Chapter 524

Most of the top officials of the Berlin government are from military backgrounds, and they have always acted vigorously and resolutely.

Because of the dispute over the Polish throne, a nail was also buried between Puboguan. The Poles, who had finally achieved independence, were unwilling to be annexed by Prussia.

Coupled with the interference of international forces, the contradiction between the general population and Poland has been continuously amplified. If it were not for the existence of the Russian enemy, the two countries would have parted ways long ago.

Even so, the radicals in the Polish government didn't want to see the Prussians pointing fingers and wanted to kick Prussia away and go it alone.

These issues, the Berlin government is very anxious to see. It is not easy to deal with the radicals in the Second Central Second, and a bad operation will trigger a violent rebound.

The Berlin government has long been thinking of killing people with a knife, but the hidden dangers of operation are quite large, and a bad one is a disaster.

To deal with the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia needs Polish cannon fodder, but Poland cannot be crippled.

If it weren't for the breakdown of Russian-Austrian relations, Mao Qi would never have dared to make this suggestion. Otherwise, the Russians took the opportunity to join in and forcibly pull Austria into the water. Pubo is not an opponent of Russia and Austria.

Now that there is a problem with the Russian-Austrian alliance, Austria also needs to use Pubo's hand to weaken the Russians. In this context, the Vienna government can at most teach the Poles a lesson, and it is impossible to really beat them.

What the Poles have to pay for it, the Berlin government doesn't care at all. Despite taking Poland as a bag, there is a reality they have to face.

For the Kingdom of Prussia, Poland was so big that if you swallowed it in one bite, you would probably end up choking to death.

In the first Russian-Prussian War, the reason why the Poles suffered heavy losses was due to Prussian writing. It's just that it's hidden and not known to the outside world.

It's really easy to agitate the second-year-olds. It's enough to stir up public opinion, and the newspaper is the most advantageous weapon. Overnight, the old story of the partition of Poland between Prussia and Austria was revealed.

Of course, the Kingdom of Prussia has been hidden, and the newspaper has become the division of the Kingdom of Poland between Russia and Austria, and the role of Austria has been artificially magnified.

...

St. Petersburg, since the start of dumping in Austria and the collapse of international food prices, Alexander II has been in a bad mood.

After working hard for so many years, I finally solved the land problem of the Russian Empire.

Austria's revenge is too cruel, if it can't get through this agricultural crisis, the Russian Empire will soon face disaster.

The main problem is finance. Russia is not an industrial country, and agricultural tax revenue is still the government's most important revenue, accounting for more than half of all fiscal revenue.

The collapse of food prices meant that the finances of the tsarist government were cold. The loans obtained from the British were used to repair railways and develop industries, not to maintain the government's daily expenses.

This is still based on the fact that the British fulfilled the contract. If John Bull refused to accept the account, the tsarist government would really go bankrupt. Although they only went bankrupt once a few years ago.

Don't look at the contract signed between the two countries, but the loan is not a one-time payment. The British lend money in batches, and now the Tsarist government has only received more than five million pounds.

For individuals, it was a huge sum of money; for the Russian Empire, it was a matter of hundreds of kilometers of railways.

Don't think it's expensive. The complex terrain, harsh climate, and the rails have to be imported from the UK. If the final cost is not high, there will be ghosts.

John Bull's loans are not easy to get, 50% of which must be used to purchase British goods, and the construction of railways is forced to purchase railroad tracks from the United Kingdom.

Foreign Secretary Chris Basham took out a document and handed it to Alexander II.

"Your Majesty, the Austrians yesterday again sent out the "Proposal to Cut Grain Capacity" to the world's major grain exporting countries. They proposed that countries reduce grain production capacity by 8% in 1873 to deal with the agricultural crisis."

8% of the grain production capacity is not 8% in the export international trading market, but 8% of the total grain production of various countries. Converted to output, the global grain output has dropped by tens of millions of tons.

