When the group of people riding horses arrived at the dining hall, it was already dark.

Everyone found an inn in the town for a stay, and set off before dawn the next day and entered Miaofeng Mountain.

Miaofeng Mountain has the best quality anthracite. Guanglu Temple purchases a lot every year, part of which is used for palace banquets, and part of which is given to the "charcoal ceremony" for all the teachers and the tribes.

Several bosses of Miaofengshan Coal Mine lived in the town, and Ambassador Hou had done everything he wanted to do last night... In fact, if it weren't for accompanying Zhao Hao, he would have called several bosses to Beijing and handle it, and he could have had some fun.

On the mountain road along the way, I saw foremen holding whips and driving teams of hunched porters down the mountain. I saw that the shoulder poles on the shoulders of those porters were bent into crescent moons, and the amount of coal in the basket was probably less than one or two hundred kilograms...

"Is coal transported down the mountain this way?" Zhao Hao asked the coal boss Miaofeng Mountain who was accompanying him in surprise.

"If you can use a wheelbarrow in a more gentle place elsewhere, you can also use a wheelbarrow." The coal boss named Niu smiled and replied with a smile: "There is no way, the road in Miaofeng Mountain is too steep... But this way you can earn a lot of money, so they are more willing."

Zhao Hao nodded without comment and asked Boss Niu again about the situation of the entire Xishan coal mine.

"There are about four or five hundred coal mines in the entire Xishan Mountain, and this number is not accurate." Boss Niu replied: "Because the coal mine is prone to seeping water, once the seepage water is quickly full, you can only get rid of another one, so you can often get rid of it, so you often open it, and no one has a accurate number."

"How many official kilns are there in these coal kilns and how many private kilns?" Zhao Hao asked again.

"More than 80% are private kilns, and the official kilns and the coal kilns in the palace only account for more than 10%, and they are all entrusted to us for management. As long as the coal is sent to Beijing regularly and in a fixed quantity, the rest will not be cared about..." Boss Niu wanted to say that Guanglu Temple and us had this kind of relationship, but he didn't know how Ambassador Hou told this young master, so he stopped talking.

"Is the tax heavy?" Zhao Hao asked again.

"Heavy, why not?" Boss Niu said with a bitter face.

"Isn't it thirty tax one?" Zhao Hao thought to himself, this person was indeed not enough.

"Thirty taxes are true." Boss Niu immediately complained: "But in addition to the regular tax on mine tax, the county also has various levies. After a little less than a rush, we said we were sheltering refugees and blocked the mines..."

Zhao Hao sneered secretly and thought to himself that he was overwhelmed by this. Thirty years later, Emperor Wanli released his mine surveillance envoy, and you will know what cruelty is.

At that time, you will definitely miss the Emperor Longqing who is light in taxes and levies without any trouble...

After walking along the steep mountain road for more than an hour, Zhao Hao and his party arrived at the mining area in the valley in the morning.

From a distance, I saw twenty or thirty small mine caves on the hillside, hundreds of black miners were coming in and out, and ants moved out baskets of coal like moving. After the accountants checked the pounds, the porters outside picked up the coal baskets with shoulder poles and transported them down the hillside. After a team of people gathered together, there would be a foreman supervising them to transport them to the Yongding River at the foot of the mountain.

After just walking around the mine, Zhao Hao thought of more than ten ways to improve production efficiency.

But he had already made up his mind, and only looked at it and asked it today, so he would not tell the boss named Niu.

"Is this your coal mine?" Zhao Hao asked casually, standing outside a black coal mine.

"If the villain had so many kilns, wouldn't he become the richest man in Mentougou?" The coal boss couldn't help but smile and said, "There are six kilns in total, and only five kilns belong to the villain."

"I think you are almost the same as the richest man." Ambassador Hou joked.

As the two joked, Zhao Hao suddenly remembered the name of the richest man in Caijiaxiang. He couldn't help but change the topic awkwardly and asked the coal boss how to find this coal-rich valley among the mountains.

At this time, there was no concept of surveying and mapping and geological exploration, but the kiln owners had a set of on-site coal search techniques similar to the Dragon Search Method.

Although people would not reveal the secret of eating to Zhao Hao, for Ambassador Hou's sake, they still showed him tools such as tape rulers, compass, benchmarks, buckets and shovels for mining searches, as well as their hand-drawn terrain diagrams.

On that topographic map, Zhao Hao even saw a mapping method that would be adopted by the West 150 years later.

On the contrary, the coal mine itself has nothing to surprise. The coal mines here are very shallow, and the deepest ones are only twenty or thirty feet long. Most of them are dug about ten feet from the ground and abandoned.

