Chapter 142: Mine Cart

“Those banners aren’t for them,” Roland said.

Barov closed his mouth. Then, after a moment: “Then why display them?”

“To create a living example.”

The red banners along the Shishui River’s shore were Barov’s second complaint of the week. The first had been the Ministry of Agriculture itself. Roland had noted that his assistant minister’s objections were becoming more specific and less reflexively resistant, which he took as progress — Barov was now arguing about the right things instead of arguing about whether to argue.

This one was harder to explain.

The banners read: Labor is the only way to get rich. Work brings honor and glory. Work can change your destiny. The vast majority of the serfs currently working the south bank fields could not read them. Those who could had spent their lives in a system where the slogans were demonstrably false, and they knew it.

Barov was correct that the banners currently did nothing.

“These people are not stupid,” Roland said. “They’re uneducated, which is a different thing. Greed and self-interest will move anyone — that’s not a failure of character, it’s human nature. Right now the words on those banners are abstract. But the first time a serf reaches his labor quota and gets promoted to a freeman — and he goes to the market with coin in his pocket and comes home wearing cotton instead of sackcloth, living in a brick house instead of a shelter — every person who saw that transformation will remember what they read on the banners.”

He paused, letting Barov follow the logic.

“The banners are for the day when the Ministry of Education produces its first graduates. When the people who couldn’t read them can read them, and the meaning of the words will have already been proven by someone they know.” He looked out at the south bank, at the green rows of wheat that Leaves had accelerated through three days of work that should have taken a month. “The first serfs to make the transition become the argument. The banners become the caption.”

Barov was quiet for a moment.

“Understood,” he said, which was not agreement but was the next closest thing.

Iron Head stood at the tunnel entrance and waited for the current load to clear.

He had been doing this job long enough that the wait had its own rhythms — the groan of the hemp rope going taut, the slow acceleration of the main wheel, the particular sound the rails made when the weight shifted from tunnel darkness to daylight slope. He knew when to shout and when to let it run. He had learned this by making mistakes, which was the only way to learn anything about a machine.

Since the incident during the Months of Demons — the steam, the third-degree burns on his hands and cheek — he had kept his distance from the machine itself. This was not fear, exactly. It was the respect you developed for a thing that had already demonstrated what it could do to you. Miss Nana had healed the burns until the skin closed over smooth, which still struck him as something he would not have believed if he hadn’t lived through it. He had brought salted fish and a boar leg to the Pine household afterward. Viscount Pine had accepted them without condescension, which Iron Head had not expected and had thought about more than once since.

“Old Iron! Rope’s fastened!”

He turned toward the engine room and raised his voice. “Area clear! Frank — green lever first, then red! Make a mistake and I’ll twist your head off your shoulders!”

“I know, I know!”

He had said some version of this every day since taking over engine operation from Nils. Nils was now in the First Army, which meant the job had fallen to Iron Head, which meant the job of keeping Frank from accidentally bursting another pipe had also fallen to Iron Head. His Highness had replaced the burst pipe without docking anyone’s pay, which Iron Head still found bewildering. Where he came from, that kind of accident came out of the person responsible’s wages for six months.

The intake valve opened. White steam billowed from the relief vent, and the main wheel began its slow turn, taking up the slack in the rope until the hemp went bar-straight and the capstan groaned.

“Eyes on the rope! Don’t let your attention wander!”

The wooden rail transport system — His Highness had called it that, though everyone in the mine just called it the track — had changed the work more than anything else in Iron Head’s memory of the place. Before: three or four men per cart, all shift, carrying or dragging ore by hand. After: the steam engine pulled five or six loaded carts out in the time it took a man to drink a cup of water. The carts themselves were iron, fully iron, which the first time Iron Head had seen them he’d thought was an extraordinary waste of the material. Now he understood. The weight that could be moved without the wheels cracking the rail was the point, and the wheels’ design — inset lip, sized to grip the rail’s edge — meant the carts tracked without steering. You loaded them and they came straight out.

His Highness had come up with this. The man came up with a lot of things.

When the rope snapped two weeks ago — six carts instead of four, someone had gotten impatient — the rebound had caught a man across the ribs and knocked three others off their feet. Iron Head had organized the response before anyone else had figured out what happened: injured to the Viscount’s house, carts recovered, rope replaced, production report to the steward by evening. His Highness had sent word that the procedure was correct.

The rope had been the worker’s fault. The worker was healing.

“Carts are out!” The lookout at the tunnel mouth.