If this can be done, then the agricultural crisis will be largely over. Austria reported a 21% overcapacity, which is a theoretical figure calculated through a formula.

It's just an estimate of the demand for food, the demand for wine, the demand for industrial use, and the demand for making feed.

In real life, food will inevitably be wasted. For example: loss during transportation, mildew and deterioration of food due to weather, waste in daily life...

If several grain exporting countries cut their production capacity by 8% at the same time, the grain that can flow into the international market will basically return to the level of 1870.

Because the population is constantly growing, in two or three years at most, the excess food on the market will be consumed, and food prices will normalize.

On the surface, there is no problem with the Austrian proposal. All major grain exporting countries have reduced production in the same proportion to maintain market price stability, which is equivalent to accepting the Russian Empire as a member, and Austria has also given up a large market.

In fact, this was very fatal for the tsarist government. Reducing production is easier said than done. If the Russian Empire's grain production is to increase by 8% next year, it is simply a matter of expanding the acreage.

Now the Russian people are highly motivated to grow grain, and the output is rising steadily. As long as the transportation is solved

Problem, replacing Austria as the world's largest grain exporter, that's not a problem at all.

But if you want to reduce production, this is not easy to handle. The government can't prohibit the people from growing grain, right? There are tens of millions of farmers in Russia, and no one can stop them from increasing their grain planting area.

Even if it is to copy the fallow method of Austria, it is useless. Russia has land. As for Austria's land reclamation method, the tsarist government would not dare to follow suit, it would be an accident.

After pondering for a while, Alexander II turned his attention to the crowd.

"What do you think, is the Austrian proposal feasible?"

A fat middle-aged man stood up emotionally and said indignantly: "Your Majesty, this is an Austrian conspiracy. How can it be possible to cut grain production capacity by 8% within a year?

Even if the international grain price is sluggish now, it will be a long process for farmers to adjust their planting habits by themselves.

It is impossible for the government to directly stipulate what farmers should be allowed to grow. Overcapacity in agriculture is similar to overcapacity in industry. After a crisis, the market will make a choice to survive the fittest.

If we force a cut in capacity, there's no value at all other than causing a big mess.

The Austrians are demonstrating against us. They want to use low food prices to force us to compromise with them. "

Manilov is not stupid. As the Minister of Agriculture, he is very aware of how motivated Russian farmers are in growing grain. It would be a thankless effort to ask them to cut production at this time.

Russia and Austria are completely different, and the national conditions of the two countries are vastly different. After the Vienna government introduced a law, it stopped the increase in the area of ​​land used for growing food.

As long as the high-level nobles in the government take the lead in replanting cash crops on their own land, there will still be many people responding. The Russian aristocracy is different. It seems easy to switch to cash crops. The question is who do they sell to?

This is the gap between an agricultural country and an industrial country. Austria has complete industries, relatively developed transportation and communication, and relatively transparent information.

For these nobles in the upper classes of society, it is still very simple to understand the market conditions, knowing what to plant will sell.

The Russian Empire is different. The local industry has just started, and the poor traffic has cut off the communication. Not to mention the telephone, even the telegraph has not been able to spread to every city.

Even if someone wants to switch to commercial crops, they don't know what to grow? Even if it is planted, I don't know where to ship it to sell it.

In the absence of effective sales channels, everyone can only carry out conservative planting. No matter what the price of grain is, at least the grain is easy to sell, and there are merchants to buy it.

If you grow cash crops, you have to think clearly. If there are corresponding factories around, there is no problem, and everyone can plant them with confidence.

If there is no factory, then it must be scaled up, and if there is insufficient capacity, it may not even be enough for transportation costs.

Foreign Minister Chris Basham: "Marquis Manilov, please calm down first. Don't forget that Austria is the largest exporter of agricultural products, and they will suffer the most in this way.

After the price of raw grain collapsed, the price of finished grain also continued to decline. If it continues, these processing companies will not escape in the end.

In order to protect domestic companies, the Vienna government has cut taxes for these companies, but the share of Austrians in the international market is still shrinking.

