Chapter 52: Technology is Productivity

“It’s all here,” Xiao Gui said, handing over a detailed list of the delivered goods. Chang Shide scanned it. The allocated materials were impressive: boilers, steam engines, cement, bricks, thermometers, pH test strips, laboratory equipment… They had been far more thorough than he had.

“This ship must be new,” he remarked. “It’s quite suitable for transporting such large items. I was worried about how the steam engine and boiler would be moved.”

“Hehe, this is President Wen’s latest design,” Xiao Gui laughed. “A near-shore, shallow-draft, wide-body, flat-deck barge. He originally planned to build all-wood containers, a sort of makeshift container ship. But he realized that making containers out of wood was unrealistic—heavy and not sturdy. The containers never materialized, but the ship was already under construction, so they just finished it.”

“Aren’t there containers piled up in Lingao?”

“Commissar Ma treats them like treasures. He wouldn’t even let the metallurgy department melt them down for steel. He specifically instructed that they be rust-proofed,” Xiao Gui said.

As they spoke, Wen Xiu reported that the laborers had been organized. The cargo included a steam engine and a boiler, so the demand for labor was immense. All the able-bodied men from the South China Plantation had been mobilized, and they had hired over two hundred more from the surrounding area. A huge team was formed, equipped with countless carrying poles, ropes, and rolling logs. Wen Tong was most concerned about the boiler and the steam engine; their main structures had to be moved as a whole.

“Let’s begin.”

A group of workers in blue short clothes, short hair, and rattan hats disembarked. Their strange attire caused a stir. They unloaded iron pipes, plates, and sacks of iron parts, quickly assembling a platform on the stone embankment. They installed pulleys and chains. Under their command, the laborers lined up, some pulling the chains, others grabbing ropes on the large cargo. One person, holding small red and green flags, climbed onto the platform. To the rhythmic sound of a whistle and the waving of the flags, hundreds of laborers began to pull. The behemoth on the deck trembled and lifted. A group of laborers, to the command of a chanter, turned the crane, and the cargo was slowly moved from the ship to the pier, then lowered onto prepared rolling logs. The crowd gasped in amazement.

Transporting the equipment to the South China Sugar Factory was a monumental task. The ten-kilometer road from Haian Port was rough and winding, barely passable for ox carts. Large equipment could only be slowly pushed forward on rolling logs. The hardship was imaginable. A team of laborers was sent ahead to clear the road. It took a full four days to transport the large equipment. The men who came with the ship also quietly arrived at the factory and settled into the courtyard prepared for them.

The horizontal steam engine was a Mozi II model. Though its horsepower had not increased, it was more efficient in steam utilization than the Mozi I. The Industrial Committee was satisfied with its performance and had decided to put it into mass production. The one sent to Leizhou was the first mass-produced unit.

In addition to this equipment, there were many long, narrow boxes, marked “Fragile” and “Handle with Care.” They were all carried by hand. Inside, tightly packed with straw ropes and dry seaweed, were glass and ceramic pipes of various calibers, to be used in place of the more easily rusted cast iron pipes.

“This is too powerful,” Wen Tong was almost speechless.

“It’s nothing. Practice makes perfect. Besides, these pipes weren’t just made for you. The chemical factory needs them in more places. This batch is just a trial production.”

The factory’s power workshop was located by the river for convenient access to water. Mei Lin organized the construction of a reservoir to treat the boiler water and recruited masons to build a towering chimney, a structure they had never built before. It was so large that all the local masons were not enough. Chang Shide bought up all the bricks and tiles from the local kiln, which was now working overtime to supply the construction site.

The three-roller press that Wen Tong had requested arrived smoothly. The machinery factory only complained about the large amount of steel consumed by the rollers. Wen Tong examined it; it looked no worse than the old equipment he had seen.

“But the strength of many of the parts is questionable,” Xiao Gui said. “The service life is hard to say.” Due to material limitations, some key connecting parts, gears, and transmission parts had poor durability.

“It doesn’t matter. We brought plenty of spare parts,” Chen Tianxiong said nonchalantly. “If it breaks, we’ll just replace it. It’s the first time we’ve made something like this, so it’s inevitable that the quality is a bit poor.”

In addition to the press, there were also a rotary knife and a crusher for breaking and tearing the sugarcane. Crushed sugarcane had a much higher juice extraction rate.

A month later, the construction and installation were complete. The boiler was successfully ignited, and the steam engine started running. For the first time, the sky above Xuwen was filled with the billowing black smoke that symbolized modern industry. This semi-mechanized sugar factory, unique in this time and space, began mass production. Its daily sugarcane pressing capacity was 70 tons. Except for the sugar boiling workshop, which continued to use the old manual method, all other workshops used machinery. The sugar boiling workshop used no fire at all, but directly used the steam from the boiler for heating.

