CHAPTER 546: CHAPTER 524 SALT AND HAM (2-IN-1)_2

Picking up the black tea to moisten his throat, Horn continued:

"The key to obtaining wealth is to work and exchange efficiently. North County has two reasons for its poverty.

Firstly, the geographical climate is unfavorable; traditional efficient labor such as farming and mining has proven unsuccessful.

Secondly, the exchange conditions are inadequate, located in a harsh highland area with no established merchant culture.

But that doesn’t mean it’s completely hopeless. If the primary industry isn’t successful, there’s still the secondary and tertiary industries, and poor road conditions can be improved by road construction."

Thousand River Valley is said to be high in terrain, but according to calculation from the ’Imperial Geographic Atlas’, Horn estimated that the elevation of the plains’ four counties is merely around 200 meters, and for the mountainous five counties, it’s only about 1000 meters.

This average elevation may not even be higher than the Jinshan Region; it mainly suffers from the high plateau mountains in the center and the Dragon Sleep Mountain Range on the east side.

The former blocks the warm current from the southern Jade Sea, while the latter blocks the warm current from the eastern Yanghai, resulting in this region’s impoverishment.

These mountainous counties seem large, yet probably more than half of the area is deserted, who knows how many treasures lie within.

North Mande, Mande, and North counties barely count as foothill regions of the Dragon Sleep Mountain Range, belonging to the same mountain and geological plate.

There’s no reason for the first two to have rich mineral deposits while the latter only has forests and trees, right?

"No, we have saline and alkali lands and toxic water ponds everywhere. Although there are copper mines, they are too deep to be exploited."

"That may not be the case..." Seeing Seching’s indignant expression, Horn did not continue but changed the subject.

"Even without these, you can still engage in livestock farming. With such a large area, if you can’t raise cattle, sheep, or horses, you can raise donkeys, mules, and pigs." Horn stood up, took paper and pen from the cabinet next to him, "Let’s do a simple calculation; in Joan of Arc Castle, 1 Dinar can only buy 3 pounds of pork, but in North County, it can buy 5 or even 7 pounds.

In North County, 1 Dinar can only buy 1 gallon or 10 pounds of grain, whereas in Joan of Arc Castle, 1 Dinar can buy 16 or even 18 pounds of grain.

Ignoring transportation costs and price fluctuations, in an ideal environment, you can buy 6 pounds of pork for 1 Dinar in North County, transport it to Joan of Arc Castle, and sell it for 2 Dinars.

Then use this 2 Dinars to buy 36 pounds of grain, transport back to North County, and sell for 3.6 Dinars. After six trips, 1 Dinar can turn into over 2000 Dinars."

"It works in a dream!" Seching’s forehead bulged when talking about this topic, "You think we haven’t tried?"

Words filled with resentment from Seching, planning to turn them into reality: "Along the way there are officials demanding bribes and fees, and transporting too much feed increases the cost, while not bringing feed will cause the live pigs to lose weight.

If pre-cut, unless it’s winter, dead pigs will spoil and decay.

At the beginning, my father and grandfather drove 300 pigs to Joan of Arc Castle for sale, encountering either swine fever or pigs losing weight along the way.

Churches and lords along the way set up checkpoints, charging me 15 Dinars per pig; my cost was 300 Dinars, cursing that bishop, every place I arrived he charged me repeatedly.

Finally selling at Joan of Arc Castle, including bribery costs, calculated not only failed to profit but lost 1500 Dinars.

Moreover, buying grain to sell back is even more of a loss, because there are fees on the way back too, with crossing and bridge taxes equaling the grain’s principal.

In one trip, we lost 10 gold pounds. My grandfather fell ill after returning, and said before he died: sell pigs only in regions reachable in three days.

Three days! We haven’t even left the mountains yet; the nearest wild boar farm is five or six days from the nearest manor in Langsande County.

We forcefully sent pigs there, and the cost of travel and expenses just balanced the price difference, luckily earning seven or eight Dinars per pig, unluckily, had to subsidize."

"Then why not turn them into ham or dried pork?" Horn spread his hands, "With so much wood available, using it to make dried pork shouldn’t be an issue, right?"

"There’s no salt." Seching replied irritably.

