Chapter 356 It’s the Right Time

Ever since coming into contact with Wells, owning his own steel plant has become Charles's concern.

Although Shire has a connection with the United States and can purchase special steel at a fair price through the US military, this is only applicable to Shire's production of tanks and cannot be used in Wells' shipyards to remove the shackles on his head.

The reason is that tanks require much less steel than warships, and the cost of special steel imported from the United States is still within an affordable range even with transportation costs and tariffs.

More importantly, tanks have more technical barriers and are protected by patents.

For example, the "Charle A1" is unique and there is no other tank that can defeat it. The French military can only purchase this tank.

Charles is still making improvements on the engine and will work on tank guns in the future.

It can be foreseen that as long as Charles exists, no company in the world, including Schneider, will be able to build a tank more advanced than Charles.

It is actually monopolized by Charles, and the cost of steel can be perfectly passed on to the military, and Charles can even raise the price.

But warships are different.

Wells could build a destroyer, and so could Schneider.

Wells could build a battleship, and so could Schneider.

There are also submarines, torpedo boats, minesweepers, etc.

There is no obvious technical gap between the two, and cost control is mainly focused on the huge consumption of steel.

If Wells relies entirely on imports from the United States for its steel, it will still not be able to escape the curse of "same performance but more expensive than others".

Therefore, if one wanted to completely bring Wells to Charles' side, the only way was to "help" him solve the steel problem.

Charles' attention naturally turned to the 68% of the steel industry that once belonged to France and was occupied by the Germans.

If we can take control of these steel industries, or even just a part of them, not much, about one twentieth, the Brest Shipyard will be completely free from the control of other capitalists.

Of course, Charles' goal is not limited to this. The development of any industry is closely related to steel, and the more share it controls, the better.

Tijani felt that this was a bit tricky. He searched on the map and found several steel mills. "The key is that their ownership is always in the hands of capitalists. One day when we fight back to retake these steel mills, the government will return them to the capitalists."

This is somewhat ironic. Charles was fighting on the front line, risking his life and going through untold hardships to recover lost territory, but he had to hand over the profits he had gained to the capitalists waiting in the rear.

But Charles had already thought of this, and he replied: "So we must act quickly, General. Now is the time!"

"Just in time?" Tijani looked at Charles in astonishment: "What do you mean?"

…

At Snyder Arsenal, James is in a meeting in the conference room.

The topic of the meeting was the mass production of the Chauchat machine gun.

James was a little proud, because until now Charles and Saint-Etienne Arsenal have not reacted, which means that Schneider finally won a battle.

"Our production capacity is a maximum of 2,000 per month. It is very difficult to increase it in the short term." Caso, the head of the Pito Arsenal, reported cautiously: "This is our limit."

"Not enough, far from enough." James said in an unquestionable tone: "At least 10,000."

Casso's face turned pale with fright. 10,000 units, that was five times the number. Whether it was the workers, the machines, or the factory, all of them were big problems.

But that's not the worst. James thought about it and gave a time limit:

"One month. It must be completed within one month."

"We must occupy the market in the shortest possible time. By then, even if Charles has a new machine gun with better performance, the military will be forced to choose our machine gun due to production capacity issues."

This is determined by the urgency of the battlefield.

Suppose Charles has a superior machine gun in the near future, but can only produce less than 1,000 per month.

However, the battlefield requires the equipment of hundreds of thousands of machines in a short period of time, and Charles' machine guns will be eliminated as a result.

(Note: Light machine guns are used as squad machine guns in modern organizations. A 10-man infantry squad is equipped with 1 to 2 machine guns. An army of millions of people would conservatively require 100,000 machine guns. In addition, they can be exported to equip the British and Russian armies, and the demand is huge.)

This is because James was not confident enough in the "Chauchat" machine gun, or it can be said that he believed in Charles' ability. James believed that Charles would be able to invent a better machine gun in the near future. He could only defeat Charles in terms of production.

"But, sir." Casso swallowed his saliva: "10,000, that's not very realistic. Everything takes time, including building a factory and training workers..."

"We can use another model." James interrupted Casso: "Decentralize production rights to other capable companies."

This is what France did after the outbreak of the war. Workers and factories with a certain level of technical skills and operational foundations in motorcycle factories, automobile factories and the like were used to produce machine guns and rifles to fill the huge gap during the war.

"But this will affect the quality of the machine gun." Casso was a little worried.

It's not that he has not thought about this plan, but judging from the current situation, there are big problems with the quality of firearms produced by informal arsenals.

And this could be fatal to a new machine gun.

"That's not the point, Casso." James tapped his fingers on the table, making it clatter. "The point is output, output! It's better for soldiers to have a machine gun in their hands, as long as it can still fire bullets!"

At this time, Paulina pushed the door open and leaned over James and lowered her voice: "Someone wants to see you, sir."

James turned to look at Paulina with a surprised look on his face: "At this time? Let him wait!"

Normally, anyone who wants to see him needs to make an appointment, especially now that he is in a meeting, how could he possibly leave everyone behind to meet someone.

But James quickly realized that Paulina couldn't make such a stupid mistake, so this person must be very important.

Sure enough, Paulina whispered, "It's Djoka, Charles' father."

James frowned when he heard "Dejoka" because he had never heard of this name.

But when he heard "Charles' father", James' face instantly turned to shock. Charles' father actually came to his door?

What's going on?

Could it be that Charles asked him to come to negotiate?

James couldn't sit still any longer. He stood up and looked around. "Today's meeting ends here. We'll discuss the details later."

Then he raised his head towards Casso and said, "Get ready, Casso, I want output!"

"As you wish, Mr. James." Casso replied helplessly.

As the head of the Pito Arsenal, he knew the situation of the Chauchat machine gun.

Even if this machine gun is produced by the arsenal, it has an unacceptable failure rate. If it is handed over to other factories for production, the situation will definitely be worse.

(End of this chapter)