MLMD -Chapter 107 Setting Up the Factory (Part 2)

“Damn it, you little bastard—if you keep shoving, I’ll make you regret it!”

“You brat, when did I shove you? It’s everyone else pushing me forward!”

“Stop squeezing, stop squeezing—if you squeeze any more, I won’t be able to breathe…”

“What are you all yelling for? Can’t you see the overseer’s coming over?”

“Whew—damn it, finally squeezed my way in.”

This was a dirt slope at the foot of Iron Hat Village. On the slope stood a table, behind which sat a middle-aged man who looked like an accountant. In front of him stretched a long line of people, all desperately trying to push their way forward.

This was the scene of recruitment at the Iron Hat Village cement factory. Ever since the cement plant at the foot of Iron Hat Mountain had been completed, Yue Yang had begun large-scale hiring. Unlike modern cement factories that were almost fully mechanized, the factory Yue Yang built could, strictly speaking, only be considered a crude workshop—far inferior even to a modern township-level cement plant. It was a labor-intensive operation, so mass recruitment became the factory’s first priority.

As soon as news of the hiring spread, it immediately attracted refugees who had been drifting around the outskirts of Yingzhou Prefecture. In the late Ming dynasty, due to land annexation and repeated natural and man-made disasters, countless farmers with no way to survive could only wander from place to place. These people became the most unstable factor within the Great Ming. Just to get something to eat, there was nothing they wouldn’t dare to do. When many of the refugees who had drifted to Yingzhou heard that there was actually a place hiring laborers, they rushed over without a second thought, as fast as they could.

On a narrow path, a ragged middle-aged man in his early thirties came walking along, carrying a simple shoulder pole together with a woman about the same age. Behind them followed an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl, who had a four- or five-year-old boy strapped to her back.

At a glance, one could tell that the four of them were a family. They all shared the same traits: sallow faces and emaciated bodies, clear signs of long-term malnutrition.

“Sis… I’m hungry!”

After walking for a while, the little boy on the girl’s back suddenly cried out.

The girl quickly turned her head to comfort him. “Don’t shout, little brother. In a bit, big sister will dig up some wild vegetables and cook some vegetable soup for you, alright?”

“Sis… are there really wild vegetables here?” Hearing this, a glimmer of hope appeared in the boy’s eyes, and he couldn’t help licking his cracked, dry lips.

“Of course there are. Once Father finds work, maybe we’ll even be able to eat wild-vegetable buns in the future.” The girl said this to comfort her brother.

“Wild-vegetable buns…” The boy felt his saliva almost spilling out. He couldn’t even remember when he had last eaten one.

Listening to the children’s conversation behind him, the middle-aged man walking in front felt his eyes sting. A warm liquid slowly flowed down from them. They said men shed blood but not tears, yet he simply couldn’t hold it back. No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t understand why—he was a grown man, not lazier than anyone else—yet supporting a family was still so unbearably hard.

The man quickened his pace. When he turned a bend in the road, he saw a crowd ahead desperately pushing forward, shouting and clamoring in chaos.

Seeing this, he couldn’t help but feel a surge of joy. He led his wife and children to a withered tree and said to them, “You all wait here. I’ll go up front and ask around, see if that’s really a factory hiring people.”

“Go on, husband. The children and I will wait for you here,” his wife replied.

The middle-aged man hurried forward at a quick trot. After nearly half an hour, he finally managed to squeeze his way to the dirt slope. Anxiously, he asked the middle-aged accountant on the slope, “May I ask, sir—is this the place where that… factory is hiring people?”

“Hahaha…”

His words triggered a burst of laughter from the surrounding crowd, and the accountant also laughed. “If you’re talking about the cement factory opened here by Wuli Fort, then yes, this is the place. Are you looking for work?”

The man immediately burst into tears. “Yes, sir. We fled here from Shandong to escape famine. We begged our way here, step by step. The children are about to starve… I beg you, have mercy and take me in. Give our family a way to live. I’ll kowtow to you!” As he spoke, he started to kneel down.

“Hey, hey, hey—” The accountant hurriedly stood up and pulled him to his feet. “Don’t kowtow to me. This factory isn’t mine—it belongs to Lord Yue. Lord Yue is kind-hearted; he opened this factory precisely to give you people a bite to eat. If you want to thank someone, thank Lord Yue. Alright, seeing how hard things are for you, I’ll take you in. What’s your name? Where are you from? How old are you?”

“In reply to you, sir, my name is Wu Mantun. I’m from Laizhou in Shandong, and I’m thirty-two this year,” the man answered quickly.

