Chapter 709 Changes on the West Coast
"I don't expect your understanding! But please believe that I must have a reason for doing this."
In the reception room of the palace, Rodney XVIII said to everyone with a guilty look on his face, "As for the reason, it is not convenient to disclose it for the time being."
The people sitting here are Paul, Catherine, and Myron Garnard, who has been staying beside the king as a member of the Special Zone Management Committee.
"Your Majesty, will the relationship between us and the orcs end here?" Paul asked him.
After stabilizing the situation in the northwest, at the urging of the king, Paul and Catherine rushed to Jingyao at full speed. Rodney XVIII wanted to give him a knighthood ceremony.
"Of course it won't end here! Five years!" Rodney XVIII frowned tightly and opened his palms. "In five years at most, Aldor's army will stand on the Watcher Fortress again."
The king said this with absolute certainty. The humiliating peace treaty with the orcs dealt a heavy blow to his prestige. Rodney XVIII now feels like he is sitting on the crater of a volcano every moment.
"I want to organize a large army!" He clenched his fist and waved it in the air.
"The Arda army is a good template!" The king looked at Paul eagerly, "I have learned in detail about your battle with the orcs. I have to say that the Arda army played the role of ballast. Your army is a model for all the armies of the kingdom to emulate."
Paul nodded slightly, "I am honored to be praised by your majesty."
"But I also understand that it takes a lot of money to support an army like Arda. Even if we have military notes, we need to match it with exchangeable materials."
Rodney XVIII turned his eyes to Mellon.
"So our reform cannot be limited to the small fights in the special zone, but must be fully rolled out throughout the royal territory and even in other territories loyal to the royal family."
Mellon stood up, "Your Majesty, I will do my best."
Paul thought to himself that it seemed that he and the king got along well.
Since the establishment of the special economic zone centered on Westport, it has been running well. The management committee has established many workshops according to the model of Northwest Bay.
Papermaking, salt drying, wood processing, coke burning...
In fact, except for a few new industries, many industries have existed in Aldo for hundreds or even thousands of years, but they all exist in the form of scattered small workshops and handmade production.
The Special District Management Committee introduced new organizational forms, new production technologies, and so-called "standardization" from the western bay to establish large-scale production units such as "factories".
The most important of these is the textile industry. The high efficiency of the spinning jenny and the flying shuttle loom attracted a large number of rich people to join this industry. With huge private capital investment, textile factories have sprung up one after another. The abundant water power in the south of the kingdom provides a steady stream of power for the machines in the factories.
These factories have attracted a large number of practitioners to make a living. In the lower class of Aldo before, the number of workers (handicraftsmen) was negligible compared to the huge peasant group, but now the situation is beginning to change.
Traditional Aldo cities can only be said to be commodity distribution centers for the surrounding rural areas. Most of the materials in the city rely on the supply of the surrounding rural areas. The number of citizens is also very small. Many cities have only 10,000 or 20,000 people. However, this situation has also changed in the special economic zone. With the gathering of workers, the scale of the city is getting larger and larger.
The rise of new industries has made cities not only commodity distribution centers but also commodity production centers. To put it ruthlessly, those handicraft workshops scattered in the countryside were destroyed by the factories in the city, and the countryside has completely become a pure raw material supply place.
Bankrupt rural handicraftsmen had to move to the city to find another way to make a living, and the factory owners who suffered from a shortage of labor welcomed their arrival, which was particularly evident in the textile industry.
The rise of the textile industry also had another huge impact, because the demand for raw materials - cotton and wool - was very huge, causing the prices of both to rise sharply.
Cotton is particularly noteworthy because the cotton gin invented in the Northwest Bay was also brought to the south. The main body of this powerful machine is a cylinder with a large number of steel teeth installed on the wall. When the cylinder rotates, the steel teeth forcibly tear the cotton lint from the cotton seeds, and use centrifugal force to filter out the cotton seeds and throw out the cotton fibers. Driven by water, one person operating the cotton gin can separate more cotton in a single day than it would take several months to do it manually. It is also easy to operate, and only one person is needed for one machine, not to mention that it can be picked more cleanly than by hand.
The strong demand for raw materials in the textile industry has led to huge changes in the surrounding agricultural production. Combined with the advanced agricultural technology and agricultural machinery also from the West Bay, the demand for labor per unit of land has been greatly reduced, and there is no extra wasteland to be reclaimed near the densely populated Wangdu and Xigang, which has prompted the rural population to further gather in the city.
The influx of a large number of people has put great pressure on the public facilities of the Special Zone. Because it is an experiment, the support of the Royal Government to the Special Zone is limited. The committee had to entrust the Northwest Bank (developed from the bank originally created by the Alda Council of State) to issue bonds to obtain funds to develop public facilities.
Roads, bridges, factories, dormitories, residences... New buildings are constantly being built in the West Port Special Economic Zone, and it looks new every day.
No mistakes, one post, one content, one 6, one 9, one book, one bar, one look!
The booming maritime trade has solved the sales of goods in the Special Zone. Driven by the Northwest Bay, more and more coastal cities have joined in.
After continuous technological iterations, the sailing ships built in the Northwest Bay are getting bigger, stronger, and more cargo-carrying, which strongly supports the growth of the trade chain.
The growing trade chain starts with the Northwest Bay, extends to the territories of forest orcs such as Tranquil Liaoyuan, Lucky Forest, and Blackwater Basin in the north, and covers the entire west coast of Ordo in the south. It turns eastward through the Horn Bay, passes through the Asar subcontinent under the control of the Holy See, and continues to extend to the eastern end of the continent, and even connects with the land inhabited by elves in the southeast of the continent.
The tracks of the Ordo merchant ships are like silk threads, connecting the various civilizations on the continent that rarely communicated with each other. Centralized production and large-capacity sea transportation make Ordo's goods inexpensive and high-quality. Although it has impacted the backward local handicraft industry, it has also been welcomed by more local people, and the merchant ships are also full of local specialties and culture when they return.
With trade as a bridge, the residents of the coastal cities of Ordo have greatly broadened their horizons, the market culture is rising, and the publishing industry has begun to develop rapidly, especially in the Northwest Bay where the literacy rate is rapidly increasing.
With the help of papermaking and printing technology, not only did novels, poems and other books appear in large numbers, but even newspapers, a publication that mainly published news and current affairs commentary, were invented by the people themselves.