Chapter 202: Brave New World (4)

As could be seen from the fact that, among France’s many arsenals, it alone used the word Central in its name, the Paris Central Army Arsenal located where the Seine River and the Saint-Martin Canal met was enormous beyond belief. With a bit of exaggeration, it was perhaps only slightly smaller than an average university campus.

Come to think of it, even if a general mobilization order had been declared, during the last war with Prussia they produced a total of forty thousand muskets, ten thousand spears, and roughly a hundred cannons in just over a month. To meet that kind of demand, perhaps a site of this size really was only natural.

“If they at least had robots or conveyor belts, maybe. But no, it’s all blacksmiths lifting hammers one by one, soldering and working the bellows by hand.”

Mm. I must really be bored after standing around so long in a place reeking of iron and acrid gunpowder. I kept muttering to myself out loud.

At times like this, I needed to restore peace to my weakened body and mind with a little nicotine. The technicians would be here soon, and I could hardly let them see me not as a dignified and impressive businessman but as some oddball muttering to himself out of loneliness.

As usual, I pulled a cigarette from the pack inside my coat, put it in my mouth, and lit it. Astonishingly, my mind was already growing calm—

“Huff, huff, Your Excellency! As ordered, I’ve brought the technicians!”

“Ah.”

I had just lit it too. What a waste.

But after summoning people here, I could not very well say, “Give me a moment while I smoke.” With tears in my eyes, I crushed out the cigarette that had only just begun to burn under my shoe.

Sob, sob. Master is sorry. In your next life, may you be reborn not as a cheap cigarette but as an expensive cigar.

“Gentlemen, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am Guillaume de Toulon.”

“It is, it is an honor to meet Your Excellency!”

“Ahem. I am very much a former Finance Minister, and the only reason I have come here today is as the president of the Ears of the Nation, not for any official business.”

“Haha, you are far too modest!”

Modest, huh. Weeeell.

You see, this official cap of office is a very annoying thing. It feels like wearing Thanos’s gauntlets called power on both hands while spinning plates on sticks and riding a unicycle with both feet at once.

To other people, it may look impressive enough to earn applause, but the one riding it feels like dying. And even if you are wearing Thanos’s gauntlets, if you swing them carelessly, the whole world will burst into flames. So all you can do is leave them there as pretty trash, with tears in your eyes.

“…Right. Anyway, what field of ironworking do you gentlemen work in?”

“Yes. I’m in charge of blast furnace operations.”

“I operate the bloomery. Steel production, you see.”

As if to prove they had come straight from work, the two middle-aged technicians, their faces blackened with soot, answered me.

“I’ve only ever dealt with money, so I don’t really know much about this. But are the blast furnace and the bloomery different things?”

“Oh, of course they are. Y-Your Ex— I mean, sir.”

“That’s right. With a bit of exaggeration, the difference is as great as heaven and earth, sir.”

“Really? Could you explain?”

The technician in charge of the blast furnace held up his fingers first as he began speaking.

“The role of the blast furnace is, in the end, simply ironmaking. Its job is to refine the impurities out of iron ore and process it into pig iron in a convenient form.”

“Hmm. Then does the pig iron produced by the blast furnace have no commercial value before further processing?”

“That is not the case. Iron from the blast furnace is called cast iron, and it can be sold as a product in its own right. However…”

“However?”

“This cast iron is extremely hard in nature, but very vulnerable to outside impact. Its strength is great, but because it lacks flexibility, under pressure that would only bend other iron slightly, it often twists and breaks.”

Ah. It was like that story about the great tree and the reed in a typhoon.

One day, an enormous typhoon blew in. The great sturdy tree endured and endured, only to snap in the end and roll on the ground, while the reed that bent with the wind remained perfectly fine.

“Then where is cast iron used?”

“In buildings or weapons, for example. Places where something has to be hard above all else, and where breaking is preferable to bending.”

“Used in buildings, you say. …Wait. Could you give me just a moment?”

“Ah, yes. Of course, sir.”

Wouldn’t our railway rails count as part of a structure too, in a way?

I hurried over and opened the rear seat of the Lavoisier Steam Carriage No. 1 I had arrived in. On the back seat was a piece of the rail Murdoch and Trevithick had cut off for examination.

Ha. Good thing I had grabbed one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠earlier just in case.

Handing the rail, cracked all over in jagged lines, to the technician, I asked,

“Can you tell what material this is?”

“Let’s see… It seems to be cast iron. Something quite heavy must have been riding on top of it. In that case, cast iron, which has poor flexibility, is bound to crack.”

“Then should cast iron not be used?”

“That’s right. Otherwise, you should use wrought iron.”

“…Wrought iron?”

“It’s iron made by forging cast iron again. When cast iron is refined, it can be turned into wrought iron or steel.”

Steel… I had heard of that. But what was wrought iron supposed to be?

At that point, the technician who said he was in charge of the bloomery stepped forward and opened his mouth.

“Ahem. If you put the cast iron refined from the blast furnace into the bloomery, ignite it with coke, and draw it out again, you get what is called wrought iron. It is less hard than cast iron, but far more flexible and much more versatile. For example, it is often used to make precision parts such as wire or springs.”

