34) Inventory
In any case, the Ottoman government's slowness and incompetence, as Ferdinand wanted, kept him from asking for trouble!
Turning back to the country, the 'Second Five-Year Plan' was still in full swing, and by 1895, many projects had achieved milestones!
In the Bulgarian government, steel plants, arsenals, and other heavy industries have made great strides in progress under the bloodless investment!
In 1895, Bulgaria produced 150,000 tons of steel per year, of which 48,000 tons of steel and 102,000 tons of iron!
The arsenal, by now, was able to: produce on average 500 new rifles (Shui Lianzhu), 15 machine guns, 1.5 of 75mm rapid-fire guns (Artillery of Italy or Mademoiselle Soixante-Quinze), 500,000 rounds of ammunition, and 2,000 artillery shells per day!
A 150mm howitzer has been successfully copied, but it is better to forget it. It is not Bulgaria can afford to play now. It is just about getting a few units out to make a show!
Steel plants have reached their limits for the time being and would like to continue to break through, but can only wait until after the Balkan Wars, after Bulgaria has obtained sufficient mineral resources!
The pace of expansion of the arsenal did not stop for a moment. As requested by the military, rifle and machine-gun output needs to be doubled, artillery output needs to be increased by one-third, and ammunition output needs to be expanded by five times!
By the end of 1896, he planned that Bulgaria would be able to arm 40 divisions, a total of more than 600,000 troops, and have a strategic reserve of supplies to meet six months of constant warfare.
As the military calculates, the reserve of bullets must not be less than 1 billion rounds, and the reserve of artillery shells must not be less than 10 million. No way called Bulgaria equipped with all the gold-devouring beasts?
The Maxim heavy machine gun, known as the one that could shoot 600 rounds of ammunition a minute, showed his power in the Bulgarian-Serbian War.
After the tireless efforts of the engineers of the arsenal (copycat), they have successfully reduced weight by one-fifth, but the other aspects of performance are still not much improved.
The military still likes it. In one breath, they gave the arsenal an order for 10,000 units. Each machine gun is equipped with 50,000 rounds of ammunition. That's five hundred million, and the rest is for rifles!
Now that the war is not far away, Ferdinand does not expect to make a technological breakthrough now! If quality is not good, let the quantity come together. In any case, the opponent is the Ottoman Empire which is not an industrial power!
The Bulgarian Type 75 gun (Mademoiselle Soixante-Quinze) goes without saying. How could a rapidly firing gun not fire faster? The firing speed naturally meant that the shells were consumed quickly, and at 15 rounds per minute, the rate of fire far exceeded that of similar artillery products.
As planned by Ferdinand, the main A division was equipped with 32 guns, and the new B division with 24 guns. In addition, five heavy artillery regiments were formed, each with 72 guns of various calibers.
Not taking into account the quality, from the point of view of firepower alone, at the division level are catching up with two-thirds of the French Army in World War I, but of course, the overall picture is still far from it!
Well, who told Ferdinand to set his strategic goals so high? No matter the military's demands, whether or not it was too big to ask, he had to approach full force to complete!
The top approved this aspect of the top Bulgarian government. No matter what, winning the war is now the most crucial task for Bulgaria!
Thousands of guns, tens of thousands of machine guns, much stronger than the British at war with the Boers in South Africa! These are the biggest bottom line for Ferdinand to challenge the Ottoman Empire and swallow the Balkans!
...
Ferdinand was in a good mood at the annual inventory meeting, and for Bulgaria, 1895 was another good year!
Demographically, Bulgaria still maintains a high growth rate, with a natural population growth rate of 2.73%, excluding new immigrants and about 110,000 more people.
In fact, 1895 was another year of the great migration to Bulgaria, lacking sufficient labor for new land development. In order to develop the Niš region as soon as possible, the Bulgarian government brought in 242,000 immigrants for the whole year.
By the end of 1895, the country's actual population had exceeded 4.3 million, of which 3,948,000 had Bulgarian citizenship. The rest were primarily new immigrants who did not yet meet the conditions for getting citizenship!
In agriculture, they halted land annexation. By the end of 1895, the country had a total of 41,300 square kilometers of arable land, and the arable land per capita remained at a high level of 0.95 hectares!
Sixty-five percent of them were scattered in the hands of more than two million three hundred thousand farmers. The Bulgarian government was the largest landowner, holding 29 percent of the country's arable land; landowners owned the remaining six percent of the emerging military class and made up a large proportion!
The total agricultural production, compared to 1894, increased by 18%. The increase was mainly due to the increase in arable land but also to the promotion of new technologies, the construction of water projects, and many other factors.
With the development of additional territories, Bulgarian agriculture will continue to grow at a high rate in the coming years!
At the same time, the core problem limiting the development of Bulgarian agriculture - the diversification of land use - is still unresolved!
The point is that Ferdinand did not intend to solve it now, mainly because land annexation would cause the bankruptcy of the peasants, which would quickly lead to social conflicts and undermine the stability and unity of Bulgaria!
At the end of the 19th century, when the material base was not abundant, and Ferdinand reduced the agricultural tax, for quite some time, there was not much difference between the income levels of the peasant class and the working class!
In terms of living standards, many farmers with much lower incomes exceed workers. The gap between industrial and agricultural scalers is not yet so obvious a short time.
As for the future, let's talk about it when the time comes! Maintaining social stability now will help the population grow at a high rate and allow for maximum preparation for war!
'Military service' is the most effective way for the Bulgarian population to move up the social ladder and become the ruling class!
At the end of 1895, there were three hundred and eighteen companies of all sizes in Bulgaria, employing 897,600 workers and possessing total assets of 1.75 billion Leva!
There are 15 large companies with more than 30 million assets, with the Royal Bank topping the list with 350 million Leva, followed by the Bulgarian Railway Company with 280 million Leva.
Behind them are companies such as Shuanghui Food Development, Union Bank, Bulgarian National Bank, Bulgarian Steel Plant, Bulgarian Machinery Plant, and Bulgarian Arsenal, all of which are on the list!
Together, the 15 megacorps have a total of 685,000 employees, including 342,000 workers in the Bulgarian Railway Company alone! The total assets are even as high as 1.58 billion Leva, and the total assets of the remaining 300 companies add up to less than 200 million.
A monopoly capital already occupies 90% of the total volume of the Bulgarian industry and commerce, and most of the other businesses survive around this group of giants!
Except for the three major banks, the others are all real industries. Three of them, the Bulgarian Railway Company, the Steel Plant, and the Arsenal Plant, are state-owned enterprises that have been losing money.
Ferdinand was ready to divest the road from the railroad, but after considering the actual situation, it was abandoned.
Although the railroad company is a bright future, with a loss in the early stage, then a separate road project, probably even until the next century, is still a loss, which is a big loss!
Now the automobile's performance is pitched down once, on average, running on thirty or forty kilometers, it has to be repaired once, the performance is volatile, not to mention what comfort!
Now on the road, it is still horse-drawn carriages that make traffic. As for collecting tolls, forget it! The original transport costs are high, and then scrape to the first stage, and do not want to develop the economy?