“Frank! Ten count, then shut the steamer down! Mind the order!”

The four carts coasted to their stop at the end of the slope. Iron Head moved along them with his ledger, noting the load per cart. First cart: reddish-brown iron ore, the usual. Second: same. Third: gray-yellow copper-bearing stone with the ochre tint. Fourth—

He stopped.

The fourth cart’s contents were dark brown, almost black, but not quite. When the cloud cover shifted and the afternoon light caught them directly, they threw back a dark metallic luster — not the flat color of iron ore, not the speckled brightness of copper. Something else. Something he had no word for.

He had been in this mine for three years. He had handled every type of rock the North Slope produced. He had never seen this.

He made a cross-mark on his ledger beside the fourth cart’s entry — the symbol for unknown material, refer to His Highness — and made a note of which tunnel branch it had come from. Whether these black stones went to the furnace or the warehouse or wherever His Highness decided to direct them, that was a decision above Iron Head’s authority.

His job was to notice. He had noticed.

He waved the cart crew forward and went back to the tunnel mouth to wait for the next load.

Chapter 142 Mine Cart

Since the day he had conquered the Longsong Stronghold a half month had already passed, and the five noble families of Longsong Stronghold had by now all already delivered the needed people and supplies to Border Town.

After the creation of the Ministry of Agriculture was completed, the new spring had finally begun, which was the first step for Roland’s farming revolution. The serfs who already saw the dawn to their life as free people started to work filled with motivation. The scene where someone had to use the whip to encourage the serfs to work basically disappeared in the area South of the Shishui River. The serfs who were lazy discovered that even though no one came to ‘encourage’ their speed, the officers of the Town Hall still came to control their work with their strange measuring tools. It was clear that the Lord didn’t care about the harvest of one or two fields, the only one who should care for their crops were the serfs who were working for their own future.

Even so, the quality of the officers of the Ministry of Agriculture wasn’t so outstanding, they had already thoroughly comprehended the distribution according to work principle, so Roland requested of them that they unceasing repeated these content to the serfs. To strengthen the indoctrination effect, as well as to satisfy the Prince’s own feeling, the shore at the Shishui River was filled with red banners. Which read “Labor is the only way to get rich,” “Work brings honor and glory,” “Work can change your destiny” and so forth.

Of course, these measures weren’t possible without taking any objections, for example, Barov was the first to stand up and complain about it.

“Your Royal Highness, something like this is meaningless, the vast majority of the serfs aren’t even able to read. Even if they could, they don’t care about the text written on the banners. These people are just uneducated and

ignorant, for some even the whip doesn’t work, so what can you expect of some unfathomable and mystery text.”

Roland ‘s answer, however, was quite simple: “Those banners are not meant for them.”

“So why do you want to set up these banners?” Hearing this answer, the assistant minister showed a very confused expression.

“To create a living example.”

He had never thought that serfs were stupid and unchangeable. It was true that they were uneducated, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t think. Greed and interest will drive even a stupid person, that’s was simply human nature. So, if the implementation of the Ministry of Agriculture seemed to have little effect in the beginning, it would still leave a primer in their hearts, just like a seed, it would eventually begin to grow. When the first of the serfs were promoted to freemen, and when they used the harvested crops as an exchange for money to buy beautiful clothing, fine food, and even robust and warm brick houses, the often time repeated slogan would soon come back to their mind and become a reality which would burn itself deep into their hearts.

As for the banner at the shore, it was for the time that the universal education system would bear its first fruits.

By only relying on their own hands to get rid of poverty, becoming an official member of Border Town, even more than the native inhabitants, this was the power of hard work.

By comparing it they could all feel the gap between them, and their only chance to close it is by taking the intuitive to pursue him, like this the individual efficiency would rise to its highest level.

Iron Head stood at the tunnel entrance of the mine, waiting for the delivery of a new ore.

Since the Months of Demons after he was nearly cooked by the high temperature of the steam, he never dared to stand so near to the black machine ever again.

Fortunately, there was the angelic like Miss Nana in Border Town. Whenever Iron Head touched his healed cheeks, his heart was filled with warm emotions. During his deluded and panic-stricken moments, he had even suspected that Miss Nana was one of the devil’s minions, but that was clearly a desecration of herself. So, after the winter, he deliberately raised two salted fish and a wild boar leg and delivered them to the Pine Family.

To his surprise, Titus Pine was a Viscount, but unlike the other aristocrats who always held their nose high in the air, he openly accepted his apology. This was the first time that Iron Head felt that not all of the nobles were all ruthless people.

