The purpose of building railways in North America or South Africa is simple and pure, either to exploit and obtain more strategic resources, such as the Maputo Railway in South Africa, which is purely to obtain more gold.

Help the empire better implement the indirect gold standard monetary system and maintain the healthy operation of the overall economy.

Either it serves to expand and control more areas, such as the proposed North American East-West Railway in North America. The early goal of this railway is to better develop the nearby Golden Valley area, mine local gold mines, and develop more

of cultivated land.

The follow-up will continue to extend into the interior of North America, allowing the immigrants from the Chu Empire to set foot in the interior, all the way to the Mississippi River, and eventually even to the east coast of North America.

In fact, these two purposes can ultimately be summed up as an attempt to obtain more overseas resources to supplement the huge local industrial consumption and at the same time improve the local food supply level.

Although the Chu Empire has completed preliminary industrialization, the overall per capita grain output is still not very good. After all, the technology of agricultural production is still not very good, the fertilizer industry has not been developed, and the research progress of excellent grain varieties is not very good either.

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This has also led to the fact that although the current grain output per acre in the Chu Empire is higher than that in traditional agricultural societies, it is still limited. To solve the food problem in the empire, more efforts are made to use the power of industry to cultivate more cultivated land.

, and transform some existing ordinary land and use water conservancy facilities to turn ordinary lower and middle fields into superior fields.

Increase total food production through these methods.

However, although the total grain output has increased, the empire has been in peace for a long time. Thirty years of peace and rapid development have brought not only economic growth and improvement in living standards, but also a huge population.

When people are peaceful and stable and can see hope, they will have a stronger desire to get married, start a family, and have children; on the contrary, if the war continues, life is difficult, and there is no hope in life, people will lower their willingness to get married and have a family.

The desire to have children.

This is not only reflected in various modern countries in later generations, but also in ancient feudal dynasties.

The so-called prosperous times that occurred decades after the founding of the People's Republic of China in previous dynasties were basically manifestations of this situation.

The same is true in the Dachu Empire, and this situation is even more obvious.

Nowadays in the Great Chu Empire, it is very common for a couple to have two or three children, and many will have four, five or even more children.

Although limited by medical standards, the maternal mortality rate is high, and the child mortality rate is also very high, but in summary, the birth rate is still very scary.

In the third census conducted by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in the 30th year of Chengshun, the total population of the Chu Empire had reached 460 million. This did not include the large wave of babies born thirty years after Chengshun!

Compared with the population of more than 100 million in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, it has tripled...

This is a scary number!

And the vast majority of the population are children and young people.

The first batch of baby boomers born in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China are now generally in their twenties and have grown into the backbone of the empire's labor force.

In recent years, the first wave of baby boomers have started to get married and have children, which has also brought about a second, even larger wave of baby boom!

This means that in the past three years and the next few years, there will be hundreds of millions of new people!

This has resulted in the great pressure on food in the Chu Empire. It has reached a level of 300 kilograms per capita long ago. However, in the past ten years of rapid development, it has only increased by 50 or 60 kilograms.

That’s all.

In the 33 years since Chengshun, according to preliminary statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, per capita grain is expected to reach 365 kilograms, with the overall level remaining the same as last year.

In fact, this year's grain production will increase a lot, but it will not be able to support the large new population!

When there are more people, the per capita food level will be lowered.

This means that there is still a long way to go before the goal of 400 kilograms of food per capita proposed by Luo Zhixue.

Regardless of the level of 365 kilograms, it is only 35 kilograms away from 400 kilograms!

However, it is very difficult to cross over and achieve this goal.

Especially when the level of agricultural cultivation is still relatively low, the grain output per acre is limited, and at the same time when the population increases significantly, it is much more difficult to quickly increase the per capita grain level than to spread the world!

In terms of fighting, in fact, if the senior leaders of the Chu Empire are willing and pay a huge price for it, to be honest, they can start from Central Asia and fight all the way to West Asia, then Eastern Europe, directly to Western Europe, and drink the English Channel!

When the Mongols were so backward in productivity, they were able to defeat it by using the characteristics of the nomadic people, let alone today's Chu Empire.

Although the Da Chu Empire was not a nomadic nation, the number of horses, sheep and other livestock in the Da Chu Empire was actually far greater than that of the Mongols.

How can the level of traditional grazing in ancient times and the size of the horse herd maintained be comparable to the modern animal husbandry technology that uses modern animal husbandry technology for large-scale grazing and breeding?

Impossible!

Besides, even the traditional grazing areas on the grasslands are now basically in the hands of the Chu Empire!

The entire vast Central Asian grasslands, Siberia, Mongolia, etc. are all pastures of the Chu Empire!

The huge number of horses also led to the Great Chu Empire having more powerful cavalry than the traditional nomads... Well, let alone quality, the quantity alone far exceeded the so-called Great Chu Empire back then.

How many horses are there in the Chu Empire?

There is no exact number, but there is a rough number: 35 million horses!

You read that right, not hundreds of thousands or millions, but a full 35 million horses!

