Chapter 218 Labor and Food

After inspecting the construction of the Barcelona industrial base, Carlo took a train from Barcelona and returned to the capital Madrid via Zaragoza.

Spain's railway construction has been quite smooth so far. Important cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Seville, Zaragoza and Valencia have all been connected by railways. The railway between Madrid and Barcelona also uses a double-track railway with stronger transportation capacity.

Although this has increased Spain's railway costs, the effect is also quite good. Every once in a while, a train from Madrid to Barcelona will start, and after a while, there will be a train from Barcelona to Madrid.

The train line from Madrid to Barcelona is also the busiest train line in Spain at present, and is praised by the Spanish government as a bridge for Spain's economic exchanges.

Because of the influence of the Meseta Plateau in northern Spain, it has become more difficult for Spain to build railways. Spain's railway network must bypass towering mountains and plateaus and pass through the valleys in the middle of the mountains.

This not only increases the difficulty of building railways in Spain, but also increases the casualties of building railways in Spain.

In this era, building railways is very important for the development of industry, but the construction of railways also represents the death of a large number of workers.

In this era when all transportation depends on manpower, the construction of railways has never been so gentle. Spain has built a large number of railways in recent years, and has also suffered a large number of casualties among workers.

The main reason why some immigrants are introduced from abroad every year is to use these foreign immigrants to build railways.

Spain has a small population, and casualties in railway construction should be avoided if possible. Because these foreign immigrants do not have Spanish nationality, they can only build railways or work as miners if they want to earn enough money.

Although these jobs are more tiring, the Spanish government has expressly prohibited the practice of deducting workers' wages in these places. As long as they are willing to work hard in these places, they can definitely make money.

It is precisely because of this that Spain's mines and railway construction sites have attracted a large number of workers, a considerable number of whom are foreign workers.

Spaniards have more opportunities. They can enter factories or other enterprises, and naturally they will not compete with these foreign workers for these jobs with higher mortality rates.

Carlo and the Spanish government also limit the number of foreign workers to a certain proportion to ensure that these workers will not have too serious an impact on Spain's unemployment rate.

Although it is a good choice to use foreign workers to fill the pit of casualties in railway construction, if there are too many foreign workers and thus affect the opportunities for Spaniards to find jobs, it would be a bit of a loss.

This is also the reason why Spain strictly limits the number of foreign immigrants. If there are too many foreign immigrants, it will be difficult for real Spaniards to find jobs.

Carlo is the king of Spain, so he should naturally give priority to the interests of the Spaniards. As for these foreign immigrants, unless they quickly convert to Catholicism and recognize themselves as Spaniards, who will care about their feelings?

Although Carlo has signed relevant population introduction agreements with Italy and Russia, these introduced Italians and Russians are all doing hard labor.

Carlo will not let them compete with the Spaniards for jobs, which will not only arouse conflicts between native Spaniards and foreign immigrants, but also make Carlo, an outsider, more embarrassed.

In his position, he should plan his politics. Carlo still knows the meaning of this sentence. When he became the King of Spain, Carlo should forget the fact that he is Italian and consider the interests of the Spaniards as much as possible, so that he can sit firmly on his throne.

The railway from Barcelona to Zaragoza is almost all plains and low hills, and the train is still moving very fast.

But after arriving in Zaragoza, the railway entered the Iberian Mountains, and the train's speed slowed down a bit.

After entering the Iberian Mountains, Carlo often saw workers building and repairing railways around the railway line. A small number of these workers are Spanish, and most of them are foreign immigrants and laborers.

Although building railways is more difficult and the casualty rate is relatively high, the wages of railway workers are also quite high.

The per capita annual income in Spain is only 131 pesetas, but the average salary of railway workers has reached about 145 pesetas, which is why these foreign immigrants and laborers are willing to be railway workers.

If they are injured or die because of the construction of railways, their families can also get some compensation. Although these compensations are not much, they are much better than those capitalists who only exploit and do not understand any compensation.

The general background of this era is exploitation and slavery. For these foreign immigrants and laborers, railway workers are already the higher-income jobs they can find.

Unless they have a higher level of education and knowledge, or have special abilities in a certain area, they can only make a living by selling hard labor.

Carlo will still treat those real talents well, whether they are scientists or technical talents, as long as they have a skill, Carlo will put them in the right position and let them play their abilities.

After entering the Iberian Mountains, we first passed through a valley, followed by the Central Mountains and Cuenca Mountain, the highest point of the Meseta Plateau. After passing through the two mountains, we arrived at Madrid, the capital of Spain.

The geographical limitations of Madrid cannot be seen from the topographic map alone, but if you take a train from Barcelona to Madrid, you can clearly feel the difference in the geographical location of the two cities.