“Old Iron,” shouted a miner who was covered in dust while he came running out from the tunnel, “the rope has already been fastened.”

“All right,” he exclaimed and turned in the direction of the steam engine, “Everyone clear the area! Frank, first you have to lift up the green lever, then you press the red lever! If you make a mistake, I’m going to twist off your head!”

“Rest assured, Old Iron, I know what I’m doing!” Frank shouted back.

After Nils was accepted into the First Army, it was now Iron Head who was in charge of the operation of the steam engine. During the first few days Frank had often made mistakes with the order, which had even caused one of the pipes to burst, so every time he made a new mistake he would get beaten up. Fortunately, His Royal Highness did not care about this matter, not only did he immediately send people to replace the damaged part, he didn’t even make them pay for the destroyed part. Originally, Iron Head had already formed a plan to confiscate their monthly payment in case of something happening.

With the opening of the intake valve, the steam engine released a majestic white cloud of gas and the main wheel began to slowly turn, moving the

capstan and stretching the hemp rope straight.

“Don’t let your spirits wander! Look at the hemp rope, look at it carefully!” Old Iron shouted.

Now, in addition to the steam engine, the transportation of the ore in the mine tunnel had also changed.

His Royal Highness had ordered artisans to create many wooden sleepers, which then were laid along the whole of the mine’s tunnel. Afterward two long wooden sticks were also placed on the wooden sleepers, which at first glance it looked like a wooden ladder.

His Royal Highness had called it a wooden rail transportation system, which is a very convoluted name. Even so, it doesn’t seem to be too complicated, but together with the wooden ladder, it also came with a special miner’s cart! That cart is really something. Usually, we needed three to four days to transport the ore, but the steam engine can pull several carts out in just a moment’s breath.

Iron Head had precisely observed this four-wheel miner’s cart. It could run on the wooden tracks and was made from top to bottom completely out of iron. Using so much iron should have cost a lot of money. The key reason that it could move on those thin sticks of wood without falling laid in the way of its construction. The inside of the wheel was smaller than its edge, fixing it firmly on the rail. On top of the wheels there stood a boxy iron pot, which had on its end and beginning each a small hole where they could be tied together with a hemp rope.

He couldn’t help himself from admiring His Royal Highness’ wisdom, with such a simple design, he had made the transporting of the ore so much easier. Before his invention, it was the transportation of the ore, which was the most time-consuming labor.

However, this system also wasn’t perfect, for example, just after five days of usage, there were already two wooden rails which had been crushed under the weight, and it didn’t take much time until others followed after them.

Later, His Royal Highness had wrapped all the rails in a thin layer of iron, somewhat improving the durability of the rails.

In addition to the problems with the tracks, the mine also had a rope break by accident, which still haunted Iron Head until this day. According to the regulations, they should only drag four mine carts out at the same time. But on that day, the miners were unusually quick, and because of this, they had linked six mine carts together. During the first half of the transport everything went well, but then suddenly broke one of the hemp ropes. The rebound of the half arm-thick rope was so powerful that the miner who got hit by the rope got several ribs broken. The mine carts instead slid down from the trail and knocked several of the miners off their feet, crushing their legs under it.

Fortunately, Iron Head who had encountered such an accident himself instantly knew what to do. He immediately organized some miners who help him to transport the injured men to the home of the Viscount. He was aware that as long as they still had some life left in them, Miss Nana would be able to heal them as if nothing had ever happened.

“Old Iron, the mine carts are out!” shouted a man who was responsible for overlooking the mine entrance.

Hearing this, Iron Head shouted his next orders, “Frank, wait ten breath and only then should you shut down the steamer, pay attention to the order!”

“Understood!”

After the four mine carts, had slowly stopped at the end of the track, Iron Head went over to record the results of their harvest. The first two carts were filled with a reddish-brown stone, iron ore, which was also the same kind of mineral which was found the most in the mine, the third cart was filled with grayish stones with hints of yellow, which should be copper. But when Iron Head came to the fourth cart, he got rooted on the spot immediately, in it was a kind of ore he had never seen before: The were of a dark brown, but when they sunlight fell on them, they sprinkled in a dark metallic luster.

These stones are clearly an unknown mineral, Iron Head shook his head, the Northern Slope Mine is so large and has so many branches; it’s normal that we would find inexplicable things in it. So, he just drew a cross on his paper, giving the signal to send the carts further into the warehouse. As for the pile of black stone, whether it would be directed to the furnace or not, had nothing to do with him.