A large number of horses are widely used in agricultural production, transportation and military strength.

You said that ordinary civilian horses cannot fight, then you only talk about military horses. Various government-run horse farms, military-run horse farms and private horse farms. In the past thirty years, Chengshun provided up to 80,000 horses for the army, navy and guards of the Great Chu Empire.

Military horses after complete military training!

This number is actually not the largest number, but the number of official purchases by the Army, Navy and Guards every year!

If the military has greater needs, major racecourses can actually provide more military horses.

At the same time, we are not talking about ordinary horses, but riding horses that have been professionally trained and will not panic when encountering the sound of gunfire. They are specially used for cavalry, officers and messengers, or professional artillery and logistics horses.

The Chu Empire purchased tens of thousands of riding horses a year... and the number of army, navy and guard horses reached 600,000!

In many countries in the world, there are not so many horses...

The sufficient number of horses allowed the Chu Empire to have the largest cavalry force in the world, as well as the most powerful artillery force, especially the artillery force.

Trivia: In modern times, in armies that mainly use guns and artillery, cavalry is not the big user of horses, but artillery and baggage are!

A standard six-gun 115mm field artillery sentry in the Dachu Empire required one hundred and fifty horses!

The powerful cavalry and artillery force, coupled with the powerful industrial system, can completely give the Chu Empire the strength to defeat the world... Without so many conspiracies, it can defeat all indigenous countries in the past.

It's just that if the Chu Empire really launches large-scale mobilization and wants to quickly destroy other countries in just a few years... In fact, it doesn't even need resistance from other countries, it can drag itself to death...

A powerful army corresponds to powerful logistical consumption!

The more advanced the equipment and the more maneuverable the army, the greater the consumption.

Not to mention other things, the food consumption alone is several times higher than that of simple foot infantry.

Why did the Great Chu Empire build a third-class division... Wasn't it just to build a low-cost army to save military expenses?

The high mobility of the Class A Division is based on the huge number of draft horses and supporting horses... Without these horses, they can't even pull the artillery!

As for the C Division, although it also has guns and artillery, it basically does not retain these draft horses on weekdays. It will only recruit draft horses directly from the civilian population when necessary when a war breaks out. This leaves a huge number of draft horses on weekdays.

Consumption of draft horses.

The second-class division is in the middle of the two. It usually has a certain number of horses, but not many. It basically only meets the horse needs of the backbone troops. When a war really comes, it still needs to mobilize and replenish a large number of horses.<

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This is also the reason why the Chu Empire has hundreds of divisions, but only twenty first-class divisions... It is too expensive to raise and not cost-effective.

If a war were to directly spread across the world, a large number of troops and horses would have to be mobilized, and the food consumption alone would be very terrifying.

Considering the current national strength of the Chu Empire, it is very difficult to support it.

Therefore, you still need to expand, but you have to pay attention to the rhythm and method... Don't just focus on the expansion in front of you, and then you will find out as you play that the front is constantly winning battles, and the country's economy behind is constantly collapsing...

In the end, we don’t know when all enemies around the world will be wiped out, but Luo Zhixue will definitely be killed in a few years.

Therefore, even if the empire has the strength to directly expand the world, neither Luo Zhixue nor the high-ranking officials of the empire are very cautious in external expansion, and can be regarded as slow-paced.

Anyway, the advantage lies with me, don’t rush, take your time, expand step by step, and develop new territories in a timely manner to supplement domestic consumption and continue to improve people’s living standards.

No, it has already taken over Siberia, Central Asia, and various places in the Southeast Asia. Now it also controls most of India and the west coast of North America. Now it is targeting Africa and the interior of North America.

Step by step, there is no burden on national strength, and we can continue to expand, resettle more immigrants, and plunder more industrial raw materials and agricultural products.

Domestic people can still live a leisurely life, and continue to obtain the benefits of overseas expansion, such as more food and more industrial raw materials.

This is pretty good!

Nowadays, the construction of railways in South Africa and North America is also based on this mentality!

Let’s not talk about South Africa for now. The development there is still a bit poor. For the time being, it is still dominated by gold mining, but it is different in North America.

After years of continuous immigration to North America, and more importantly, the continuous development of ships, the tonnage of ocean liners and cargo ships continues to expand, safety continues to improve, and transportation costs continue to decrease.

This has led to the continuous reduction of the cost of immigrants to North America. Whether it is official immigration or self-funded immigration, the cost has been low to an acceptable level.

In the Age of Sail, if immigrants wanted to go to North America, the ticket price alone was beyond the reach of ordinary poor immigrants.

In Europe, during the Age of Sail, a large number of indentured servants, or migrant laborers, appeared. The reason for this was that the cost of immigration was so high that ordinary poor people could not afford it. They had to sell their labor for many years just to get a ship ticket.

Money.

But in the current Great Chu Empire, even the lower class people who don’t have much money on hand can basically save enough money to pay for a one-way ticket.

Even if you are in trouble, you can still apply for an immigration loan from a bank.
To be continued...