The entire journey from Barcelona to Zaragoza is quite flat plains and hills. Going along the Ebro River, you can see the development of European countries at a glance.

But after entering the Iberian Mountains from Zaragoza, it is difficult to find such a flat and prosperous area. Before arriving in Madrid, most of the way is sparsely populated mountains and plateaus, and there is not even a decent medium or large city.

This is not an exaggeration. There is a vast "no man's land" between Zaragoza and Madrid. It is definitely a bit exaggerated to say that it is a no man's land. There are still some people living in this mountainous area and plateau.

But compared with Madrid in the south and Zaragoza to Barcelona in the north, it is not outrageous to compare these mountains in the middle to no man's land.

The area of ​​this uninhabited area is not small. There are tens of thousands of square kilometers of mountains from Zaragoza to Madrid alone. The usable value of these lands is extremely low, which is why Spain's development potential is far less than that of France in the north.

Spain's land area is as high as 506,000 square kilometers, while France's land area is only 549,000 square kilometers. The gap between the two is not large.

What really makes Spain and France show the difference is the land type in the land area.

The northwest of France has an extremely vast Western European plain, and the capital Paris is located in the Paris Basin, which is extremely suitable for the development of agriculture and animal husbandry.

Although there is a central plateau in the south, the west of the central plateau is the Aquitaine Basin. Most of France's land is plains and hills, and there is only a small part of the mountains.

Nearly half of Spain's land is covered by the Meseta Plateau, and the south also has mountains such as Penivetico Mountain, Morena Mountain and Toledo Mountain.

Only a small part of the plains and hills are suitable for the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, which also makes Spain lag far behind in potential compared with countries such as Britain, France and Germany.

Countries like Britain, France and Germany can achieve food self-sufficiency even with a population of tens of millions because they have large plains.

But for Spain, if it has a population of tens of millions, it is difficult to achieve food self-sufficiency.

Unless Spain can annex Portugal and reclaim the vast plains of Portugal into arable land, or fully annex Morocco and expand its territory, it will be difficult to achieve food self-sufficiency with a population of tens of millions.

Whether food production can achieve self-sufficiency is extremely important for a country. People are iron, and food is steel. If you don't eat, you will be hungry. If there is no food, even if the country is well governed, it will eventually fall into chaos when there is a shortage of food.

Although domestic food needs can be met by importing food in peacetime, who can guarantee that their country will always be in peacetime?

When the war comes, those countries that need to import food in peacetime can only pay a higher price to buy those high-priced foods.

This also needs to consider whether those grain-producing countries are willing to sell food to themselves. Therefore, achieving self-sufficiency is also Carlo's requirement for Spain's development. No matter at any time, Spain's food production must keep up with the rate of population growth.

Fortunately, there is still a lot of land that can be reclaimed for Spain at present. Spain also has a large area of ​​land that can be reclaimed. After all, the population at this time is only more than 18 million, which has not yet reached the upper limit of the population that Spain can accommodate.

Outside of Spain, Guinea, Congo Territory and the Philippines can be used to grow food, and Spain has no problem achieving self-sufficiency in food.

Not to mention self-sufficiency, Spain is also one of the food exporters in Europe, exporting a large amount of food every year in exchange for foreign exchange to purchase other industrial equipment or technical production materials.

According to the Spanish agricultural department's estimate, before the Spanish population reaches 25 million, it is completely no problem for Spain to maintain food self-sufficiency.

After the population reaches 25 million, either find a way to increase food production or reclaim more land.

The good news is that Spain is still a long way from the level of 25 million people. If we really want to talk about the time when the population reaches 25 million, we have to wait until the 20th century at least.

The time in between is also the time for Spain to find more arable land, develop more effective fertilizers, and find ways to increase food production.

After the train left the mountains and entered the area of ​​Madrid, Carlo's frown finally improved a little.

The Meseta Plateau has always been a pain for Spain and one of the most important factors affecting Spain's development.

If this area is turned into a vast plain like the Western European Plain or the Pode Plain, Spain's development potential will be greatly improved, and it may even have the opportunity to become the world hegemon.

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Unfortunately, this is just a dream after all. The Meseta Plateau completely prevented Spain from becoming a world hegemon. After the 19th century, Spain was at most a regional power, an upper-middle power.

After returning to Madrid, Carlo summoned the Minister of Agriculture, Jovillar Soller, to inquire about the current development of agriculture in Spain.

Although most of the land in Spain is not suitable for agricultural development, there are still some areas that are excellent arable land, suitable for growing crops and vegetables and fruits.

Although Portugal has a larger plain area, Portugal is not as good as Spain in terms of grain production.

