Chapter 403: Great Industrial Development

As time came to 1900, Gao Da intended to completely remove the shackles on Spain's industrial development.

In this era, there were many factors to measure the strength of a country, and industry was absolutely an extremely important link. And when measuring whether a country's industry was strong or not, many times one would refer to the country's total steel production.

The reason was also very simple: the more total steel production, the more it represented the country's demand for steel. Those who used steel were either large-scale projects such as railways or urban infrastructure, or machinery manufacturing and other heavy industrial enterprises.

Under these circumstances, the idea that the more steel production, the stronger the country's industry, was established.

In 1895, Spain's steel production could still rank behind Britain, the United States, and Germany, being the world's fourth-largest steel-producing country.

At that time, the steel production of France and Russia was less than 900,000 tons, while Spain's annual steel production reached an exaggerated 967,700 tons, establishing its status as a super great power in one fell swoop.

However, in the five years from 1895 to 1899, Spain's steel production was once again surpassed by France and Russia.

Currently, according to the data disclosed by various countries and Spain's own statistics, Spain's annual steel production was around 1.47 million tons.

Although it maintained steady growth every year, it could not be denied that Spain's existing steel production still had a large gap with industrial powers like Britain, Germany, and the United States, and was even surpassed by France and Russia by quite a bit.

In 1895, Spain's annual steel production was still ahead of France and Russia by tens of thousands of tons. But by 1900, Spain's steel production was already behind France by more than 100,000 tons and behind Russia by nearly 800,000 tons.

This was just the French and Russians, whose industry was not that strong; the steel production of the three industrial powers of Britain, the United States, and Germany had all exceeded 5 million tons. Britain's steel production reached 5.276 million tons, Germany's steel production reached 6.401 million tons, and the United States' steel production reached an exaggerated 10.305 million tons.

Compared with these three countries, Spain's steel production was truly a bit pitiful. This was also the reason why Gao Da decided to throw away the shackles on Spain's industrial development and let Spain develop its industry rapidly before World War I.

Only when the industrial scale completely caught up could Spain persist longer in World War I and have more hope of becoming the final victor.

The good news was that although France and Russia's steel production once again surpassed Spain, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy further down had no possibility of surpassing Spain's steel production at all.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire's steel production had fallen back again since 1898, and currently, the steel production was only around 860,000 tons. Italy's steel production was even more pitiful, having maintained around 110,000 tons for several consecutive years, just a fraction of other European countries.

Of course, this was not because the industrial scale of countries like the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy was small. In fact, it was mainly because the industrial scale of countries like Britain, the United States, and Germany was too huge, which caused the industrial scale of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy to look small.

One had to know that the industrial total of European great powers had always occupied the vast majority of the world's industrial total.

How exaggerated was it specifically? In 1871, the world's total steel production was only 850,000 tons, and the steel production of the great powers added up to as high as 830,000 tons, accounting for as high as 97.6%.

And by 1900, the world's steel production had increased to 29.627 million tons, and the great powers' steel production also had an exaggerated 28.27 million tons, still accounting for as high as 95.4%.

It could be said without exaggeration that even Italy, with the weakest industry, was a proper industrial power compared to other non-great power countries.

A certain country that was seen as a great power after the Russo-Japanese War currently had a steel production of only a pitiful 200 tons, not even a fraction of the European great powers.

From this aspect, one could also see how big the gap between great power countries and non-great power countries was; even the weakest great power country still had to be a big step ahead of the strongest non-great power country.

If it was only compared with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, and those non-great power countries, Spain's current existing industrial scale was already completely sufficient.

It could even be said without exaggeration that Spain's current industrial scale was larger than the total industrial scale of those non-great power countries combined, and in terms of national strength, it could easily crush any non-great power country.

But Gao Da's goal was to recover Gibraltar and annex Portugal, which meant that Spain's enemy would only be Britain.

If compared with Britain, Spain's existing industrial scale was a bit pitifully small.

Britain's steel production was as high as 5.27 million tons, and pig iron production reached an exaggerated 9.1 million tons. In contrast, Spain's steel production was only 1.472 million tons, pig iron production was only 2.426 million tons, and the total steel production was only a fraction of Britain's total steel production.

