Chapter 40 Arsenal 1

Zhao Chenbin had guessed that Zhao Dongyun planned to build his own private arsenal, and Zhao Chenbin still knew some of his family and knew that he could not afford brand-new equipment, which was often millions of things, and he could not dig out so much money after digging out the Zhao family's yard.

So I asked if there were any cheap ones, and even said that they didn't need new goods. Second-hand ones are fine, and they don't need to be too modern. As long as the performance is average, as long as guns can be made, and the guns can be sold. In fact, I don't ask how good the performance is, but the price is the lowest!

For Lihe Yangxing, new goods are also sold, and second-hand goods are also sold. Anyway, he is a second-way dealer who can make money, whether he is new or old. If you have good things, you must have rags, and I will find some rags to sell them to you.

At this time, Zhao Dongping also talked with them about machine gun ordnance equipment. Although this old man had different ideas, Zhao Chenbin and Zhao Dongping still had a tacit understanding to connect these two things and tried to unite to suppress the price.

To be honest, if it is only a business of tens of thousands of taels of silver, Li and Yangxing will not pay so much attention to it. However, Zhao Dongyun's ordnance purchase order is not meaningful to the sales of tens of thousands of taels of silver. For them, this is an important opportunity to open the gap in the Beiyang army weapons market, which can be said to be of great significance.

Once the arms purchase starts, the follow-up will be convenient. As long as the Beiyang Army is equipped with the first batch of German ordnance, there will be the second and third batches. Therefore, this batch of rifle and machine gun orders is an important opportunity for Lihe Yanghang to enter the Beiyang ordnance market.

That's why they pay so much attention to military purchase orders of only tens of thousands of taels of silver.

The same is true for the equipment for making guns. If North China wants to run an arsenal, no matter whether Zhao Dongyun himself does it privately or the Beiyang official does it, as long as they want to run an arsenal and still want to run a successful arsenal, then they must purchase millions of machine and equipment orders one after another, and this Some future orders are the large number of profits expected by Lihe Yanghang.

For example, at the beginning of the Hubei Gun Factory, the investment was not much, only hundreds of thousands of taels, but it didn't take several years to invest the money one after another. After accumulating millions of taels of silver, it initially had the ability to mass- produce 1888 rifles and five-life seven mountain guns.

So even if Zhao Dongyun had no money at the beginning and only bought cheap second-hand goods, as long as he built the arsenal, it means that he may expand the arsenal in the future, which also means that Li and Yanghang may receive subsequent orders for millions of silver equipment.

So the significance of this order for gifts and foreign travel lies not in the present, but in the future.

In this case, Li and Yangxing acted quite quickly. In a few days, they issued quotations for some machine guns, rifles and pistols. At the same time, they also contacted Germany and found a set of depreciation equipment for the early 88 rifles and marked the price.

That's why Zhao Dongyun received a telegram from Zhao Chenbin that he had found a second-hand gun-making equipment!

This made Zhao Dongyun speechless. He obviously just asked them to inquire about the market situation. When will they let them directly implement the purchase? However, since he said it was a second-hand bargain, he wanted to know how cheap it was, so he called him to write to tell him the details.

These days, although there are telegrams for long-distance contacts, commercial telegrams can only be used for limited information exchange due to their high fees. In the telegram, Zhao Chenbin can only say that he has found cheap gun-making equipment for a day, but there is no way to explain the specific situation, so it can only be described by traditional letters.

However, when Zhao Dongyun received the letter from Zhao Chenbin, he was a little unsent.

The letter in his hand is not long, but only a thousand words, and between the lines, Zhao Chenbin said that he had come into contact with German etiquette and foreign countries, and learned that they have a set of second-hand 88 rifles and bullet production equipment, which can produce 50 88 rifles a day, and 25,000 smokeless round warhead bullets, including There are 400 large and small machines and equipment.

This is not important, but the price is important: not two million, one million, or even 800,000 or 600,000 yuan. As long as the price is 360,000 taels of silver, you can establish a complete 88 rifle production line, and the production capacity is completely comparable to today's Hubei gun factory.

In addition, they also said that if you can't even produce the smokeless gunpowder needed to produce bullets, they can also sell a production line of 300 pounds of smokeless gunpowder per day, which is not expensive, only 140,000 taels of silver.

360,000 taels, Zhao Dongyun was stunned at this price, not because it was too expensive, but because it was too cheap!

How much did Hubei Gun Factory spend in order to produce 50 Type 88? At first, about 400,000 taels of silver were introduced into the equipment, and then more than 1 million taels of silver were spent on the equipment after being burned by the fire. Of course, it also includes the equipment needed to build artillery, but it is definitely exceeds 1 million yuan on the Type 88 rifle alone.

