Chapter 617 Oh, Gold!

"Hey, what is this?

Gold!

Gold that is yellow, shiny, and precious!

No, gods, I am not an idle believer; I just want you to give me some tree roots!

This thing, just a little bit, can turn black into white, ugly into beautiful, wrong into right, humble into noble, old into young, and coward into warrior."

-Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens"

The charm of money is indeed unstoppable. Even after the war, California's population still showed explosive growth, from 450,000 before the war to 500,000, and is growing rapidly at a rate of 10% per year.

How fast is this speed? Take India, which is well known to modern people, as an example. Its population growth rate is only 0.8%, while the current California area is 12.5 times that.

If it develops at this speed, California will have a population of 3.7 million in 20 years, but that is almost impossible, because the gold mine will be exhausted sooner or later, and without gold, this land will no longer have such great charm.

Although the alchemy technology of the Austrian Empire at this time was far superior to the historical level at the same time, and the utilization rate was also constantly improving, it was an indisputable fact that gold mines were non-renewable resources.

Moreover, the land under the control of the Austrian-Mexican Joint Development Company in the future would not be limited to California. In fact, Franz is now studying how to develop the land in Nevada.

However, unlike the favorable natural environment in California, Nevada's climate is hot and dry, with high temperatures in summer and cold winters, which can be described as "two distinct seasons".

Nevada's terrain is complex and diverse, including mountains, deserts, plateaus, basins and canyons. In addition to the common wild wolves and black bears, local creatures also include Nevada brown spiders and Nevada scorched tail scorpions, which are unique to the local area.

Not to mention the mysterious Bigfoot and brain-eating worms. If it weren't for the hundreds of nuclear tests conducted by the Americans in Nevada in later generations, who knows what monsters could be found in it.

The local Shoshone people said that Chernobyl and other things were weak, and the local nuclear radiation was 48 times that of Hiroshima.

Franz was naturally reluctant to waste precious German immigrants to colonize such a poor and bad place. In fact, the Indians are the most suitable for the locals and have the highest adaptability.

However, these guys are weak in both development and resource exploration. In addition, there is a high probability of rebellion, and even joining forces with local Indians and Americans to attack the Austrian-Mexican Joint Development Company.

So Franz needs a group of "loyal and reliable" and "hardworking" colonial advance teams. This is not just for the California region. In fact, Austria's colonies are still very short of people.

After all, the Irish have been enslaved by the British for a long time, and it is inevitable that some crazy people will appear. There can be Irish in the colonies, but the proportion should not be too high, let alone let them become large gathering places.

In fact, the United States encountered many troubles when assimilating the Irish, one of which was a large number of gangs and mobs.

Later generations only knew about the Italian Mafia in black clothes and black hats holding Thomson, but they did not know about the Irish gangs that were countless times more terrible than them.

Although the Italian Mafia can easily beat the Irish in terms of professional skills, the latter has stronger concealment and more ambitious goals than the former.

In fact, it can be said more simply that the Italian Mafia cares about money, while the Irish gangs care more about power.

While the Italians were still bleeding in the streets, the Irish had quietly mastered a more effective weapon - power.

With the rapid development of urbanization in the United States, no president can keep up with the infrastructure and management system.

This has created a large-scale power vacuum, so the Irish gangs have spontaneously become the underground bosses of these emerging cities.

Historically, it was called U BOSS, which literally means underground boss, but Franz thinks it is more appropriate to translate it as underground mayor.

This is well reflected in the American TV series "Mayor of Kingston" starring Hawkeye Saint Zelen Corgi. Although the plot is very exciting, it is still a story of Huang Silang's whitewashing, and he is even too lazy to wash it, telling you directly that the world should be like this.

This political gang seems to have eased local conflicts to a certain extent and established an order that is "suitable" for the local area.

However, these guys are not good people at all, because they are the source of chaos.

Although the Irish in the Great Famine were pitiful, it would be better if Franz exchanged the safety and happiness of his own people for it. After all, indifference can solve 99% of the problems in this world (this sentence is different for different people, don't copy it, believe that the world is beautiful and the future is bright).

In fact, in addition to Franz looking for labor, Americans are not idle either.

In history, in 1845, Asa Whitney proposed to the US Congress to build a transcontinental railway in North America, so many American elites discussed the construction of railways.

But now that the Mexican-American War has failed, and California and Nevada are not in the hands of Americans, Franz feels that some things may not happen again.

But the reality is that Americans still plan to build a transcontinental railway in North America, but no longer through Nevada and California, but directly to Oregon.

The reason was very strange, that is, the whaling industry in the United States needed this railway, and at the same time, more than 100,000 Americans were blocked from colonization by less than 2,000 British people, which was really unbearable.

James Polk's two major slogans for the presidential campaign were to fight slavery and "reoccupy" Oregon.

He always showed himself as a tough guy, and even said to the British, "I want 49 degrees north latitude or war."

Although the United States won the Mexican-American War, the losses were surprisingly large, and with the disbandment of the army, yellow fever began to spread across the country, and the number of deaths was too many to count.

The army of the northern factory owners was even more defeated in the war, while the army of the southern slave owners did not suffer much loss because they were always on guard against the French.

As a result, the voice of the southern slave owners became stronger, and some even claimed that they invited the French, so that the United States could turn the crisis into safety.

However, there is a lot of controversy on this point, because the generals of the Northern Army insisted that Austria and Mexico had long been exhausted, and the United States could achieve the final victory without the French, and there was no need to share half of the fruits of victory.

Both sides have their own opinions, but one thing is certain, that is, the power of the South was stronger at this time, so Polk would never dare to touch slavery.

Polk in history did not "intervene" in slavery itself, although the Democrats have always claimed.

"James Polk is a fighter who has fought for democracy and freedom all his life, capable, upright and cannot be bought."

But in fact, he always wanted them to be "young, effective, and cheap."