With a peculiar smile, Horn turned around, took a roll of newspaper off the nearby shelf, flipped through it for a while, and then placed a page on the table.

Seching stared at the word ’Truth Journal’ on the newspaper, suddenly realizing what Mira meant.

His eyes moved down from the newspaper’s title, and Seching quickly saw Red Maple Village’s price list, corn at 0.6 Dinar per gallon, wheat at 0.7 Dinar per gallon, salt at 18 Dinars per bushel (56 pounds)...

"Hmm?" Like a turtle stretching its neck, Seching suddenly leaned his head towards the Truth Journal as if he didn’t recognize the words on it.

Equivalent to 1 Dinar for 3 pounds of salt, knowing that buying 1 pound of salted fish from the Norn people cost half a Dinar.

Generally, salting 10 pounds of salted fish requires 1 pound of salt, and Horn here could salt 30 pounds of salted fish with 1 Dinar.

"Where did you get so much salt?"

"Secret." Horn wore a mysterious smile, spread his arms towards the sky, "It’s the result of the invisible hand of the Holy Father."

While this statement is religiously significant, accurately speaking, Horn’s rotary divine pump system includes four pumps for extracting brine.

To ensure longer lasting exploitation, Horn only maintained a minimal extraction to meet market demands.

If running at full power, nearly 3.6 million liters of brine could be extracted monthly, depleting a small salt well in a month.

3.6 million liters of brine could produce about 700 tons of salt, requiring approximately 10,000 tons of peat.

10,000 tons of peat would be the result of 600 Alchemist Priests working 90 man-hours, which was a challenging prospect in the past.

But now with the spit-flight method, the scale transformation of Blessed and Alchemist Priests makes it achievable.

Sometimes Horn couldn’t help but marvel at the deafening roar of industrial machines, a single spring wheel pump could topple the entire Thousand River Valley’s salted fish industry.

For some reason, witnessing Horn’s almost mystical behavior, Seching felt a sudden wave of fear in his heart.

"The taxes and checkpoints currently don’t exist, live pigs can be replaced by dried meat and ham, and as for transport costs, it just so happens, our mortar needs a market, so let’s use it to build roads." Horn circled behind Seching, steadying the back of his chair, "Do you have any more concerns?"

"But why are you doing this?" Seching still didn’t understand, "Without our ham, would everyone be unable to survive?"

"Of course not, firstly, having more food on the table is an improvement in living standards, and secondly, supporting industries will require numerous manpower and consumption, which expands the tax base."

This statement clearly confused Seching, so Horn had to switch to a simpler version:

"The principle is that the more I spend, the faster money circulates, leading to a more prosperous market, more willingness to consume, and subsequently more tax revenue."

When people sense market prosperity, they have higher future expectations and, with more funds, are more likely to increase spending.

This spending cycles through various channels in the market, driving further consumption and investment, forming a ’multiplier effect’, where each unit of spending yields more than a unit of economic output.

This means more transaction volume, more enterprise growth, and more employment, thereby leading to a broader tax base.

Most importantly, outsiders, like the Falan people, seeing Langsande County’s booming market have no reason not to invest.

As long as Horn can timely prevent inflation, it’s sufficient for the economy to enter a rapid development phase.

Regarding the matching of productivity, Horn can only say that the Empire’s productivity is inherently higher than its development level, merely forcibly suppressed by the extraordinary.

If it weren’t for the extraordinary, based on the Empire’s current population and level, advancing civilization from the Late Middle Ages to the Renaissance level, and then to the mid-to-late 17th century would not be an issue.

Even without spring industry, simply lifting the Empire and Church’s shackles could spur economic development.

"Money is money only when it flows; I even pay each small construction worker 30 Dinars a month, and in the future the taxes collected will amount to billions." Horn swallowed back the phrase "listen to the applause", smiling at Seching.

Only Seching didn’t speak; he looked at the price list on the table, suddenly experiencing Nagami’s mood.

An indescribable complex mood mixed with bewilderment, envy, and unease.

"A new era, new propositions, new appearance." Horn’s voice was more tempting than a devil’s, "The mountain people of North don’t have to leave home, they can sleep in warm houses, eat their fill, and your people and friends no longer need to envy others!"

The blueprints painted by Saint’s Grandson fell on Seching’s head, leaving him dizzy and confused.