This is because, first, due to the tool level, it is not cost-effective to dig deeper. Second, the Xishan area is exactly where the groundwater is enriched in Beijing. Often, if it is dug ten feet downward, water will seep out. If the water is not drained in time, the well will soon be unable to work.

In addition, the coal resources in this area are too rich, making kiln owners too lazy to spend money on drainage. If you have the time, it is better to find another coal nest...

Moreover, because the mine is not deep, most of them are well ventilated. In a small number of relatively deep mines, large hollow bamboo is used to exhaust the air, and no ventilation machinery such as windmills, wind hoods, fans are used, which disappoints Zhao Hao a little.

However, through conversations with several coal bosses, he found that the other party was also very dissatisfied with the current mining method. After all, no matter how rich the coal mines in Xishan are, they do not just dig a shovel and just throw away coal nests. It is also a huge waste for them.

Therefore, if there are tools that can be automatically drained and transported, their willingness to use them is very strong.

After visiting the small coal mine, Zhao Hao's eyes were attracted by a high-walled courtyard filled with thorns.

"This is the pot built by our six families, and it is the place where workers eat and sleep." Boss Niu explained hurriedly.

"Go in and take a look." Zhao Hao said.

"Young master, please don't want it anymore. It's smelly and dirty inside, so many people are squeezed..." Boss Niu showed a embarrassed look.

Zhao Hao walked straight towards the small door.

"Oh..." Boss Niu glanced at Ambassador Hou and couldn't help but whisper: "How come this young master brought by lord, why do you like such strange things?"

"How could I know?" Ambassador Hou was almost exhausted and he regretted following Zhao Hao into the mountain.

Boss Niu had no choice but to open the heavy iron door.

Then they saw more than a hundred dark and extremely dirty miners squatting in the yard. Each of them was holding a thick porcelain bowl, which was filled with cabbage soup with only a few oily flowers. The miners were holding two or three equally black steamed buns in their dark hands and were eating there.

When the door was ringing, the miners raised their eyelids and ignored them when they saw that it was not their foreman. Instead, the one who was in charge of the gang grew up and greeted Boss Niu, one of the bosses of the boss.

By asking the gang leader, Zhao Hao learned that the mine had a total of more than 800 miners. The supply capacity of the pot was limited, so he had to come back for a meal in shifts.

In fact, even if it can be supplied, in order to save time, coal bosses will only ask the miners to have a hot meal a day, and then each of them will give three steamed buns, and then go into the mine with their hands. When they are hungry, they will eat a few bites of steamed buns, and when they are thirsty, they will drink the accumulated water in the mine.

Zhao Shizhen asked what to do if he gets sick like this? The dozens of lying on the bunk bed in the house were injuries caused by various reasons. The chef in the pot also serves as a doctor. Whoever is sick will catch some herbs randomly. If it can be cured, it is normal to not cure it. Moreover, although it does not cost money to treat the doctor, it is much more expensive to get the medicine than in the town...

Later, these words were not heard from the long group. Instead, Zhao Hao asked Gao Wu to take out a bag of copper coins that he had exchanged in the town and directly distributed them to the workers present. The insensitive miners finally responded, could laugh, thank you, and could speak eloquently.

After chatting with them, Zhao Hao learned that these miners must work in the mine until the summer of the next year before they can settle the bill and go home. Before that, they had to eat and live in the mine, and even if they were only on a day off during the Chinese New Year, they were not allowed to leave the pot. The coal boss was very self-aware and knew that with their abuse of miners, most of them would not come back once they were released.

But the coal boss also told Zhao Hao that it was not their original intention to build a prison, but the request of the court.

Because Xishan is too close to the capital, the coal mine recruits a large number of refugees. The court is naturally very alert to the gathering of refugees, fearing that riots will occur and endanger the capital.

But the people inside and outside the capital could not bear this hardship, and the coal mines could not bear the cheap labor. So the two sides reached a compromise, and the coal boss would restrict the freedom of the miners. If the miners caused trouble, the coal boss would be jointly and severally responsible.

In order to avoid the large number of people being uncontrollable, coal bosses could only take the initiative to reduce the number of workers recruited, and the production scale was greatly restricted. Several coal bosses bragged that if the court did not restrict refugees, they could expand the production scale ten times and make the entire Zhili burn coal from the west.

Although I don’t know how true or false their words are, combined with what Wu Kangyuan said at the beginning, it seems that the court has indeed had a negative attitude towards refugees.

However, Dongshan tigers eat people, Xishan tigers don't eat vegetarian food, and these coal bosses are not more kind than British capitalists in the 17th century.

When leaving here, Zhao Hao suddenly realized that he was actually a member of the capitalist...
Chapter completed!