“Mm.”

Going by that explanation, I could think of wrought iron simply as flexible iron.

“And steel?”

“Steel is the most precious of all iron. Whether it is wrought iron or cast iron, no iron can compare to steel, sir.”

“I see. Then how is steel made?”

Unlike me, who had asked that question without much thought, the faces of both men began to darken.

“Why are you looking for steel?”

“Did you not just say it was the best? Naturally, a businessman looks for the best raw materials.”

“Mmm.”

“Is there some problem with steel?”

“Well… steel is the hardest of all to make.”

“How difficult?”

“First, after taking the cast iron or wrought iron that has already been produced, you ignite it together with coke and charcoal. Then, from a matter of weeks at the shortest to several hundred days, you must continue feeding in coke and charcoal. Even the cast iron or wrought iron used as raw material cannot be made from ordinary iron ore. It has to be the highest-grade iron ore from Sweden, and even then it is only barely possible.”

“Why must it specifically be Swedish ore?”

“To make steel, there must be very few impurities. With ordinary iron ore, the best you can generally do is produce wrought iron. Swedish iron ore contains more than twice as few impurities as ore from other regions, so it is much easier to refine into steel.”

“Tsk. I see.”

Just hearing that was enough to make me sigh.

For starters, having to keep feeding in expensive coke and charcoal continuously for hundreds of days was already a huge mark against it. No matter how good or excellent a product might be, if manufacturing costs are too high, it loses all commercial value.

Every year, the news is full of headlines like, “Research team at OO University finally discovers a cure for hair loss!” “Research team at XX University invents technology to decompose plastic! Environmental pollution, your end is here!” “MM Corporation developed new cancer treatment technology! Time to go all-in with all our assets!” But most of them disappear without a sound, and the people who invested their entire fortunes after believing the hype end up smashing their monitors. The reason is simple: once it is actually made, the product’s commercial value is disastrously low compared to the cost put into it.

And coke was already refined from coal once, while charcoal came from burning wood once, did it not? Even if they were primary products, the cost would already be high. If they were secondary products made by refining those again, there was nothing more to say.

And then there was the blunt statement: “If it’s not Swedish iron ore, you can’t make steel.” If the raw materials were insanely expensive and the production costs were also insanely expensive, how were you supposed to make it? You couldn’t.

…But something felt strange. People called twenty-first-century modern civilization a steel civilization. Steel rebars were used to build apartments and buildings, streetlamps used steel, blacksmiths on YouTube used steel, and in any case, eight out of ten visible things contained steel. So if the material cost was truly that filthy expensive, how had they used steel so freely?

There were three hypotheses.

First hypothesis.

As international trade and development increased, the supply of raw materials became smoother.

Second hypothesis.

The “steel” I was hearing about in the eighteenth century and the “steel” of twenty-first-century modern civilization were in fact different things.

Third hypothesis.

There had been innovation in the manufacturing process, increasing productivity relative to raw materials.

For now, I rejected the first one. No matter how much trade increased and development advanced, it could never drastically reduce the fundamental cost.

Just look at South Korea, with its population of fifty million. How many apartments were there? To build all those apartments, an absurd amount of steel rebars would be needed. Unless iron were being pulled out of Doraemon’s four-dimensional pocket, no matter how smooth the supply became, it would never keep up with demand.

The second one… I would reserve judgment on that.

There was no way for me to know unless I returned to the twenty-first century and asked in Pohang or Gwangyang.

That left the third hypothesis.

That innovation in the manufacturing process had increased productivity relative to raw materials—this seemed the most likely. The nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution was such a dramatic change in human history that even business administration studies covered it as a major turning point.

It made the most sense to assume that, during that Industrial Revolution, something had appeared that allowed steel to be mass-produced.

If so, then first I had to see the site for myself.

“…Would it be possible for me to observe the steel manufacturing process once?”

“Oh, of course. This way, please!”

“Thank you.”

Following the technician, I entered the foundry inside the arsenal. Even though it was winter, the inside of the foundry was filled with blazing heat that seemed to surpass thirty degrees with ease.

“Whew. It is rather hot.”

“Haha, be careful. Every now and then, a newcomer experiencing this kind of heat for the first time gets hit all at once and nearly loses his senses.”

Clang! Clang!

Red-hot molten iron was being poured here and there, carried away somewhere, and blacksmiths wielding hammers so large they required both hands were tempering iron that had been cooled with water.

This was exactly why blacksmithing was a brutal manual trade and a macho profession.

“Now then, we’ve arrived! This is the bloomery entirely responsible for steel production in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠France!”

“Ohhh!”

Ohhh… huh?

Wait a second, what was this?

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Yes, is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠there something you wish to ask?”

“To make steel… shouldn’t there be some enormous vat or something?”

You know, that thing. The giant cauldron—or maybe tank—you see at job fairs for public corporations and POSCO, where red-hot molten metal is boiling inside.

But where ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had that vat gone, and why was there something that looked like a mole tunnel instead?