Spain is one of the largest exporters of vegetables and fruits in Europe in later generations, and its grain self-sufficiency rate can reach about 70%, which is a relatively good level.

Minister of Agriculture Jovillar Soler soon arrived at the Royal Palace of Madrid, and Carlo also summoned him in the reception room of the Royal Palace.

"Minister Jovillar, how is our agricultural development now?" Before Jovillar saluted, Carlo couldn't wait to ask his question.

For any country, agricultural development is definitely one of the most important links. For Spain, a country where most of the population are farmers, agriculture is an important factor related to the survival of the country.

"Because we have used a lot of chemical fertilizers on the arable land in Andalusia, the grain yield per mu has increased a lot.

It is expected that our grain output this year will increase by at least 5%, and the output of vegetables and fruits will be almost the same as last year." Agriculture Minister Jovillar saluted first, and then answered Carlo's question.

Spain's total grain output is about 4 million tons, of which wheat, corn and rice have the largest output. Because of Spain's complex geographical environment and climate, Spain also produces other grains including barley, oats, rye and potatoes, but they are all planted in small quantities and the output is not large.

In addition to these 4.5 million tons of grain, Spain also produces a large number of vegetables, fruits and other crops, including olives, grapes, etc.

There are also many economic crops for industry, such as cotton, beets and tobacco, etc.

Although the grain output is only 4 million tons, because it also produces many vegetables and fruits, it can barely guarantee the food needs of more than 18 million people in Spain.

To put it bluntly, this is not the era of later generations, when people have too much food to eat and even waste it.

People in this era were relatively short of food and had basically no right to choose. Everyone basically ate whatever they had, as long as they could barely eat enough, and they would not ask for anything else.

4 million tons of grain can only feed 15 million to 18 million people in later generations, but in 1877, it could feed nearly 20 million people.

In addition to the vegetables and fruits produced domestically, the food produced in Spain alone can almost ensure that 22 million people can eat for a year.

Of course, although ordinary people will not waste food, food waste is still common among the nobles and capitalists.

This also leads to the fact that Spain's food production can only guarantee the consumption of about 20 million people, and there is also the worry of large-scale famine caused by natural disasters that destroy agricultural production.

Minister Jovillar's 5% increase in food production is definitely a good thing for Spain. According to the total amount of Spanish food production of about 4 million tons, an increase of 5% is equivalent to an increase of 200,000 tons of food production, which can ensure that 1 million people can eat for a year.

The population of Spain increases by only about 300,000 people each year, which means that Spain's food self-sufficiency rate will become higher and higher, and it will be less likely to have famine and food crisis.

After hearing Minister Jovillar's report, Carlo nodded and was quite satisfied with the development of agriculture.

Although Spain's food production is not much compared with countries with large plains such as Britain, France and Germany, fortunately, Spain's population is not large, and the demand for food is not that huge.

Although it cannot reach the food self-sufficiency rate of France and Germany, it is a very good result for Spain to maintain a food self-sufficiency rate of about 100%.

At least it can ensure that Spain will not rely on foreign food imports and can use more funds for other more important places.

Although it is not so expensive to import food in peacetime, the accumulated expenses every year are still a large expense.

There are four important grain-producing areas in Spain, namely the Seville grain-producing area in the west of Andalusia, the central grain-producing area around the capital Madrid and Toledo, the Zaragoza grain-producing area in Zaragoza, and the Leon grain-producing area near Leon.

If we talk about the place with the most grain production, it must be the Andalusia region with the largest population. The grain-producing area near Seville alone contributes about 25% of Spain's grain production, which is already a very exaggerated level.

It is no exaggeration to say that the grain production in the Andalusia region is always related to Spain's total grain production and Spain's grain prices.

If there are problems with agriculture in the Andalusia region, it will seriously affect the grain production of the whole of Spain, causing a food crisis that affects the whole country or even a large-scale famine.

Unlike grain-producing areas, livestock breeding areas are generally concentrated on the western border of Spain, especially in the Extremadura region, which has the largest livestock breeding area in Spain and is also the main supplier of meat in Spain.

From this aspect, we can also see the superiority of Portugal's geographical location. Spain's largest grain-producing and livestock-raising areas are both plains and hilly areas close to Portugal. The inland mountains and plateaus are inferior to the plains and hilly areas in terms of both grain production and livestock raising.

If Portugal can be conquered, Spain will have a large area of ​​plains and hills that can be used for grain production or livestock breeding. The comprehensive development potential of the entire Iberian Peninsula will far exceed that of Spain before. This is also an opportunity for Spain to break through the upper-middle power limit and become a regional hegemon or even a super power.

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