After getting cheap raw materials, the food processing companies in various countries that were suppressed by Austria are now beginning to flourish.

If the oversupply situation does not change, and the price of raw grains continues to be sluggish, grain processing companies in European countries can quickly develop.

From the point of view of interests, the proposal issued by the Austrians is more to protect the domestic processing and manufacturing industry.

Regardless, Austria is still our most important grain exporter, and even the reopening of the UK market would not change that fact.

If Austria refuses to accept my country's agricultural products, it will be the beginning of the disaster. No European country has such a large-scale agricultural product processing industry chain. "

Alexander II stretched out his hand and patted his forehead. It was a headache even after a bumper crop. The international grain market is oversupplied, and this year's grain slowdown has become a foregone conclusion.

Once the biggest buyer, Austria, is lost, there will be no way for the mountain of food accumulated in the country. Preliminary estimates show that tens of millions of tons of grain will be produced by the Russian Empire this year.

They don't have any big orders at the moment, aside from the unsure contract in Britain. At the same price, no one wants their food.

Everyone has a stable supplier, so how can they just replace someone for no reason, or replace someone they hate.

No way, the Russians have been blackmailed in Europe in recent years. Seventy percent of Europeans now do not recognize Russia as a European country, and Russians are naturally not Europeans.

The remaining 30 percent who recognize them as Europeans include more than 74 million Russians. In this era, the total population of the European continent was less than 300 million, so this ratio is quite touching.

Fortunately, with so much grain, at least half of it cannot be shipped out, otherwise the competition in the international grain market will be even more brutal.

This is completely different from Alexander II's original plan. He originally wanted to use grain as ammunition to leverage European hegemony. As a result, it fell into his own hands before he had time to start.

plan no

The problem is that the change is a little sudden. The main grain exporters in continental Europe are Austria, Russia, Poland, Prussia, and the rest are not worth mentioning.

Overseas competitors are not yet a climate. Because the American countries also send more than one million tons of agricultural products to the European continent every year, their market share is not high.

This is determined by interests. The Confederate States of America are still going further and further on the road of cotton planting. Now their cotton hegemony status is still unbreakable.

The same price fights for quality, and the same quality fights for price. No cotton in any region can compete with them these days.

The British cotton planting plan in Egypt died early. After the French occupied Egypt, they once wanted to develop the cotton industry, but under the impact of cotton from the United States, the French finally gave up.

The Indian cotton that the British fiddled with was unfortunately overwhelmed by the Americans in terms of cost. There is no negotiation in the face of interests, and Indian cotton cannot become the mainstream.

Austria's West African cotton-growing base is not much better. Production has barely grown over the years, and domestic capitalists are also big fans of American cotton.

There is no way, this is caused by unique natural conditions. If the enterprise does not use the cotton of the Confederate countries, the products produced will lack market competitiveness.

The government is not omnipotent, and it is impossible to support every industry. As a result of distracting energy, it often ends up accomplishing nothing. Austria has no advantage in the cotton spinning market, and the Vienna government will not invest in it.

If it weren't for this powerful opponent, everyone's life would be even more difficult.

At present, the major grain exporting countries in the Americas are Brazil and Argentina, but these two countries have small populations, limited grain planting area, and not very large production capacity.

After getting up and wandering for a few steps, Alexander II had an idea and made a decision.

"Reply to the Austrians and tell them that the Russian Empire is also a responsible power, and we agreed to reduce food production capacity. The specific measures will follow Austria's example, but it needs to be changed.

There is no problem with the land fallow method, just move in. The wasteland reclamation law has been changed from now on: the newly reclaimed wasteland shall not be allowed to grow food for five years. "

Alexander II has already seen the consequences of overcapacity, and since international grain exports are no longer profitable, he does not want to continue to increase grain production capacity.

In this case, it is better to give the Vienna government a face. The Russian Empire is not increasing its grain production capacity for the time being, but it is better to reduce its production capacity. Such a challenging task is not something the tsarist government can do.