And this is all small. On the one hand, it is bureaucratic corruption, takeback buckles, etc. In addition, it is also related to the introduction of the Type 88 rifle too early. It bought equipment and introduced technology a few years after the Type 88 rifle came out. At that time, the Type 88 rifle was the latest rifle. Naturally, the Chinese people are desperately trying to increase the price.

However, the 88 rifle is now outdated, and Germans no longer produce it. In addition, China already has the technology of the 88 rifle that can be produced by itself, so from the technical point of view, the German 88 rifle can't be sold at any price. In addition, this set of equipment is still second-hand. After handling this batch of old equipment, the Germans can also withdraw funds to replace the new equipment to produce newer rifles and artillery.

So with many factors combined, the price is naturally not much expensive.

In addition, another very important reason is that Li Heyang acted on the follow-up orders. In this order, he did not inflate the price too high, but kept the profit at a normal level. It's not that they are not black enough, but that they hope to get more follow-up orders, as long as Zhao Dongyun dares to accept this batch of second-hand devices. They are sure to establish a long-term cooperative relationship with Zhao Dongyun. In the future, if this arsenal wants to operate normally, it will have to replace parts, replace depreciation equipment, and more importantly, if they want to expand production and purchase equipment. Those are all money.

Zhao Dongyun didn't understand many joints in

for a while, but even a layman knew that this price was definitely cheap.

Compared with the low price of this set of second-hand rifle and bullet equipment, the production equipment of smokeless medicine is the normal price, mainly because the smokeless gunpowder was out of date in 1902, and this equipment is not second-hand equipment, but brand-new. This set of 300 pounds of smokeless fire It is normal for pharmaceutical production equipment to sell 140,000 taels of silver.

If the two add up, it only takes 500,000 taels of silver, which is a complete rifle production line, from guns to bullets to gunpowder.

But now it's at least 1902. Even if you want to improve the gun production line, you have to introduce a more advanced Mauser 1898 rifle and introduce a backward 88 rifle. I don't know if it will be cost-effective at that time.

The German Mauser rifle has developed many models. Germany is now equipped with the 1898 model, but the Germans have just been equipped with this gun for a few years. Now they want to introduce this kind of rifle, which is the most advanced rifle in the world, which is definitely not enough for hundreds of thousands of silver.

However, Zhao Dongyun thought about it and thought too far. Not to mention millions of taels of silver, he can't even take out these 500,000 now!

You should know that what Zhao Dongyun envisioned at the beginning was that he integrated part of the funds from his home, used corruption and so on to get 10,000 or 20,000 yuan, and then borrow tens of thousands from Zhou Xuexi, the god of wealth. At that time, it is not a big problem to raise more than 200,000, but 200,000 and 500,000 is more than twice the difference. You let Zhao Dongyun go there. Collect the money!

But it is also unwilling to give up like this. Cheap goods are not always available. If you can buy this batch of equipment, it means that you have the ability to produce 88 rifles under the Beiyang system, which is unusual.

At present, among the major arsenals in China, only the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and Hubei Gun Factory can mass-produce new guns, but these two factories are in the south. Yuan Shikai is difficult to control. In short, it has nothing to do with today's Beiyang.

Although many other bureaus and factories also have a certain production capacity, they are rare, and most of them are old guns that are not worth mentioning.

After thinking for a long time, Zhao Dongyun did not decide anything rashly, but gave Zhao Chenbin electricity and instructed him to continue to talk to the Germans. If he could press down the price, he would continue to delay if he could not, and buy him time!

It takes time to collect funds or persuade Yuan Shikai to run an arsenal privately. It definitely does not mean that Zhao Dongyun can take out hundreds of thousands of taels of silver with a wave of his hand, let alone that Zhao Dongyun can build an arsenal with money.

Guns and cannons are a sharp weapon of the state. I have always heard that they are produced by state-run factories, but I have never seen private factories make guns.

So there are still many uncertainties to be solved.

After Zhao Chenbin stabilized the Germans, Zhao Dongyun asked Zhao Dongping to telegraph and write to his hometown to ask them to prepare money, saying that he would take them to run a big business. On the other hand, he also contacted Zhou Xuexi. Of course, he did not directly say that he saw a batch of gun-making equipment and wanted to buy it, but just borrowed Fuyuan yarn. The factory loan secretly inquired whether the silver is loose on the other side of the official silver account in Tianjin. If the silver is loose, he will find a way to get a batch of loans from Zhou Xuexi. If he has no money, he will naturally not waste his expression.

Of course, these are secondary, and the most important thing is that Zhao Dongyun has to see Yuan Shikai!

As long as Yuan Shikai nod, everything else is easy to say. If he doesn't nod, let alone Zhao Dongyun doesn't have money, even if he has money, he can't do it.

Zhao Dongyun, who came to the governor's mansion, took a deep breath and then strode into the governor's mansion. Today, he wants to persuade Yuan Shikai to set himself to run an arsenal!