“Mm, good.” The accountant jotted a few notes into a ledger, then handed Wu Mantun a wooden token. “Take good care of this token. Follow the road behind me straight ahead—there’s a factory there. Just report when you arrive. Your monthly wages are fifty jin of grain and five hundred wen in cash. Got it?”

“Got it! Thank you, sir, thank you!” Wu Mantun was so overjoyed that his chest felt like it might burst open. This man in his thirties ran back to the big tree, shouting excitedly, “Mother of the children! I got in! The overseer said I can start work at the factory tomorrow! Tomorrow we’ll have buns to eat!”

Over these days, stories like Wu Mantun’s were happening almost daily on Iron Hat Mountain. This newly established cement factory had officially begun operations in the Great Ming. Perhaps it was still stumbling along at present, but Yue Yang firmly believed that it would one day bear abundant fruit.

One day in mid-June, Yue Yang led Hailanzhu, the Linglong sisters, and Shunbao along with several others on horseback to Iron Hat Village. From afar, they could see two huge chimneys belching thick smoke. The sun was scorching, and with a bit of wind, dust and smoke drifted endlessly through the air.

Before anyone could voice their thoughts, a sudden thunderous boom came from the other side of the mountain, startling their horses into nervous whinnies.

“Yue Yang, what on earth is going on? Why is there an explosion?” Hailanzhu asked anxiously, clearly frightened. Aside from Yue Yang and Shunbao, the other three women were all startled by the sound.

“It’s nothing,” Yue Yang replied nonchalantly. “That’s just the sound of blasting rock at our factory.”

Yes—blasting rock with explosives. Black powder technology had existed in China for a very long time. After obtaining the most scientifically accurate black-powder formula, the first thing Yue Yang did was establish a black-powder workshop to manufacture it. Once the cement factory was up and running, he naturally used black powder to quarry stone. As a result, every blast shook the heavens and earth.

At first, the villagers of Iron Hat Village protested to the factory, complaining that the earth-shaking noises frightened their chickens, ducks, and pigs so badly that they wouldn’t eat. Eventually, the matter reached Yue Yang. After compensating each household with five taels of silver, all complaints vanished without a trace.

As they continued onward, they heard constant booming blasts and saw billowing smoke everywhere. Combined with the dust from kiln firing and mountain blasting, the surrounding sky took on a gray, hazy hue. Drawing closer, they saw that the mountain beside Iron Hat Village—once shaped like a hat—now looked as though its skin had been stripped away. All vegetation was gone, leaving exposed gray-white rock. Not a trace of grass or trees remained, and the ground was pockmarked with stone pits everywhere.

Seeing this, Yue Yang himself was taken aback. This sight was far too familiar to him—it was industrial pollution, a term well known to both adults and children in the modern world.

Gazing at the smoke-shrouded cement factory, a thin sheen of cold sweat appeared on Yue Yang’s forehead. If a factory like this were built in modern times, the environmental protection bureau would fine him into oblivion. But in this era, no one cared about such things. After all, people couldn’t even fill their stomachs—talking to them about environmental protection would be pure nonsense.

When Yue Yang and his group reached the foot of the mountain, they immediately saw large numbers of workers with bare upper bodies and cloths covering their mouths and noses. They pushed small carts, loading them with blasted stone and hauling it to nearby crushers, where two iron beasts roared as they rolled ceaselessly. At the mountain’s base, another group swung massive iron hammers nonstop, smashing the large rocks that had rolled down into smaller pieces.

At this moment, Hailanzhu, standing behind Yue Yang, asked curiously, “Yue Yang, why are all these people covering their faces?”

“Well… this…” Yue Yang hesitated. He thought for a long time but couldn’t figure out how to explain the issue of dust pollution to her. As for making workers wear masks, Yue Yang had only managed to enforce it through strict orders. At first, the workers were unwilling, complaining that masks made it hard to breathe and slowed their work. In the end, Yue Yang issued a mandatory rule: anyone who worked without a mask would have half a month’s wages docked. Only then did they comply.

The group walked over to the two rumbling iron beasts. Yue Yang explained to Hailanzhu and the others, “This is called a ball mill crusher. It’s used to crush stone, clay, and coal after mixing them together. Once crushed, the material is sent into the kiln for calcination. The hardened blocks that come out are then ground again—that’s how we get cement.”

“Yue Yang, how do these things move?” Watching the constantly turning ball mill crushers, awe flickered in the eyes of Hailanzhu and the others. This was a feeling anyone would experience when first confronting industrial civilization.

“They’re driven by steam—a miracle. I’ll explain it to you in detail later.” Looking at the constantly rotating machines, Yue Yang felt a hint of helplessness. If he had any choice, how could he be willing to use such backward technology?

“Come on, I’ll take you to see the finished cement,” Yue Yang said after a while, leading everyone off to the side…