moreover, this only takes into account the situation of gold gross profit margin. If all costs are included, it may take thirteen or fourteen years.

Therefore, if you don’t want to accumulate step by step, God knows if you can save it. If there is not enough money one day, you may use so much reserve gold to open some gold mines and quickly collect the reserve gold required to issue currency. Therefore, the East Coast Gold Company began to instruct the Zhaoyuan Gold Mine and Huma Gold Mine in the Far East, and immediately began to expand production and strive to increase production as soon as possible. To this end, they helped clear the relationship and purchased a large number of new steam engine mining equipment from the local area and transported it to Denglai for local gold mine production.

Such treatment should be said to be quite low, because many coal mines in the Far East do not have enough steam engine equipment to pump water, wash coal, and transport it. Therefore, Lu Zheng also felt the pressure, so he invited someone from Nan to visit Zhaoyuan Gold Mine.

Nan Yimin and Lu Zheng were walking around the gold mine. Seeing that the time was almost over, Nan Yimin didn't want to delay it anymore, so he directly said: "Manager Lu, I won't say anything secretly. To be honest, the matter of building a railway branch line to Zhaoyuan Gold Mine you mentioned earlier is not realistic. It's really not that I don't help me. It's really difficult. Because from Laiyang Railway Station, the closest to this side, there are about 70 kilometers, which costs more than one million yuan in road construction funds. To be honest, our company can't take it out, and it's not something that a small director of the Gum Smoke Railway Management Committee, can make the decision. This requires a meeting at the company headquarters to discuss it."

Nan Yimin said this. He could not get it even if he killed more than 70 kilometers of mileage and more than one million yuan of funds. Therefore, this branch railway is destined to be impossible to complete. Even though Zhaoyuan Gold Mine is rich and powerful, its annual gold output is significant. Except for partly allocated to the Denglai Development Team government, the rest must be transported back to the east coast. Therefore, it is impossible to misappropriate this part of the gold to build the railway. That will cause major problems.

"So, this branch railway is destined to be a delusion?" Lu Zheng asked with some depression.

Nan Yimin nodded gently and said, "It has been two or three years since the official commercial operation of Jiaoyan Railway. I have not saved any financial resources so far, and the dividends to shareholders are pitifully small. From an investment perspective, it will take about decades to recover the cost of this railway, and it is not a good investment."

"But in terms of social and economic benefits, the Glue Smoke Railway has reduced the logistics transportation time and cost between the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea, accelerated the flow of personnel, funds and commodities in counties and townships along the railway, prospered the local economy, and increased the government a lot of taxes. The benefits of this part are actually quite large, but they cannot be reflected in the accounts of the railway company." Lu Zheng said with a wry smile: "Okay, I understand what you mean. Isn't it just called poor? Glue Smoke

The railway profit rate is low, and the big part of the benefits has been taken away by the local government, right? Forget it, I didn't force you to build this branch railway. But looking at your shabby appearance, how can the Pingrong Line railway be built in the future? I remember that the Jiaodong Peninsula has two railways, one vertical and one horizontal in the government's plan. If there is another Pingrong Line, it will be really amazing and can effectively mobilize the strength of more than 2 million people in the entire Jiaodong Peninsula."

"The Pingrong Line is the year of the monkey and horse month." Nan Yimin handed a cigarette to Lu Zheng, and lit one himself, saying: "Anyway, if the Denglai local government does not make a big deal, the Pingrong Line will definitely not be built. After all, our Nan Railway Company is a commercial enterprise, and may have to pay attention to the return on investment and be responsible for shareholders. The Pingrong Line Railway is longer than the Jiaoyu Line and costs a lot. It is impossible for us to do so alone. The Denglai local government should show its sincerity. Jiaodong's economy is so good now.
Chapter completed!