Chapter 299 Hot Selling

Franz's sewing machine not only occupied the entire Central European market, but also exported abroad. Even Britain, known as the "world factory", was not spared.

This kind of profitable business will naturally arouse the envy of businessmen from other countries, so many powerful businessmen followed suit, but the design that seemed not complicated made many people turn over.

Various problems emerged in an endless stream, the failure rate was astonishingly high, and repeated comparisons and studies could not find the reason.

In fact, this is the problem of standardized production. During this period, people had not yet realized the importance of standardized production, and only a very small number of industries achieved standardized production of parts.

Austria had already achieved the standardization of parts, and the emergence of new hydraulic presses also made Austria's parts manufacturing industry lead the world.

The common hydraulic presses during this period had a power of less than 1% of Austria's, and steam forging hammers, which were destined to be eliminated by history, were even more useless. Even if they thought of it, they could not achieve the same effect as the Austrians.

Missing a nail,

losing a horseshoe;

losing a horseshoe,

breaking a warhorse;

breaking a warhorse,

losing a battle;

losing a battle,

losing a country.

It is these seemingly insignificant parts that have brought disgrace to the imitators in European countries. Of course, when someone loses, someone benefits. Franz took the opportunity to promote Austrian manufacturing, Viennese craftsmanship, and craftsmanship in newspapers, and all kinds of "chicken soup" circulated on the European continent.

This is naturally due to the promotion of mainstream media such as the British "Times", French "Century" and "News" (the famous Figaro was suspended), "Frankfurter News", "Goodnight, Vienna" (controlled by Franz), "Berlin Morning News" and so on..

(The last two are made up by me. Before 1848, Austria and Prussia had strict censorship systems and there were no newspapers with great influence. After 1842, Prussia had a "Rheinische Zeitung" but it was quickly banned.)

Under such propaganda, there will naturally be a lot more spiritual Austrians, especially in the German and Apennines regions that are closely connected with Austria. A strange trend of thought is spreading.

But governments around the world don't pay much attention to this kind of thing, but more and more workers and immigrants come to Austria.

And for those who are already in Austria, there is also a strange sense of superiority that is growing, no matter what nationality he is or whether he is Austrian.

Russia, St. Petersburg.

Economic recession is an important problem facing Russia now. With the end of the Turkish-Egyptian War, Russian-Turkish trade is becoming more and more difficult.

Britain had already regarded the Ottoman Empire as its own forbidden fruit, and of course it would not accept Russia continuing to fleece the Ottoman Empire. The Tsar was very angry, but facing the isolated Britain, the European gendarmes were willing but unable to do anything, so they had to give up.

As a result, the Russians had a surplus of food. Fortunately, the Prussian Junker nobles extended a "helping hand" at this time, but the roof leaked and it rained overnight. The Spanish Civil War ended and the Russians lost an important market again.

At this time, some people in Russia started the business of selling serfs, but it was very ridiculous that both the United States and the French Texas colony refused to accept Russian serfs.

So Russian businessmen could only turn their attention to South America. Argentine farmers were suffering from the problem of insufficient white people, so they threw large orders to Russia.

However, these serfs were not handed over to the Argentines in the end because those Russian businessmen ignored one person. That was Tsar Nicholas I, who was an extremely traditional person and claimed to be the father of all Russian serfs.

How could a loving father sell his children? Of course, he would keep them at home to enjoy happiness. So the Tsar's military police rushed into the homes of those merchants and put those who tried to defy the Tsar's will into prison.

In fact, unlike what many people think, the Tsar did not like to kill people, but it was certain that these captured merchants would be skinned.

The Argentines who did not receive the serfs wanted to get back their deposits, but Tsar Nicholas I not only refused to compensate, but also detained the debt collectors to prepare for a counter-extortion.

But this kind of thing does not happen every day. If you want to reverse the economic downturn, you need to start from the two aspects of increasing revenue and reducing expenditure.

Because there are British, Ottomans, Persians, the Khiva Khanate in Central Asia, the Qing Empire, and the British Canadian colonies abroad.

There are dissatisfied nobles, radical reformers, Polish restorers, South Russian Cossacks, Caucasian natives (Chechnya, Georgia), Siberian natives and rebels, and those "restless" Jews in the country.

In fact, the so-called restless Jews are completely empty target shooting. For example, 99% of the merchants involved in the slave trade this time are pure Slavs, and some of them have German ancestry. There are no Jews involved at all.

The whole country needs money everywhere. Nicholas I's dream of the South Russian Railway and the Trans-Siberian Railway has not yet started construction and there is no money.

At this time, there were only two railways in the whole of Russia. One was built in 1834 by craftsmen Yefim Cherebanov and Milon Cherebanov, who were born as serfs, at the Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant in the Ural region. The track was cast with pig iron, with a total length of 854 meters and often pulled by horses.

The other is the Tsarskoye Selo Railway built by Austrian engineer Gastner, with a total length of 26 kilometers.

Since Russia's mechanical manufacturing industry was very poor at that time, and its traction capacity was not as good as that of horses, it took several steam locomotives to succeed. What's more bizarre is that steam locomotives were only used on Saturdays and Sundays in the early days, and horses were used to pull trains on other days. This phenomenon did not end until 1838.

The Petersburg-Tsarskoye Selo Railway runs two pairs of passenger trains every day, of which steam locomotives are used to pull trains on Saturdays and Sundays, and horses are used to pull trains on other days. It was not until 1838 that all steam locomotives were used.

So if Russia wants to reverse its economic decline, it can only open up new sources of income at this time.

But the problem comes again. Although Russia is vast and rich in resources, the commodities that can be accepted by other countries are really limited. Even before the end of the Napoleonic Wars, their main export product was animal fur.

The largest commodities now are food and timber, and Britain is the largest importer of Russian timber. Previously, Egyptians had imported a large amount of Russian timber to build a navy, but at this time, a large amount of high-quality timber could only be sold to the British.

The export volume of grain dropped rapidly after the food crisis and the Turkish-Egyptian War, and the sudden end of the Spanish Civil War caused the export of goods in Russia to enter a cold winter.

Franz naturally knew about this situation, so he planned to help Russia.

Of course, it was not suitable for Sina, the Jew, or Adjani, the Pole, to talk business with the Tsar.

"Oh, Karl! My friend, what brings you here?"

Tsar Nicholas I admired soldiers very much and regarded himself as a soldier, so he naturally favored Archduke Karl, who was also a soldier.