Chapter 544: Serious Shortage of People

"I'm tired." This time it was Frederick's turn to run to Psyche's office to complain, "They plan to disinfect the entire city with chlorine once a month."

Frederick had just finished his government affairs when scholars from all walks of life came to him immediately after hearing the news, promoting various research applications that were shot down by Psyche.

Frederick drank a sip of happy water and continued to complain: "Someone wants to build a traveling cannon. They dig a cannon barrel in the mountain like digging a mine. The cannonball is the crew cabin. When it reaches the highest point, it opens the parachute to achieve the purpose of long-distance travel."

"This is just the first phase of the project. The ultimate goal is to travel to the moon during the full moon."

Psyche was accustomed to this kind of thing and said, "Just get used to it. He originally wanted to go to the sun, but was greeted by the church."

Frederick felt a little stomachache. This matter looked like nothing when it was not weighed, but it weighed more than a thousand pounds when it was weighed.

In the doctrine of the Church of Light, the sun is generally regarded as the gate to the kingdom of God, and only when summoned by the God of Light can one go there.

If you want to go there now, it is a good thing to say that you are actively throwing yourself into the arms of God. If they want to kill you, they will ask you if you want to cause trouble and close the door.

Psyche continued, "Be careful when you go to the Holy City this time. The debate about the Cyclops is not over yet. Last winter, someone at the observatory wrote a paper on the sunspot cycle, and there was another quarrel there."

Frederick didn't care much about astronomy in the past, and asked curiously about the situation.

After the invention of the telescope, many people used it to observe the sun. Some of them used oil lamps or candles to smoke glass pieces black as filters, some observed when the thickness of fog or clouds in the sky was appropriate, and some projected the sun onto white paper or wooden boards in a dark room.

Sunspots were observed because of this, and the priests of the Church of Light didn't know how much hair they scratched. They finally found the records of a large number of black shadows on the surface of the sun from the pile of old papers. At that time, they said that this was the devil attacking the sun.

"The sunspot cycle of this sun is about 7 years." Psyche said to Frederick, "It reached its peak last year in 1035."

"There is a pharmacist named Schwabe at the pharmaceutical factory whose hobby is astronomical observation. As long as the weather permits, he observes the sun every ten days to find an undiscovered star."

"He wrote down the results of each observation and can find the stars passing between the sun and the earth by the changes in the position of the sunspots."

"Last year, when he was recording the number of sunspots, he suddenly remembered the records from a few years ago, so he made a table and a curve chart and found the law of the fluctuation of the number. The two years of 1021 and 1028 were the maximum values ​​in a cycle."

"Finally, he checked the records of sunspots observed with the naked eye before and calculated that the sunspot cycle is seven years and one month."

"The Church of Light cannot explain this, so there is a quarrel."

Since its birth, religion has used gods and monsters to explain phenomena that people cannot understand. When science and technology develop, people can explain more things, which naturally conflicts with religion.

This is just a superficial contradiction. There is a deeper contest between secular power and theocracy, which may lead to war.

Frederick did not care much about religious affairs on the surface. He mainly approved a piece of land to build a seminary and an unprecedented cathedral, which was enough to be used as a shield.

What he did secretly was to fragment the organization of the Church of Light within the principality.

The churches of the church are hierarchical. There are small chapels in the community, larger churches in the city, and even larger churches at the state level, and ordinary administrative departments.

In the name of the cathedral, Frederick restricted the expansion of churches in states and cities, encouraged the development of chapels within the community, and the grassroots priests of the chapel took the lead in mutual assistance among believers in the community.

There are limited large churches in a place, and the number of subordinate chapels has increased significantly, which has led to chaotic management, objectively weakening the connection between the grassroots and the upper level and limiting the power of the upper level.

Now Frederick has not yet thought about the ultimate goal of church reform, so he can only take it slowly and take it one step at a time.

He frowned slightly and said, "Look at how scientific development has begun to conflict with the church. There are more and more such conflicts, and sooner or later the Holy City will make a big move."

Psyche said indifferently, "Don't worry too much. The church is now corrupt and chaotic, and factions are forming to plot against each other. Otherwise, they would have killed you when you were translating the Holy Scripture."

"Just let them continue to mess around and not focus on the outside."

Frederick pinched his chin and said, "I'll go and see if there is any way to make them fight each other."

"But the only way is that they divide the cake among themselves and no one is happy. We have to make a new cake."

"Let's not talk about this. Today I want to ask, where is the bauxite mine in the southern continent?"

Psyche said, "Go west out of the inland sea, walk along the coastline of the southern continent on the ocean, and go east to the bow of the ship. It's about 6,000 to 7,000 kilometers."

Frederick calculated in his mind and felt a little bit of a toothache.

According to the plan of the Duchy of Bavaria, the railway from Weissenburg to the Kingdom of Sardinia is about 1,000 kilometers, with a port at the end.

From this port, it is about 2,000 kilometers to the exit of the inland sea.

In the end, it is almost 10,000 kilometers one way.

"It's difficult." Frederick finally shook his head, "It seems that it will take many years before I have enough strength to reach that far."

"After the first World Expo, many factories were expanded and put into production recently. There is a shortage of manpower everywhere. I have to pick some people from the second-line troops to form the 4th Division."

"The progress of farmland reclamation is much slower than expected. Being a worker makes more money than being a farmer, so many young people have run away."

"The result of the population census in the principality last year was 1.92 million, of which 70,000 were permanent residents who came from other places for work, business and study, and I have 50,000 to 60,000 floating population."

"The short-term labor gap alone is almost 100,000, and it is not a problem to have another million people in the long run."

"However, population is an important resource, and many places have tightened the outflow of population."

Frederick was a little annoyed. Recently, the industrial and agricultural departments kept complaining to him about the lack of labor, as if he could turn people into people by pulling out his hair and blowing.

So it is impossible to go to a place thousands of miles away to mine bauxite. There are not so many people.

Psyche was helpless and said with her hands spread out: "I can't do anything."

"The baby boom in Wessen started in 1028, when you were already famous in the Battle of the Elbe. Because of the rapid growth of grain production due to good seeds and fertilizers, people felt safe and had more children."

"You can't start to enjoy this wave of demographic dividend until 12 years later, in 1048."

"Three new states will join in 1034. The baby boom is expected to start this year or the year after, let alone the year after next."

"I can only make a suggestion, try to find people in mountainous areas with harsh environments, and fool them one by one."

"These people are definitely not suitable for factories, but they can still open up wasteland and farm."

The task of opening up wasteland in the Principality of Wessen is very heavy. There is no need to talk about environmental protection before eating. In addition to mountainous areas, water sources, and river protection areas, all places that can be reclaimed must be reclaimed.

The area of ​​the Duchy of Wessen is now 34,000 square kilometers, and about 29,000 square kilometers of land will be planned for agricultural use, including 13,000 square kilometers of forest, 10,400 square kilometers of farmland, and 5,600 square kilometers of pasture.

Judging from this data, there is a large gap in the agricultural population alone.

After thinking about it, Frederick said: "This is a direction. I will try it if I have the chance."