Under such circumstances, if it continued to maintain relatively flat and stable growth, the gap between Spain and Britain would only get bigger and bigger, which was bad news for Gao Da.

Currently, Spain's total steel production added up to less than 4 million tons, which could not meet the needs of the future super war at all.

Only by loosening the shackles of industrial development could Spain's total steel production break through to over 10 million tons before the outbreak of World War I.

Only when the total steel production exceeded 10 million tons would Spain have the possibility of challenging Britain head-on.

In order to accelerate Spain's industrial development, Gao Da also specially summoned the current Minister of Industry, Roger Villiers, and Prime Minister Angelo Orcajo, asking them to come up with an industrial development plan to rapidly increase Spain's total industrial scale and steel production within the next five years.

Regarding Gao Da's idea of rapidly increasing Spain's industrial scale, both Prime Minister Angelo Orcajo and Minister of Industry Roger Villiers were very supportive.

Since the Industrial Revolution, whether a country's industry was strong or not largely determined whether the country's comprehensive strength was strong or not.

Although industry did not represent everything, it was fundamentally unrealistic for a country that wanted to become a super great power to have no strong industrial foundation.

This was also the reason why it was said that the current super great powers were only the five of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Spain, and subsequently, only the United States had the potential to become a super great power.

For countries like the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy, no matter how much time was given to them, they could not become a super great power.

Although the Austro-Hungarian Empire had industry, its own ethnic composition was too chaotic, and the country could not be condensed into a rope, so naturally, it could not have the qualifications to become a super great power.

Italy did not need to be mentioned; Italy's industry had always been the biggest problem, which also destined that Italy could never become a super great power unless it could completely change its appearance in terms of industry.

But Italy's own mineral resources limited the development of Italy's industry; unless it could occupy a region rich in coal and iron mines outside its own territory, Italy's own industry could not be developed.

It took less than a week for Prime Minister Angelo Orcajo and Minister Roger Villiers to come up with an industrial development plan that satisfied Gao Da.

If one wanted to promote the growth of Spain's steel production, one had to promote the development of heavy industry. Only when Spain's domestic demand for steel achieved growth would Spain's steel production further increase.

Demand and production were equal; if one only cared about producing steel without caring about domestic demand, doing so would not only cause Spain's steel market to collapse but also cause Spain's heavy industry to suffer heavy losses.

Steel was the basic link of heavy industry, and the price of steel concerned the reasonable development of heavy industry.

Therefore, no matter how urgent Gao Da's mood to increase Spain's steel production was, he had to prioritize the growth of Spain's domestic demand for steel.

How to stimulate the growth of Spain's domestic demand for steel?

In fact, the simplest way was to build a large number of railways.

Railways required a large amount of steel rails; as long as large-scale railway construction projects were started, Spain's domestic demand for steel would increase by a large margin in a short period of time.

This industrial development plan mentioned the plan to promote railway construction to increase Spain's domestic demand for steel.

Although Spain's current railways were enough, there was still a lot of room for construction in the vast colonies and the newly conquered Morocco region.

Furthermore, Spain's domestic railways had not reached the limit at all, and railway lines could continue to be expanded in more densely populated areas.

Because Spain built wide-gauge railways, if it was a double-track railway, the steel required per kilometer of railway would be at least over 120 tons. If it was a single-track railway, the steel required per kilometer would be at least over 60 tons.

If 1000 kilometers of railway were built a year, calculated according to the ratio of half single-track and half double-track railway, the steel consumption required just for steel rails would be at least 90,000 tons.

Coupled with the consumption of other miscellaneous parts, on average, for every 1000 kilometers of railway built, at least 100,000 tons of steel were required.

This was also the reason why Germany and the United States built a large number of railways and their industry was also developing rapidly at the same time. The more railways were built, the faster the heavy industry, with the steel industry as the main body, developed.

The faster heavy industry developed, the greater the industrial development and economic improvement driven would naturally be. ===== CHAPTER 404 =====