The towering chimney and the steel sugarcane press amazed the locals. When they heard that the factory continued to process sugarcane on behalf of others, many farmers came from afar to see the newfangled factory for themselves. Bundles of sugarcane were transported by ox cart to the factory. They first underwent mechanical processing: the sugarcane was leveled and cut by a cane knife, then torn apart by a crusher. The crusher was sophisticated, designed to break the sugarcane along the fibers to avoid breaking the “pith” where the sugar was stored.

After being crushed, the sugarcane was transported in baskets to the press. A three-roller press could extract 70% of the juice in one go. Modern factories used several machines for continuous pressing, with up to fifteen rollers, achieving an extraction rate of up to 90%.

The transmigrators did not have such conditions, so they adopted a repeated pressing method. After the first pressing, the bagasse was set aside and passed through the press again. Though labor-intensive, the benefits were considerable.

The sugarcane juice was first sent to an iron heater, where it was heated by high-temperature steam. Then it passed through a cement liming tank, where lime was added for clarification. Finally, it was transported through ceramic and glass pipes to a settling tank. The clarified juice entered a boiling pot to be heated with steam. The method of removing molasses still used the earthenware funnel technique, but on a much larger scale, with over thirty funnels in the workshop.

With the support of thermometers, pH test strips, and other equipment from Lingao, Wen Tong, after much practice, finally mastered the temperature at each stage of sugar boiling, the amount of lime to add, and a series of other data, and formulated a corresponding production process. The sugar masters were initially dismissive. They had learned their craft through years of experience, and even then, their mastery was only average. They were skeptical of this new contraption and were ready to see the owner make a fool of himself.

But the owner, relying on glass tubes, paper strips, and some indescribable jars and pots, not only produced sugar but did so without any mistakes, and the yield was almost the same every time. This was a devastating blow to their confidence. Even the most skilled masters in the county couldn’t do this.

Seeing their fearful and adoring eyes, Wen Tong was both proud and a little disappointed. Why has our science and technology always been empirical? Why did no one ever think to explore its principles and establish standards?

The implementation of this method greatly reduced waste. And Wen Tong used this to establish a stricter assessment system for loss rate control. Since the production factors were controllable, the only factor that could cause excessive loss was the workers’ lack of responsibility. From that day on, the men who were formerly called “masters” became “workers.”

This whole set of procedures was countless times more efficient than the traditional earthen mills. The scene of large-scale, semi-mechanized production left the local gentry and commoners alike dumbfounded.

The surprise was secondary. When the cane farmers discovered that after having their sugarcane processed by this factory, the amount of sugar produced was a quarter more than that of ordinary mills, and the factory still maintained its low processing fee of thirty percent, the entire population of Xuwen’s cane farmers went into a frenzy. Ox carts and boats came from all over, forming long queues at the factory gate. Some had to wait for two or three days, but their enthusiasm did not wane. In the end, even entire boatloads of sugarcane were transported from Haikang. Due to the overwhelming number of people, there was some chaos. Liao Dahua had to once again ask the yamen to send people to maintain order. The chimney, spewing black smoke, and the steel rollers, which roared as they devoured huge amounts of sugarcane, clearly left a deep impression on the assistant magistrate. However, his fear of the machinery far outweighed his curiosity, and he always kept a safe distance.

When Wen Tong got the numbers for the first day, he knew that the profit far exceeded his expectations. Especially in the processing-for-others business, a considerable part of the extra sugarcane juice extracted fell into the pockets of the South China Sugar Factory. This profit was obtained at zero cost. Not to mention that the extra molasses and bagasse were also theirs. The cane farmers did not need these by-products, but the South China Sugar Factory had a use for them.

If the equipment were better, with a twelve-roller machine and the water immersion method, a 97% extraction rate would not be a dream. Wen Tong thought that there was still a lot of profit potential to be tapped here.

He even began to consider whether it was still necessary to maintain the other four earthen sugar mills. It seemed that driven by profit, the common people were not afraid of the distance. At least the earthen sugar mill in Xuwen could be closed down, leaving only the one in Haikang.

Mei Lin and the others were also beaming with joy. Seeing the factory flourishing, everyone was genuinely happy—this was another growth point for foreign trade. Of course, there were some problems. Once, a pipe at the boiler interface broke and leaked, and several times, the gears and connecting parts of the press were damaged. But under the emergency repairs of Chen Tianxiong and Xiao Gui, it quickly returned to normal. Xiao Gui also had another task: to train several qualified boiler workers—firing a boiler was a serious job. A moment of carelessness could harm oneself and others, not to mention that this boiler was a knock-off.

Chen Tianxiong was not in a hurry. His was a long-term business trip, and he would not be going back for a while. He had enough time to train apprentices. Wen Tong suggested that after the children’s school was opened, they could select apprentices from among the older children.

However, Chen Tianxiong’s actions attracted Chang Shide’s attention. In addition to his regular inspections of the machinery, he often talked with the men from the Special Reconnaissance Team. Sometimes he would even change into local clothes and go out with the Qiwei escorts. Obviously, Chen Tianxiong was not just here to maintain the machinery; he was most likely an intelligence officer.